10
THE CHRONICLE
r. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is
recognized as a ground-
breaker. In 1990, she was the
first woman to be hired by
HUC-JIR as a full-time tenure-
track faculty member for the
rabbinical school and she
became the first female tenured
full professor at HUC-JIR in the
rabbinical school in 1995.
“
My memories of those first days
at HUC-JIR are twofold,”
Eskenazi recalls. “First, I experi-
enced a tremendous welcome by
my colleagues, who were so
pleased with the appointment.
Second, I felt a great sense of
responsibility to my male and
female students, because they
had never had a woman as their
teacher at HUC-JIR. The
women students felt particularly
affirmed. For some, it opened
up a profession of academic
study that has led former stu-
dents like Rabbi Andrea Weiss
to become the next generation
of faculty here. Today, women
faculty at HUC-JIR may be
taken for granted, and I’m very
happy that it is. It’s nice to have
moved beyond the one-and-only
to one of many.”
Eskenazi’s scholarship is focused
on the area of post-exilic Biblical
text, an area in which she has
published quite extensively and
significantly. The post-exilic era,
when Jews returned from exile
in the 6
th
and 5
th
centuries
B.C.E., “was a time as significant
for them as the establishment of
the State of Israel is for contem-
porary Jews,” she explains. Her
specialization is in Ezra-
Nehemiah studies, an area
chosen for several reasons.
“
A key element was that this was
an area much neglected in gen-
eral scholarship. In fact, when I
began, the writings of the post-
exilic era were denigrated by
major figures in 19
th
and 20
th
century Biblical studies who
regarded these texts and period
as a time of decline. Julius
Wellhausen, the 19
th
century
scholar known for his influence
on modern source criticism of
the Bible, said that these texts
reflected the decline into mere
Judaism. For him, the Bible at
its best were figures like David
and the Prophets, traditions only
revived at the time of Jesus. In
Jewish tradition and my own
assessment, however, the post-
exilic era was a time of
enormous creativity and signifi-
cant transformation, so my goal
was to influence scholarship
toward a reassessment. I’m
happy to say that in the years
since I began, this reassessment
has happened, not simply
because of what I did but as a
consequence of a new wave of
scholarship in which I partici-
pated. Today, there is clear
recognition as to the significance
of this period for any work on
the Hebrew Bible.”
Eskenazi asserts that the post-exil-
ic period was when the Bible was
edited into the shape that we
have it today. “In fact, the reason
we have the Bible that we have,”
she claims, has to do with the
communities and conditions in
the post-exilic era that influenced
those communities to preserve
these writings rather than some
other writings. In Jewish tradi-
tion, Ezra was always appreciated
as the one who was as worthy as
Moses to bring the Torah.”
Eskenazi’s other field of inquiry
is literary and feminist studies.
“
Being in Los Angeles and
amidst the colleagues doing this
work and within the context and
community of those who had
been thinking about feminist
issues long before I began has
been very significant,” she notes.
“
Dr. Rachel Adler, Rabbi Laura
Geller, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell,
and I were part of a feminist
criticism group, and it was possi-
ble to think seriously about
those issues in conversation with
other scholars and to connect
my work with that of others in a
very meaningful way.”
The WRJ Women’s Commentary
on the Torah
(
see page 11) is an
extension of these interests.
Eskenazi, as Editor-in-Chief,
projects that this massive under-
taking will be completed in the
next five years. Her editorial
board includes professionals in
the rabbinate, cantorate, and
Jewish education as well as
Biblical scholars, rabbinic schol-
ars, and Jewish philosophers,
primarily from North America,
as well as from Europe and
Israel. Despite the sponsorship of
the WRJ, the contributors are
not exclusively affiliated with the
Reform Movement. “Our schol-
ars are the best scholars in the
field, regardless of their institu-
tional affiliation,” Eskenazi notes.
This is a project by women for
klal yisrael.
The list of contributors is still in
formation, with about 100
already engaged. The assign-
ments number five contributors
for each of the 54 Torah por-
tions yielding nearly 300 entries
for the final publication.
Eskenazi, herself, will tackle the
first
parashah, Bereshit
.
There
will be an introduction to each
book and additional specialized
articles, including topics impor-
tant to women: statistics about
mortality rate, life expectancy,
child-rearing in ancient Israel,
and women’s rituals in the Bible.
Eskenazi wants us to learn more
about these rituals. “We know
from the story of Abraham,
Sarah, and Isaac in Genesis 21,
for example, that Abraham
makes a great feast when Isaac is
weaned. Weaning was a very
import rite of passage in the
Bible, as part of the life cycle
from birth, to weaning, to adult-
Profile:
T
AMARA
C
OHN
E
SKENAZI
D
(
continued on page 12)
by Jean Bloch Rosensaft