The Institute for Contemporary Midrash, particularly the Summer Training Intensives, fostered engagement, particularly women’s engagement, with theological texts through midrash. Moreover, these organizations allowed for a community of women to emerge. Rivkah Walton notes that in the ICM’s midrash training, about 90% of the participants were women (Walton, “Lilith’s Daughters, Miriam’s Chours” 10). In a phone interview, Walton claims that the community aspect of midrash was both important to and deliberate for the ICM. She recalls, “We really tried to put tracks together, have people work together, we made sure that you started the morning with an inter-track midrash study session, chose one text to study that week—everybody was working on the same stuff” (Walton, Personal Interview).
Because most of the participants in the STI were women, the archives show the network, the sisterhood, that grew out of practicing contemporary midrash.
Testimonials in the ICMR collection prove that Walton’s attempts to create a community certainly came to fruition; the records also demonstrate that such a network empowered women and facilitated a deeper relationship to faith. In video transcripts of STI 1997 participants, one individual claims that the process of midrash at the trainings facilitated writing as a social practice (Box 9, ICMR). Hence,
midrashim was a communal, not individual, endeavor. In her interview at the STI, Avi Dolgin claims that contemporary midrash was a democratic process, without a specified expert who dictated the interpretation of texts (Box 9, ICMR). Clearly, if dealing with the texts becomes a democratic effort, all participants have power and gain authority over their relationship with religious materials. As a result, the community that emerged at the STI brought women together and also imbued them with power. Interestingly, Dolgin goes on to note that this community transcended different sects of Judaism; she remembers that there were workshops for women of all inclinations (Box 9, ICMR). Another participant recalls that the summer trainings actually had a lot of potential for interfaith work, meaning the community created could extend to different religions (Box 9, ICMR). The importance of community in making midrash becomes even clearer with an examination of the role of instructors at the STI.
Alicia Ostriker, who instructed writing at the intensive, received all favorable evaluations; one of her students claims that Ostriker “was one of us,” demonstrating a community, one that even included the instructor, flourished.
The same participant notes that she was comforted by being surrounded, thereby reiterating the importance of the network the STI created (Box 10, ICMR). Indeed, this community extended beyond the STI and ICM. Letters about the ICM included in Box 10 of the collection indicate that participants took the skills they learned from the contemporary midrash trainings and brought them back to the communities they lived in. In fact,
Andrea Clearfield, who with the
Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, presented the groundbreaking “
Women of Valor,” claims that she used the ICM as a resource while doing her creative work (Box 10, ICMR). Work at the Institute for Contemporary Midrash not only created a network of empowered women, it spread to other communities across the United States.
