Jewish Radical Feminism

Finalist, 2019 PROSE Award in Biography, given by the Association of American Publishers

Fifty years after the start of the women’s liberation movement, a book that at last illuminates the profound impact Jewishness and second-wave feminism had on each other

Jewish women were undeniably instrumental in shaping the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Yet historians and participants themselves have overlooked their contributions as Jews. This has left many vital questions unasked and unanswered—until now. Delving into archival sources and conducting extensive interviews with these fierce pioneers, Joyce Antler has at last broken the silence about the confluence of feminism and Jewish identity.

Antler’s exhilarating new book features dozens of compelling biographical narratives that reveal the struggles and achievements of Jewish radical feminists in Chicago, New York and Boston, as well as those who participated in the later, self-consciously identified Jewish feminist movement that fought gender inequities in Jewish religious and secular life. Disproportionately represented in the movement, Jewish women’s liberationists helped to provide theories and models for radical action that were used throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led to new initiatives in academia, politics, and grassroots organizing. Other Jewish-identified feminists brought the women’s movement to the Jewish mainstream and Jewish feminism to the Left. For many of these women, feminism in fact served as a “portal” into Judaism.

Recovering this deeply hidden history, Jewish Radical Feminism places Jewish women’s activism at the center of feminist and Jewish narratives. The stories of over forty women’s liberationists and identified Jewish feminists—from Shulamith Firestone and Susan Brownmiller to Rabbis Laura Geller and Rebecca Alpert—illustrate how women’s liberation and Jewish feminism unfolded over the course of the lives of an extraordinary cohort of women, profoundly influencing the social, political, and religious revolutions of our era.

Joyce Antler is the Samuel J. Lane Professor Emerita of American Jewish History and Culture and Professor Emerita of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother (2007) and The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America (1997) and is the author or editor of many other books on American Jewish history and women’s history.Joyce Antler is the Samuel J. Lane Professor Emerita of American Jewish History and Culture and Professor Emerita of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother (2007) and The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America (1997) and is the author or editor of many other books on American Jewish history and women’s history.

Nancy F. Cott,author of The Grounding of Modern Feminism:
This is an utterly absorbing and valuable book. Having the insight and courage to probe many questions unasked before, and not trying to press the answers into a simple story or a single model, Antler succeeds beautifully in illuminating the underrecognized ways in which feminist convictions have been related to Jewishness. Her oral interviews with scores of women having differing levels of Jewish attachment provide the books mainspring, and supply original perspectives on matters from the 1960s New Left to the 1980s World Conferences on Women.

Alice Kessler-Harris,author of A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman:
Joyce Antler provocatively explores the special qualities of being Jewish and Feminist in the 1960s and 70s. She cogently unwinds the personal stories of leading activists to trace how intertwined identities produced powerful political consequences. This enjoyable and illuminating book will encourage readers to probe their own complicated heritages.

Antler is a first-rate historian. Her work manages to answer the question of Jewish women’s representation and self-understanding in the context of feminist movements without either overgeneralizing or individualizing; the answers were not the same for everyone but neither were they wholly unique to each person. Jewish Radical Feminism collects and tells stories from a feminist movement whose importance continues to affect American Jewish life.

Displayed over the interior pages are the labeled photographs of forty seminal radical American feminists who advocated for change from both inside and outside the Jewish community...never before has a scholar brought these diverse voices together to explore the impact of Jewishness on these women’s actions and life choices.

CHOICE:
Antler’s work makes visible Jewish feminists contributions to Jewish history and women’s history; the interviews also served to make some of the participants' Jewish identity more visible to themselves.

Antler complicates histories of feminist activism by revealing the presence of Jewishness in the backgrounds of dozens of influential radical women.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin,author and co-founder of Ms. Magazine:
Joyce Antler offers us a new understanding of the struggles, themes, accomplishments, and failures of my generation. It's a remarkable synthesis of landmark moments in late-20th Century Jewish feminism and an important contribution to the history of women.

H-Net Reviews:
Antler is a first-rate historian. Her work manages to answer the question of Jewish women’s representation and self-understanding in the context of feminist movements without either overgeneralizing or individualizing; the answers were not the same for everyone but neither were they wholly unique to each person. Jewish Radical Feminism collects and tells stories from a feminist movement whose importance continues to affect American Jewish life.

The most profound reasonJewish Radical Feminismshould be widely read is that it puts many current disputes about gender and Jewish identity into long perspective.

Journal of Religion and Culture:
Antler’s thorough and meticulously researched study examines the convergence of Jewishness and activism through a nuanced analysis of Jewish radical feminism and Jewish feminism. Antler demonstrates how these two streams of feminist activism are simultaneously distinct and intricately woven together.

Journal of American History:
Antler is a deservedly esteemed historian, a complex thinker, a compelling storyteller, and a feminist with a flair, who, once again, has expanded the terrain of women's history and the history of feminism, especially second-wave feminism, American-Jewish history, the history of radicalism, the Left, histories of anti-Semitism, and multiculturalism. Jewish Radical Feminism transforms our understandings of late twentieth-century social activism and offers a powerful corrective to narrow notions of identity feminism and Judaism.

Its reassuring to learn how these iconic women navigated their own struggles with multiple identities in their own time, and to recognize the tremendous contributions they made, even from outside the mainstream.

Compelling, original, and urgent reexamination of the past . . . ReadingJewish Radical Feminismfeels like witnessing a collective in the making.Those deeply committed to understanding, learning from, and building on the vital social and civil rights movements of the pastwould do well to invest in this captivating history.

Antler broadens intersectional understandings about the day-to-day workings of the U.S. women’s movement in a period of intense activity and rapid change, and about the lives and thought processes of modern Jewish American women...the book is a remarkable achievement—a thorough and engaging study.

A captivating and timely new book... that brings to light, for the first time, the ways in which feminist trailblazers were influenced by their divergent and often unspoken Jewish backgrounds.

Jewish Radical Feminism traces the emergence of [womens liberation] collectives, including in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and the backgrounds of these bold and inspirational women and the influence their Jewish roots played in shaping their lives and views. It also tells a parallel story, that of Jewish women who, beginning in the 1970s, confronted the male-dominated Jewish institutions and transformed them.

"Jewish women were a major force in second wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. [Antler] illuminates this previously underappreciated history and draws clear parallels to forces shaping contemporary political and social movements . . . A critical volume for feminist Jews to understand the past and a useful primary source for historians of feminism and Judaism.

From consciousness-raising groups, to health collectives, to militant lesbians and women standing up to religious patriarchy, historianAntlerspends time with the dozens of Jewish personalities of radical feminist movementswomen who challenged the structure of society far beyond the reach of laws.