She develops this approach, and the metaphor of "Expanding the Palace of Torah", which she adopts from Abraham Isaac Kook's philosophy, as she intends to promote expansion, rather than dismissal of religious tradition, and text.
Hartman provides three stances that she claims "may be relevant, resonant, and helpful in cultivating a strong feminist position vis-á-vis the traditional Jewish canon,": affirmation, rejection and reinterpretation.
[6] Tracing back to ancient rabbinic Judaism, scholars have sought to develop ethics and a moral code of conduct based on their understanding of the written Torah.
[8] Today, the dilemmas posed for Jewish feminist theologians extend beyond the original issues by tackling problems of women in liturgy, biblical language, and sexuality.
Ten years later, in October 1983, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the main educational institution of the Conservative Movement, began accepting women in the rabbinical and cantorial schools.
"[20] Rachel Adler invokes the rabbinic concept of Geneivat da'at ("theft of the mind") to describe the process by which tradition "steals the memory of the true face of the other" by misremembering and misrepresenting women in the text.
Plaskow writes: [H]ints concerning women's experiences must be carefully ferreted out from narratives, prophecies, and legal texts focused on other matters.
Tova Hartman, who identifies as Modern Orthodox, describes this tension: To know that one is feminist and to know that one loves the Bible is, in the thinking of many, at best an oxymoron, perhaps clever as a rhetorical statement but surely not a possibility for existential living.
Laurie Zoloth writes that when women read rabbinic text, "We witness the discussion of our existence as the considered object, largely unnamed, and called only by the name of their relationship to men ('Rabbi Hiyya's wife,' 'the widow,' 'his handmaiden') and often seen only in terms of the most external of features.
Plaskow refers to this as "preaching against the text" and remarks that, "Remaining silent about the negative aspects of tradition not only leaves them to do their work in the world, it also deprives us of an important spiritual resources."
Berman suggests the topic of globalization as an area on which nashiut ethics can comment because "it represents well the complex web of race, gender and class issues which are ... the defining ingredients of early twenty-first century moral dilemmas.
Adler writes, "The legal definition, derived from talmudic property law, anachronistically categorizes women as a special kind of chattel over which the husband has acquired rights.
Beacon Press: Boston, MA p. 169] Adler outlines a new wedding ceremony based on the sheva brachot (the celebratory blessings bestowed upon a newly married couple) that is compatible with an egalitarian society.
Plaskow was part of the Ezrat Nashim, a small Jewish feminist group that presented the "Call for Change" to the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement on March 14, 1972.
This call for change represents a liberal feminist stance, arguing for equal access to positions of leadership and religious participation from which Jewish women were excluded because of their gender.
[58] The heads of the Conservative movement at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America finally responded to Feminist outcry, and on October 24, 1983, began admitting women into the Rabbinical School.
Plaskow supports this, and defends this analysis as theology, claiming that "an established system can become self-perpetuating and lose its ability for introspection and re-examination of basic premises"[61] Fundamental sources of Feminist texts in Reform Judaism come from Rachel Adler.
Women refuse to disavow the sacred stories and texts that are the foundations of Judaism, yet are constantly fighting to make their voice heard in a for-men, by-men religion.
Following Greenberg, Modern Orthodox feminists attempt to apply Halakha universally to male and female roles, without fundamentally altering history, the text, or all moral obligations.
To glean knowledge from this section, it is important to note that the definition of theology is understood as "the systematic and rational study of concepts of deity and of the nature of religious truths".
[79] Tova Hartman offers something different aligning herself with Maimonides and takes his permission to change the liturgy in order to "facilitate a greater sense of connection between the subjective self-image of the supplicants and words they use to pray".
She recognizes the history of oppression and separation that women have faced and this is her attempt to work towards equality in marriage and divorce law while still refusing to reject Halakha; rather this is a reconstruction and reconfiguration of tradition.
Because of this, and the nature of how women are forced to defer to male authority, in what is often a very humiliating way, many Jewish thinkers; including ethicists and feminists, see the laws and practices of Niddah as both unethical and anti-feminist.
She draws on her own experiences and identity, as well as different Jewish sources, in an attempt to redefine human sexuality as open and fluid; she offers a re-reading of biblical texts as a means of defining a new ethical.
In her book, Zoloth analyzes and criticizes the healthcare crisis in America, maintaining that we should turn to the Jewish tradition in order to guide us in creating an appropriate ethic.
Tova Hartman, a professor, ethicist, and psychologist, studies Freud and incorporates some of his research into her book Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation.
Like Nashiut ethics, womanist and mujerista theologies provide voices to justice-seeking women who have been neglected within their respective racial, ethnic, and religious groups.
Donna Berman specifies, that, like womanist and mujerista theologies, the purpose of Nashiut ethics is to create a place for women who have been neglected and "otherized" in history.
"[113] While most Jewish feminist ethicists and thinkers agree that Judaism can be inadequate to the requirements of feminism, many have oppositional views towards methods of solving this problem, and are thus critical of each other's works.
"[117] In her article, Plaskow criticizes Ozick and Adler for being too focused on making changes to halakha to fit feminist needs, and for not discussing Judaism's underlying theological problems.