Expanding the Palace of Torah

Expanding the Palace of Torah offers a broad philosophical overview of the challenges the feminist revolution poses to Orthodox Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism's response to those challenges. Writing as an insider (herself an Orthodox Jew), Ross confronts the radical feminist critique of Judaism as a [...]
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Expanding the Palace of Torah offers a broad philosophical overview of the challenges the feminist revolution poses to Orthodox Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism's response to those challenges. Writing as an insider (herself an Orthodox Jew), Ross confronts the radical feminist critique of Judaism as a religion deeply entrenched in patriarchy. In exposing this bias, she sees this critique as threatening the theological heart of traditional Judaism - the belief in divine revelation. Ross seeks to develop a theological response that fully acknowledges the male bias of Judaism's sanctified texts, yet provides a rationale for transforming today's world. Uncovering aspects of Jewish tradition that support this response, Ross proposes an approach to divine revelation which she calls "cumulativism." This approach is based on a conflating of strict boundaries between text and its interpretation, or divine intent and the evolution of human understanding.Emphasizing that continuity with tradition can be maintained only when the halakhic system is understood as a living organism that grows via affirmation of its historical legacy and respect for its constraints, her book shows that the feminist revolution in Orthodox Judaism reaches beyond its practical effect upon individual lives to teach us something more profound about the nature of religious practice in general.