Sunday, January 06, 2008

First Paper for the GTU

is posted below. I got a good mark on it, so I'm putting it here. After reading it, you will notice that I have committed a lot of these prejudices in my last five years' worth of sermons, and I am struggling over that. Rewriting them is obviously out of the question, but any time I preach them again, I will certainly be removing the supersessionist/anti-Jewish elements. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this paper, or that it at least gives you some food for thought.

Christian Feminist Theology and Anti-Judaism, December 2007

CHRISTIAN FEMINIST THEOLOGY AND ANTI-JUDAISM:
A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY

The feminist revolution has furnished one more occasion for the projection of Christian failure onto Judaism. It ought to provide the opportunity for transcending ancient differences in the common battle against sexism.
Judith Plaskow1


Introduction
Christian churches today acknowledge the sin of the Holocaust and endeavor to avoid anti-Judaism in their theology. In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant churches have issued church-wide statements to this effect,2 laying the foundation for a reconciliation between Jews and Christians. Despite these formal steps, anti-Judaism continues to be present in Christian theology. The purpose of this bibliographic essay is not to explore why this is so, but to underscore that Christian feminist theology is not nor has been exempt from this prejudice and to highlight the contributions of Jewish and Christian feminist theologians in exposing and expunging it.

This paper is structured as a narrative chronology of feminist theologians’ writings that have addressed and shaped the argument against anti-Judaism. It will show that early works identifying the presence of anti-Judaism in feminist writings were not themselves explicitly influenced by feminism, but that it did not take long for writers to use specifically feminist lenses in examining the problem. This essay will demonstrate that, while not always explicitly stated as such, feminist theory, which seeks to criticize systems, assumptions, and prejudices, has provided and continues to provide the tools for feminists to expose Christian anti-Judaism and to begin the process of avoiding it.

The intended audience of this survey is the english-speaking Christian who is engaged in or has an appreciation for feminist theology, but who has not had much, if any, exposure to the problem of anti-Judaism. Therefore, a summary of each article will be included, in part to give some familiarity to the arguments, but also to emphasize that the presence of anti-Judaism in Christian feminist literature has, over the decades, shown few signs of lessening. It is important to be aware that the resources that have been selected are ones that are in circulation within the english-speaking Christian community. While there has been a great deal of literature written in german, arising out of post-holocaust theology, the limits of this essay restrict it to material that is available to the reader familiar with english.

Finally, before continuing any further, it is necessary to define three terms used frequently in this field: supersessionism, anti-Judaism, and anti-Semitism. Supersessionism is the belief that the Christians replace the Jews as God’s chosen and saved people. In this view, Jesus Christ is the fulfillment and/or replacement of God’s Abrahamic covenant, and his coming is often cited as the reason Jews, their covenant, and the “Law” are irrelevant and no longer applicable to Christians.3 Anti-Judaism is a more explicit form of supersessionism, exemplified by a religious and/or theological bias against Jews that denigrates or vilifies them as a faith group.4 Anti-Semitism is a term that is most often, though not always, used in a secular context, primarily referring to Jews as an ethnic and cultural group. The usage of the latter term is particularly problematic because it was claimed and made popular by Wilhelm Marr in 1879, a self-defined anti-Semite who urged hostility against the Jewish people because of their (supposed) economical and political influence.5 While there continues to be ongoing discussions about terminology and the relationships of the terms to one another, this paper is not the place to explore that. Instead, despite the appearance of inconsistency that might arise, this paper will refer to the particular terminology that the authors use in their own writings.

Women Raise the Issue - the 1970s
This survey must begin with Rosemary Radford Reuther’s groundbreaking work, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism6 (1974). While Reuther, a Christian, never claimed her work to be specifically feminist in methodology and neither did she reference feminism in any of her arguments, this book was the first major contemporary attempt at highlighting the problem and history of anti-Semitism in Christianity. Every scholar familiar with anti-Judaism in Christian circles is familiar with her work, and so it must be included here. Reuther’s thesis, based on historical and textual criticism, argued that the roots of anti-Semitism extend to the very beginnings of the Christian church, are concretized in the writings of the New Testament canon, and have been entwined with Christian theology ever since. For Reuther, the two theological doctrines of christology and covenantal theology have been the most problematic for Christianity because of the ways in which anti-Judaism contribute to their very foundation. Only by addressing these fundamental doctrines can Christianity hope to recover from anti-Judaism.

While Reuther’s work was well-received, and continues to be read by students and scholars alike, it was Judith Plaskow’s critical essay in CrossCurrents four years later that focussed attention on anti-Judaism in specifically feminist Christian writings. Plaskow, a Jew, wrote “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism”7 (1978) in order to criticize Christian feminist writers for the ways in which their “sloppy scholarship” (Plaskow 1978, 308) in New Testament studies on Jesus contributed to anti-Judaism. Using contemporary biblical and historical scholarship, Plaskow critiqued the polemical (mis)representations that Jewish groups and later Talmudic interpretations were simultaneously contemporary with and antagonistic towards Jesus, and accused Christian feminist scholars of unfairly representing Jewish attitudes towards women in order to make Christianity, and Jesus, look good.


Specifying and Engaging the Perpetrators - the 1980s
Plaskow continued to be the one of the few voices of protest through the 1980s, as Christian feminism addressed issues other than anti-Judaism. Although Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her8 addressed the dangers of anti-Judaism in feminist writings about Jesus, as raised by Plaskow in 1978, it went no further. While Plaskow applauded Schüssler Fiorenza’s work for fairly representing the diversity of Jewish opinion held during Jesus’ time and for locating Jesus within the Jewish community, she was not wholly convinced that Schüssler Fiorenza’s methodology would be applied consistently. Holding up the feminist practice of unveiling the ambiguity that often lies in texts, Plaskow encouraged Schüssler Fiorenza to apply that practice to biblical scholarship. Plaskow hoped that by doing so, scholars might become aware of the ways in which the stories of Jesus that liberate women can sometimes be used to oppress Jews.9

An important shift in the tone of Plaskow’s 1984 review reflects some of the changes that feminism was going through at the time, specifically the move from describing groups in monolithic terms to recognizing the diversity of individuals within groups. Moving from her 1978 position that all Christian feminists were guilty of anti-Judaism, Plaskow began to nuance her argument to say that only some Christians were implicated. Simultaneously, she sought to keep women involved in Jewish-Christian discussions by framing her criticisms in the context of everyone being “engaged in a common project, never reading other women out of that project because of the disagreements with them” (Plaskow 1984, 101).

Focusing the Self-Critical Gaze - the 1990s
The 1990s ushered in a renewed focus on anti-Judaism, led by Susannah Heschel. In “Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Theology”10 (1990), Heschel identified the shared goal of Jewish and Christian feminists as one of recovering religion from its patriarchal roots. While she applauded this goal, she took Christian feminists to task for the ways in which they were pursuing this. Specifically, she condemned those Christian feminists who connect Nazism, patriarchy, and the Israelite religion. While Heschel found it horrifying that the cause of all patriarchy should be ascribed solely to the Israelite religion and the way their men murdered the Goddess, what was even more troubling was the way in which the Israelite patriarchy was being described as the foundation of Nazi ideology, thus implicating Israelite men in the attempted elimination of their descendants, Heschel’s own people. In the midst of these atrocities, the specific sin of the Christian feminist was to form these connections for the purpose of holding up Jesus Christ as the only one able to free women from such wicked, patriarchal domination (the implication being that Christianity was therefore the only religion where women would be safe from the power of men). Heschel, in an attempt to guide feminists to a more appropriate path for achieving the Jewish-Christian goal of eliminating patriarchy, offered what was a reflection of post-second-wave feminism’s contribution to overcoming any form of prejudice: “If there is any single most important point promoted by feminism, it is to cease the projection of evil onto others” (Heschel 1990, 97).

The following year, both Heschel and Plaskow continued to press their point. Turning to more feminist-based arguments, they each encouraged Christian theologians to broaden their critical gaze to include not just those who were perpetrating injustice by objectifying women, but to include themselves as people who were perpetrating injustice by objectifying Jews. Drawing on feminism’s development of repersonalizing the “Other,” both women recommended similar solutions to the problem.

Heschel, in “Feminism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue”11 (1991), recommended that Christian feminists begin to acknowledge the patriarchalism that existed with Christianity itself as a way of putting an end to anti-Judaism. Drawing a parallel between the exclusion of females and “society’s patriarchy and misogyny” and the exclusion of Jews and anti-Judaism and anti-semitism, Heschel encouraged both Christian and Jewish feminists to personalize the “Other” for the purposes of the mutual reclamation of women to the community’s relationship with God (Heschel 1991, 240).

Plaskow used the same feminist ideal of mutuality to emphasize the value of encouraging diversity as a basis for overcoming not only patriarchy but anti-Judaism. In “Feminist Anti-Judaism and the Christian God,”12 (1991) she reiterated her criticism of Christian feminists’ inaccurate descriptions of rabbinic and Talmudic Judaism that served to glorify Christ by denigrating the very people to whom he belonged. Her solution, though, was different here than in her past works. In addition to urging Christian feminists to become knowledgeable about Jewish past and present, she encouraged them to do so within the context of Judaism itself. That is, she called them to engage in the particularly feminist practice of allowing groups to define themselves (instead of being defined by an outsider), to “foster [an] awareness of Judaism as defined by Jews” (Plaskow 1991, 107).

Around the time of Heschel’s and Plaskow’s publications, Christian feminist theologians were beginning to raise concerns about their own tendencies towards anti-Judaism. But while the Jewish feminist voices were coming out of America, the Christian feminist voices were speaking primarily from Germany. Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz and Katherina von Kellenbach, two German Christians, received the most exposure in English circles, and it is to their work that this survey now turns.

Siegele-Wenschkewitz, in “The Discussion of Anti-Judaism in Feminist Theology - A New Area of Jewish-Christian Dialogue”13 (1991), built on the work begun by Plaskow and Heschel of bringing together explicitly feminist theology and Jewish-Christian dialogue. Obviously rooted in post-holocaust theology, Siegele-Wenschkewitz applied the same methodologies used to uncover the oppression of women in the history of the church to expose the “oppressive heritage of anti-Judaism in christian theology and church past and present” (Siegele-Wenschkewitz 1991, 97). She encouraged feminist theologians, both Christians and Jews, to bring their critical and supportive methods to the task of Jewish-Christian dialogue so that sexism, religious prejudice, and even classism and racism might be avoided.

Her work was followed by Katherina von Kellenbach who, other than Reuther, has offered the only book-length contribution to the issue at hand. Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings14 (1994) differed from Faith and Fratricide, though, in that it is an explicitly feminist work. Beginning with the premise that “feminist theology is political theology” (von Kellenbach 1994, 16), von Kellenbach examined the similar ways in which women and Jews have been marginalized by different groups of people: through exclusionary dualisms, labeling and reducing the “Other”, and rendering the subject invisible. Describing this attitude as it results in anti-Judaism as a “teaching of contempt” (von Kellenbach 1994, Chapter II), she challenged three widely recognized theories that contain anti-Judaism (Judaism as superseded by Christianity, Judaism as solely and hopelessly patriarchal, and Judaism as suppressing and eliminating the Goddess) as contemptuous and flat-out inaccurate. In place of a teaching of contempt, von Kellenbach proposed a “teaching of respect” (von Kellenbach 1994, Chapter VIII), a term developed by Clark Williamson in A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology15 (1993). While Williamson is not a feminist per se, von Kellenbach connected his new teaching with the feminist methodology of respectful criticism. This “teaching of respect” maintains the legitimacy and dignity of the group under discussion while continuing to challenge its prejudices.

As the 1990s progressed, Jewish and Christian feminists began to work together in identifying and combatting anti-Judaism. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, obviously taking to heart Judith Plaskow’s suggestions to her in 1984, included Plaskow’s “Anti-Judaism in Feminist Christian Interpretation”16 in the first volume of Searching the Scriptures (1993). Briefly surveying the nature of the problem, an argument with which readers should by now be familiar, Plaskow then suggested the use of particularly feminist hermeneutical tools as a corrective. Specifically, Plaskow argued that, much as non-white feminists have addressed issues of race in white feminism through education and exposure of bigotry, anti-Judaism could be addressed by examining Christian “texts and social structures” for religious prejudices (Plaskow 1993, 124). Plaskow, again reflecting the trends in feminism at the time, foregrounded institutions and systems as being part of the problem of anti-Judaism, and insisted that they ought to be critically investigated by Jewish and Christian feminists alike.

In another instance of collaboration, the anthology A Feminist Companion to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament17 (1996), edited by Athalya Brenner, took seriously Plaskow’s early charge of “sloppy scholarship” and the subsequent criticisms from other circles of misrepresentations of the people of Jesus’ times and sought to rectify that. Bringing together seventeen biblical and theological scholars, Jewish and Christian, the anthology presented more recent and more accurate scholarship regarding patriarchy and women in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Recognizing, though, that simply providing corrective interpretations was not enough, Athalya Brenner concluded her book with a fourth part, “Anti-Judaism and Its Feminist Interpretations?” Here, Siegele-Wenschkewitz equated anti-Judaism with anti-Semitism and cautioned German feminists to be aware that a “contextual” German feminist theology included the context of a history of anti-Semitism culminating in the National Socialist Party’s attempted genocide of the Jewish people in “In the Dangerous Currents of Old Prejudices How Predominant Thoughts Have Disastrous Effects and What Could Be Done to Counter Them” (Brenner 1996, 342-348). In a similar vein Edna Brocke, a Jew, in “Do the Origins Already Contain the Malady” (Ibid, 349-354), challenged Christian feminist theologians to search the histories of New Testament scholarship and the Western church for anti-Judaism in the same way that they did for patriarchy.

By the end of the 1990s, the problem of anti-Judaism in Christian feminist writings had garnered enough awareness that surveys of the relevant materials were possible. Although this essay is restricted to materials written in English, Marie-Theres Wacker’s essay, “Feminist Exegetical Hermeneutics,”18 in Feminist Interpretation: The Bible in Women’s Perspective (1998) provides an excellent, though very brief, bibliographic survey of both German and English resources addressing the issue. (The volume is translated into English, but the resources listed are mostly written in German.) As a way of countering anti-Judaism, Wacker introduced some basic resources for Jewish feminist theologians, from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform traditions, something that had been missing from the field to that time.

Another survey, written five years later for a Christian clergy audience, focused on English literature. Sarah J. Meicher, in “The Problem of Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Biblical Interpretation: Some Pragmatic Suggestions,”19 gave practical advise for how a Christian feminist might avoid anti-Judaism in her study of biblical interpretation and directed the reader to the resources that have been surveyed above.

Complexities and Nuances - the 2000s
One might expect that after thirty years, Christian feminists would be well aware of the danger of anti-Judaism in their thinking. Sadly, that has not been the case, and the most recent round of publications on the subject attest to that. While Judith Plaskow was the voice most widely recognized as speaking against anti-Judaism in the 1970s and 1980s, in this decade, that dubious honor has fallen to Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar. In “Lilies of the Field and Wandering Jews: Biblical Scholarship, Women’s Roles, and Social Location”20 (2000), Levine situates herself squarely within the field of feminist scholarship, admiring the beauty and variety of hermeneutical strategies blooming therein. She is not so overcome by the foliage, though, that she does not notice that the weeds of anti-Judaism are overtaking, in particular, the blooms of feminist social-location exegesis. Identifying very specific people and pieces, Levine focuses on the work of feminist liberation theologians and exposes the anti-Judaism that has been growing there since the 1990s. In a disappointing proof of history repeating itself, however, the examples of anti-Judaism that she provides fall into the same categories that have been used to define anti-Judaism since Judith Plaskow and Susannah Heschel began their critiques: the misrepresentation of Judaism as a monolithic group uniquely and categorically against women and Jesus, the denigrated Jews as a foil to the glorified Jesus, and the incompetent scholarship that turns the Jews of Jesus’ time into the Other. Levine’s solution to the problem is similar to Plaskow’s and Heschel’s - greater exposure to current biblical scholarship and to Judaism in general - but she also encourages “reading-with” strategies that include Jewish women in biblical interpretation. Her essay ends on a positive note, history’s repetition notwithstanding, as she lists the many feminist works that avoid anti-Judaism while remaining rooted in their social location.

At this point, it is necessary to note that while Levine’s subject matter is not new, the way in which she located herself as a North American, educated, middle-class Jew is. Using the third-wave feminist tool of self-location (rather than social-location), she not only opens to her audience her own biased involvement in the issue, but acknowledges that despite being the target of anti-Judaism, she is not in a place where she can criticize the theologies of “under-represented racial and ethnic minorities” (Levine 2000, 350) free from any taint or suspicion of racism. In the works of those fighting against anti-Judaism in Christian feminism, Levine’s approach is unique and worth adopting.

The most recent work in this field (and one might hopefully say the last) has also been the result of Levine’s leadership. In The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004), Levine brought together Musimbi Kanyoro, Hisako Kinukawa, Kwok Pui-Lan, Adele Reinhartz, and Elaine Wainwright in a roundtable discussion on “Anti-Judaism and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation.” Levine’s preliminary article, “The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing,”21 opened with the frank statement that “feminist postcolonial biblical scholars often re-create the dichotomizing rhetorics of the Bible and many of its interpreters. Specifically, these readers identify the evil of their own circumstance as an elitist Judaism, which both they and Jesus oppose” (Levine 2004, 91). Levine exposes the incongruity of postcolonial theologians adopting what is a colonial attitude, stating that anti-Judaism is a “Western export” (Ibid, 96) that was learned in the West and carried across the seas with other biblical scholarship. Her corrective, something we should by now be able to predict, is education about Judaism and responsible historical-critical work. While Levine acknowledges that the latter field of study is often problematic for those seeking to avoid colonialism’s influence or who find it irrelevant, she nevertheless insists that without it, myths and untruths about Jews and Judaism will continue to circulate. For Levine, postcolonialism’s rejection of the West’s oppressive ideologies includes rejecting the oppression of anti-Judaism.

The responses from the postcolonial Christian feminists involved are significant, reflecting where feminist theology is in the mid-2000s. Kwok Pui-Lan’s response22 acknowledges Levine’s concerns and emphasizes that anti-Judaism has historically been a Euro/American concern, not shared by third-world women. However, she reiterates Levine’s point that anti-Semitism is actually a postcolonial issue, and as such, third-world women have much to learn from and much to contribute to its dismantling. Her response, though brief, demonstrates the importance of postcolonial theory in understanding the complexities of anti-Semitism and its continued presence in feminist theology.

Musimbi Kanyoro also echoes the Euro/American focus of debates on anti-Semitism in her response,23 but she questions the existence of anti-Semitism in African postcolonial feminist theology and states unequivocally that “anti-Semitism is not their fight” (Kanyoro 2004, 107). Using social-location theory, Kanyoro shifts the argument to highlight the concerns of African women, specifically HIV/AIDS (where she inadvertently proves Levine’s argument in an attempt to disprove it).24 She then suggests that the best way to address the issue of anti-Semitism would be to show “greater empathy for what non-Jews have suffered and suffer now” (Ibid, 110).

Hisako Kinukawa responds to Levine from her perspective as a privileged Japanese liberation theologian.25 Speaking autobiographically, and acknowledging her own social location, Kinukawa expresses her desire to be more critical of her sources and her own works in assessing them for anti-Judaism. Old habits die hard, though, and in her argument she refers to the “Judaism of Jesus’ time” (Kinukawa 2004, 117) in a negative and monolithic way, thereby lessening the power of her statement.

Elaine Wainwright’s and Adele Reinhartz’ responses26 are worthy of mention because they both highlight an important new contribution to the issue, that “recognition needs to be given to the anti-Judaizing of the Christian psyche” (Wainwright 2004, 125). The addition of sociology as a lens for interpreting the causes of this specific form of oppression, while not exclusively feminist, is helpful. Wainwright, in particular, uses a sociological analysis of class to assess the situation of anti-Judaism in non-academic circles, a group heretofore unexamined.

Levine’s concluding response27 gives proof to her opening argument of how pervasive anti-Judaism is by highlighting where it is at work in the previous respondents’ essays (as has been shown in the preceding paragraphs). Nevertheless, she recognizes and appreciates the complexities revealed as a result of examining the issue through the lenses of race, class, and third-world theology. She leaves her readers, and the readers of this survey, with the task of continuing to develop feminist theology uninfected by anti-Judaism.

Conclusion
Anti-Judaism continues to be a problem in Christian feminist writings. Fortunately, feminist methodologies continue to bring forth new ways to expose and eliminate it. In the 1970s, feminist theory was any work by or about women, and Reuther’s and Plaskow’s essays reflected that. As feminists developed more nuanced arguments in the 1980s, seeking to avoid the generalization of the Other of which they accused patriarchy, Plaskow and Heschel brought more specificity to their identification of who was perpetrating this oppression and how. The development of the feminist self-critical gaze in the 1990s enabled Christian women to identify their own participation in anti-Jewish rhetoric, and as we move through the first decade of the twenty-first century, we see postcolonial theory and third-world feminist theology contributing further nuance to the issue, bringing together oppressor and oppressed, excusing none but humanizing all. (It is interesting to note that in the field of feminist studies and anti-Judaism, the inappropriate application of gender studies, a foundational tool in feminist theory and theology, can too often be identified as the cause of anti-Judaism rhetoric. To date, I have not yet found any resources that use gender studies as a way of either exposing or eliminating anti-Judaism, although there is no inherent reason that this should be the case.)

It is difficult to look forward, to anticipate what the next wave of feminist theory will bring to the issue of anti-Judaism. This is due, predominantly, to the hope that anti-Judaism has no future in Christian theology. While it is outside the scope of this paper to address the (possibly insurmountable) theological complexities of anti-Judaism in Christianity, one can nevertheless be hopeful that more recent areas of feminist study, including queer theory (which has been missing from the debate), and a revival of some neglected, older areas of study, including race and class analysis, can put a definitive end to anti-Judaism in all writings, theological, feminist, and otherwise.


Notes
1. Plaskow, Judith. “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism.” Cross Currents 28:3 (1978): 309.
2. For more detailed information, including church documents, visit the website of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, Boston College, specifically “Documents, Declarations, and Speeches” at<>
3 The most recent public example of this argument was made by Ann Coulter in an interview with Donnie Deutsch on his NBC show The Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch, Monday, October 8, 2007. Visit to view a video recording of the segment.
4 Heschel, Susannah. “Anti-Judaism/Anti-Semitism,” in Letty M Russel and J. Shannon Clarkson, eds., Dictionary of Feminist Theologies. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. 12-13.
5 Lincoln Allison "anti-Semitism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Graduate Theological Union.
6 November 2007
6 Reuther, Rosemary Radford. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. New York: The Seabury Press, 1974.
7 Plaskow, Judith. “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism.” Cross Currents 28:3 (1978):306-309.
8 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroads, 1985.
9 Plaskow, Judith. “Response: In Memory of Her Symposium” Anima 10:2 (1984): 98-102.
10 Heschel, Susannah. “Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Theology.” Tikkun 5. No 3. (1990): 25-28, 95-97.
11 ______. “Feminism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue.” Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations. Shermis, Zannoni, eds. New York: Paulist Press, 1991. 227-246.
12 Plaskow, Judith. “Feminist Anti-Judaism and the Christian God.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7:2 (1991): 99-107.
13 Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Leonore. “The Discussion of Anti-Judaism in Feminist Theology - A New Area of Jewish-Christian Dialogue.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7:2 (1991): 95-98.
14 Von Kellenbach, Katharina. Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1994.
15 Williamson, Clark. A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.
16 Plaskow, Judith. “Anti-Judaism in Feminist Christian Interpretation.” Searching the Scriptures. Volume One: A Feminist Introduction. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ed. New York: Crossroad, 1993.
17 Brenner, Athalya ed. A Feminist Companion to the Hebrew Bible in the Testament. Series: The Feminist Companion to the Bible 10. Sheffield: Sheffield Press, 1996.
18 Wacker, Marie-Theres. “Feminist Exegetical Hermeneutics” in Feminist Interpretation: The Bible in Women’s Perspective, edited by Luise Schottroff, Silvia Schroer, and Marie-Theres Wacker, translated by Martin and Barbara Rumscheidt. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998: 55-62.
19 Meicher, Sarah J. “The Problem of Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Biblical Interpretation: Some Pragmatic Suggestions.” Cross Currents 53:1 (2003): 22-31.
20 Levine, Amy-Jill. “Lilies of the Field and Wandering Jews: Biblical Scholarship, Women’s Roles, and Social Location” in Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-Viewed, edited by Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger. Biblical Interpretation Series 43. Boston: Brill, 2000.
21 ___. “The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 91-99.
22 Kwok, Pui-Lan. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 9-106.
23 Kanyoro, Musimbi. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 106-111.
24 Kanyoro wrote, “Many people in Africa are explaining AIDS as witchcraft or a curse from God. Which God is this? For Christians, it is the God who is most aligned to things African and who is introduced to Africa through the Bible, specifically the Old Testament… The God of the Bible healed people from pestilence and other things that would otherwise harm them. This reasoning should not be understood as anti-Semitism. In fact, this is a case where regard is high for Judaism; therefore it is actually a pro-Semitic stance.” (Ibid, 110). As Levine points out in her response [see citation note 21 below], the equating of Judaism with the people of the Old Testament is part of the problem of anti-Judaism
.25 Kinukawa, Hisako. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 115-118.
26 Reinhartz, Adele. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 111-115.
Wainwright, Elaine. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 119-125.
27 Levine, Amy-Jill. “Response to The Disease of Postcolonial New Testament Studies and the Hermeneutics of Healing.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20:1 (2004): 125-132.