A Network of Faith: Scholars on Midrash and Community
In her book Feminist Revision and the Bible, poet, scholar, and STI teacher Alicia Suskin Ostriker describes the process of midrash and examination of faith:
As critic and poet, as Jew, woman and (dare I say) human being, I am involved in a collective enterprise which has as its ultimate goal the radical transformation of what used to be called ‘the Judeo-Christian tradition.’ (30)
Interestingly, not only does Ostriker point to a purposeful agenda in the re-examination of faith, she also includes an emphasis on the “collective” aspect of such an “enterprise.” The word “collective” remains ambiguous here—Ostriker could be referring to the collective methods she uses or to a collective of beings who engage in the re-examination of faith.
Either way, we see a discussion of religion that transcends a single mode and a single person. In “The Coming of Lilith: Toward a Feminist Theology,” Judith Plaskow both creates and comments on midrashic interpretations of Lilith. She notes, of engaging with Lilith’s story:
We try to express through our myth the process of our coming to do theology together. Lilith by herself is in exile and can do nothing. The real heroine of our story is sisterhood, and sisterhood is powerful. (31)
Plaskow not only highlights the importance of a community of sisters for engaging in theology through midrash, she also demonstrates the importance of re-imagining a community of women in religious texts. That is to say, a sisterhood emerges in both the process and product of contemporary midrash. Later, in her re-imagining of Lilith and Eve, Plaskow invents a meeting between the two women:
They taught each other many things, and told each other stories, and laughed together, and cried, over and over, till the bond of sisterhood grew between them. (Plaskow, “The Coming of Lilith” 32)
The author’s insistence on community is explicit (she notes the “bond of sisterhood” between Eve and Lilith) but, with her syntax, she also implies the lasting nature of this bond. That is to say, by using a long sentence, and connecting different phrases and actions with “and,” Plaskow exposes the momentum in Eve’s relationship with Lilith, momentum that culminates but does not end in “the bond of sisterhood” (“The Coming of Lilith” 32). Hence, we have no reason to believe that this small community will end. More importantly, Plaskow indicates the power potential of such a network of women. She ends the story:
And God and Adam were expectant and afraid the day Eve and Lilith returned to the garden, bursting with possibilities, ready to rebuild it together. (32)
Plaskow therefore ostends the latent power in sisterhood and community.
