Jewish feminist interpretation, circa 1929!

Here’s one I didn’t expect. In 1929, as part of a series of activities for Cincinnati’s Young Women’s Hebrew Association, Belle Wohl, the wife of the young rabbi of Reading Road Temple led a discussion series focused on “Feminist interpretations of the Bible.”

British Jewess Grace Aguilar had written the popular and valorizing Women of Israel in the 1830s and U.S. woman’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton had published the controversial Woman’s Bible in the 1890s which highlighted Old Testament denigrations of women. But I wasn’t aware that there was much of a Jewish tradition of feminist biblical reading before the late 20th century. (The Women of Reform Judaism organization is preparing to publish the latest of this genre, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary by the end of 2007).

I’d love to know what Mrs. Wohl had to say. A February 22, 1929 Every Friday report noted only that she "gave a feministic interpretation of women of the Bible." (emphasis added)

Other YWHA activities for the winter of 1929, as reported in Every Friday for January 25, 1929, included dancing classes at the Temple, a bowling team which met downtown at Central Bowling Alleys, and weekly rehearsals for a minstrel show scheduled for March. More on that, or some similar event, anon …