Beginning Anew [antikvár]

Introduction Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith A. Kates Every year on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we and our families sit together in a temporarily large but informal congregation. Located in a university, the congregation fosters active intellectual engagement with the holiday services and prides itself particularly on lively discussion of the Torah and Haftara portions, the prescribed Biblical readings for each day. This setting has reinforced our own inclination to involve ourselves with traditional texts as a central part of our experience of, and participation in, the Days of Awe. Our shared commitment to feminist questions and to the search for women's voices within the Biblical text and Jewish tradition led us to the compelling realization that women are central to the Rosh Hashana readings: women as characters, and through them, concerns that have traditionally been felt to be of particular importance to women. Each year we have noticed and begun anew to try to find meaning in this phenomenon. Reflections on Rosh Hashana from women-centered perspectives have led inevitably to our wondering about the possibility of women's modes of response to Yom Kippur. Clearly we are not alone. We have read and learned from scattered essays, poems and midrashic meditations that contemporary women have written on these texts. But it is also clear that few of these new and exciting interpretations reach the majority of those who find themselves in synagogue on the High Holy Days. Even in our highly participatory, egalitarian congregation, the centrality of women in these readings is only rarely discussed. Most anthologies devoted to explanation and interpretation of these holidays treat the Biblical readings only by way of summary, indicating the general thematic connections. But when the reading for the first day of Rosh Hashana is referred to as "the birth of Isaac," we easily lose sight of how much it revolves around Sarah and her handmaiden Hagar. When the reading for the second day is discussed as a test of Abraham's faith and/or of Isaac's trust, we easily forget that ii