Devoted Resistance

Jewish Feminist Art in the US and Israel

Series: 

Author:
David Sperber
What is Jewish-feminist art, and how does it contribute to the spaces of art, society, and religion? Devoted Resistance examines the nature, methods of operation, and contribution of the feminist art movement, which has developed in traditional Jewish spheres since the late 1990s in the two major Jewish centers – the United States and Israel. The book analyzes critical Jewish feminist art and the different fields in which it operates; it explores the interrelationships between feminist Jewish art and feminist theories; the connection between critical discourse and feminist activism in observant Jewish worlds; and feminist artists and artwork in these spaces. Devoted Resistance highlights aspects common to feminist Jewish artists who create from traditional spheres and amalgamate the “social” with the “theological,” connecting private experience with community existence. It offers new and vital contextual understandings regarding the relationship between feminist art and Jewish Identity, illuminating their relationship through Jewish religion rather than merely Jewish ethnicity. By doing so, the book demonstrates how art, theology, feminism, and critical thinking interwind.
Copyright Year:
2025
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73080-9
Publication:
07 Apr 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73079-3
Publication:
17 Apr 2025
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David Sperber is an Art Historian, Curator, Art Critic, and Rabbi. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, a David Hartman Center for Intellectual Leadership research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, and the head of the Curatorial Studies Program at the Schechter Institute, Jerusalem. In 2012, he co-curated the international exhibition “Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art” at the Mishkan Le’Omanut Museum of Art, Ein Harod, in Israel.
Acknowledgments
List of Figures

Introduction
 1 “Matronita”: the Emergence of a Field
 2 A Consciously Incomplete Narrative
 3 Jewish Feminisms: between the USA and Israel
 4 Is Contemporary Religious Art an Oxymoron?
 5 The Artworks – from Object to Subject
 6 Creating a Transnational Jewish Feminist Art Field: Overview of the Book

1 “Mikva Dreams”: Mierle Laderman-Ukeles
 1 Ukeles’s Mikvah Works in the 1970s and 1980s
 2 Mikva Dreams and the Feminist Spirituality Movement
 3 Ukeles’s Mikvah Works and American Jewish Feminist Art
 4 “The Personal Is Political”: the Mikvah Works in the Context of Maintenance Art

2 “Tikkun Olam”: Helène Aylon’s Ecofeminist Ritual Art
 1 Jewish Mysticism: Process Art in the 1970’s
 2 “Tikkun Olam”: Ecofeminist Ritual Art in the 1980s
 3 “Holiness Embedded in Matter”: the “Sand Carrying/Sand Sacs” Performance
 4 Conflicted Land: the Haifa Performance
 5 “Nation Shall Not Lift Sword against Nation”: the “Earth Ambulance”
 6 Searching for the Matriarchs: the Great Goddess Discourse
 7 A Call to Be Reborn as Jewish Feminists
 8 The Erasure of Judaism

3 “The Liberation of G-d”: Helène Aylon’s Dialogical Aesthetics
 1 Turning the Gaze Inward: Art Based on Dialogue
 2 Cumulative Revelation
 3 The Illuminated Pink Dash: What’s Missing

4 “You Shall Walk in Virtuous Ways”: Nechama Golan
 1 Golan’s Critique of the Religious Jewish Text
 2 “Genizah”: Tempered Radicalism and Orthodox Jewish Feminism
 3 Radical Art in the Jewish Orthodox World

5 The Pornography of the Jewish Laws of Modesty: Andi Arnovitz
 1 “Gloo-Ya” (Uncovered): Exclusion of Women from the Public Space in Jerusalem
 2 “The Male Gaze”: Covering and Uncovering
 3 A Course of Correction
 4 Nomos and Narrative

6 “De Facto Feminism”: Body and Sexuality in the Works of Young Religious Israeli Women Artists
 1 “Studio of Her Own”: Images of the Female Body
 2 Vaginal Art
 3 De Facto Feminism

7 “Not Prepared!”: Hagit Molgan
 1 Precedents of Molgan’s Works in Israeli Art
 2 The Reception of Molgan’s Works in Her Community: The Religious Kibbutz
 3 The Reception of the Works in Orthodox Feminism
 4 The Art World as an Arena for Innovation

8 “A Tale of a Woman and a Robe”: Nurit Jacobs-Yinon
 1 “Inclusion”: Internal Halakhic Criticism
 2 The Orthodox Academic Feminist Conversation: Radical Criticism
 3 Challenging Patriarchy
 4 Exposing Sexual Harassment in the Mikvah
 5 The Reception of the Exhibition among the Orthodox Rabbinical Establishment
 6 Feminist Activist Art

9 Conclusion: the Art of Breaking Conventions
 1 The Contribution of Jewish Feminist Art to the Jewish Religious Worlds in the USA and Israel
 2 Between the USA and Israel
Bibliography
While it clearly addresses scholars and researchers, its subject, interdisciplinary discussions, and fluid writing style may also appeal to a broader audience, particularly to an educated readership interested in Contemporary art, Judaism, and feminism, whether regarding one of these subjects individually or their integration.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
xiv, 297 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004730809

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