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Germans debut kitesurf-powered autonomous windjammer
A new commercial cargo ship which will harness wind power to achieve greater fuel economy was christened in Hamburg on Saturday. MV Beluga SkySails will use an enormous, football-pitch sized tethered aerofoil to pull itself along, in much the same way as a kite-surfer. Skysail pulling a ship in trials Whoa, dude - that's one …
Defeatist talk
"Even in a world where every ship suddenly had a massive kite achieving 30 per cent efficiencies, that would equate to barely a one per cent worldwide CO2 saving, which would be wiped out by reasonable economic growth in less than 20 years."
Damn, I thought switching my main lights to diffuse energy saving bulbs was helping CO2 emmissions by reducing my electricity requirements by 1138 KWatts hours annually, but I note now that a growth in world energy consumption of 0.001% would wipe out that gain in 14ns.
So now I wish I'd never bothered!
Oh well, there's always the 80 Euros a year saving in electricity.
Saving Money
"...But it could well reduce fuel bills and make money for shippers - and thus for the technology's creators..."
But in a capitalist society, isn't that the whole point? Everything in the end boils down to pounds, shillings, and pence. And nobody does anything out of the goodness of their hearts unless it also makes them money. Trying to drive these pathetic "initiatives" using good intentions alone (or at best, the marketing departments) is doomed to failure. Only when the bean counters become involved will something happen. I find it incredible that so many people are naive enough to think otherwise.
This only works efficiently...
downwind and with a favourable tide.
What cargo ships really need to make them eco friendly is a mast, some sails and less demanding delivery lead times.
....is it me?
Or does the success of this project depend greatly on the ship travelling in the same direction as the wind?
Revolution in propulsion?
Shouldn't that be a "retrovolution"?
Truly revolutionary!
"This is the start of a revolution for the way ships are powered"
Wind powered ships? Well I never! What will they think of next?
so we shouldn't try and make any savings at all then?
If all industries could make 15-30% savings that would be a real boost to fuel efficiency and slow down the increase in CO2. But why when I read most articles on el reg that cover the subject (and especially any by Lewis Page) do I feel that he's basically a global warming sceptic or has just decided to throw in the towel and not to try solve the problem?
Kudos to the company thats developed this, lets hope it works: apart from transport of goods/commodities large ships such as cruise liners would also seem suitable in some situations..
realist talk
I dunno about defeatist talk but to me it seems realist talk.
Its all well and good running the UK back into the stone age in thename of decreasing CO2 but in the major scheme of things its totally pointless and more than a smattering of stopping the tide coming in.
Until they stop trying to blame humans for climate change and stop trying to tax them for it then there is no hope for any of us as the so called exspurts (whose entire funding depends on continued predictions of doom and gloom) will never predict a rosier future just a constant everything is too little too late.
It may not be Friday, but it's nearly Christmas
I couldn't visualise how much global warming this could prevent. Maybe a Vulture Unit of greenhouse gas emission would help. It could also be used to quantify data centre environmental impact. The Kinnock? Or the Clarkson?
Not new
Didn't the Japanese try this with fixed blade-like sails on cargo ships, years ago? It didn't seem to catch on.
@DaveS - presumably they can tack, else there would be a lot of kite surfers sitting in the doldrums trying to hitch a lift home...
Where is the....
Government data loss angle?
Can't automate traditional sails.
Don't mean to p*ss on this designer's parade, but last time I checked, an automated 1 man sailing system was more than possible.
'Traditional sailing' doesn't use it as it isn't traditional, it would require motors and computers. The question is, would sails survive something as block like as the average modern cargo ship. I reckon it could easily, but I'm not exactly experienced..
Glad to know Branson became a Millionaire over night, and just threw all those pennies away to achieve it.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear
"This is the start of a revolution for the way ships are powered"
Admiral Lord Nelson would be turning in his grave, as would several other prominent sailors.....
1% saving is nothing?
It seems a pretty stupid comment to make to say that a 1% drop in global CO2 emmissions is a waste of time.
A solution to a specific sector that can result in a 1% drop across the whole world seems very nice to me....
'Shouldn't that be a "retrovolution"?'
Yea, didnt they used to do this years ago without masive engines? New technology ; my_arse_is_on_fire
They even discovered new continents etc... and now they cant find squat...
What a waste of technology.
Sounds familiar
Isn't there one of these monsters in dry dock in Portsmouth harbour
I seem to remember some chap called Brunel built one......
There's more to GHG than just CO2
Ships burn the dirtiest of all fuels - bunker oil. And they're not exactly fitted with catalytic converters... That thick column of black garbage seen rising into the air contains, amoung other things, NOx. NOx is ~far worse~ a Greenhouse Gas than CO2. Not to mention the smell...
Solving good old fashioned air pollution (CO, HC, NOx) would be something that would have obvious direct benefits as well as global warming benefits. This global obsession with CO2 (IN THE ABSENSE OF ANY ACTIVITY RELATED TO OTHER POLUTANTS) is less than efficient. Logic dictates that we should address the easy end of the '80/20 rule' (like NOx) first, before trying to solve the difficult and expensive end (CO2).
too much stuff
The mistake is to assume that growth is linked to buying and shipping more stuff. It's true that buying, making and shipping more cheaper and crappier stuff has been the way of progress for a century or two, but less-better-more expensive stuff is the way to go now at least for us in the rich world.
Has anyone noticed the number of self-storage depots springing up all over the place? People don't have room for all the stuff they've already got. Chucking it all out soon won't be an option either, with landfill tax and weeee directives.
The reason for the end of the age of sail.....
The most important contributing factor to the end of the sailing ship wasn't speed at sea, as most people assume, but speed at port.
A fully-rigged square-rigger is almost impossible to unload with a crane -- there's just too much rope, wood and canvas in the way. Everything would need to be unloaded by a couple of dozen people and a sailing boat could spend a day or two in port, whereas an engine-powered boat could be emptied in an hour or two by a couple of crew-members.
One of the benefits of the skysail system is the minimal deck space required, meaning crane access is not restricted.
As for the "only sailing with the wind"... no.
A) This is an aerofoil -- it can be driven by winds in a range of ~270º and is at it's *least* efficient when travelling with the wind (due to a lower difference in speed between the wind and the sail)
B) I believe boats still travel with the prevailing wind wherever possible anyway (it's safer, smoother and quicker).
C) It's not the sole means of locomotion, and unlike a traditional rig isn't a source of drag when travelling under engine power.
It's an interesting project, and I hope it does well and survives a few stormy seas.
I'm eagerly anticipating the day...
when I can watch ten thousand cars an hour being towed up the M1 by kites...
The future of air travel
The romantic in me would like to see a return to the golden age of sail, even if it's only sail-supplemented motorised shipping. As the article says, the amount of carbon saved would be small, but a huge amount of carbon might be saved if aeroplanes took up the technology.
Of course engines will always be needed to get a flight airborne and up to cruising altitude. But once there why not pop up a massive spinnaker and let the jetstreams propel the 'plane? Pilots routinely plan their routes to take advantage of tail winds, and spinnakers are downwind sails so ideally suited. The speeds of the winds in the lower stratosphere are enormous. And an aeroplane could fly a kite above, below and to either side, capturing a lot of wind. It wouldn't matter much if the pilot's view were obstructed since there's little to look at up there.
Air travel is one of the main culprits in polluting the atmosphere with CO2; an innovation like this could save the world.
football pitches are equivalent to?
so it's a sail the size of a football pitch - UK, European, American, and how Paris Hiltons or lines of beluga caviar or yak horn combs does that convert to?
and it's hardly impressive, is it? if it was "the size of Wales" I'd be much more interested.
No Paris Hilton angle in this at all, or IT; sure this isn't Sailing Weekly or A Sailing Man and his Rough Shag?
Bring on the Nobel prize for physics
Why not Add another three kites and have a 120% efficiency? This way you will generate energy from nothing, breaking an age old scientific law, and thereby create a massive black hole, sucking up all the CO2 in the atmosphere and solving our global warming/greenhouse gas problem once and for all.
@lewis page
The author of this article clearly has some kind of chip in his shoulder, or is just a little misguided.
"a one per cent worldwide CO2 saving, which would be wiped out by reasonable economic growth in less than 20 years."
Surely if this invention saves 15% now, won't it also save 15% in 20 years when demand is higher?
As the worst pollutant in Bunker Fuel 6 is about 3% sulphur, that fertiliser that makes Mediterranean volcanoes so attractive to farmers. If it was funnelled directly into the sea it might help conserve plant life in the oceans.
And as for the idiocy in Paris' article, the sail system if it works looks like it could <s>single</s>no-handedly compensate for <s>projected</s>his projected figures for future carbon use.
Not that I am a glowball warmonger.
Lord Thomas Admiral Cochran
I hope I got that right. I am not good with english titles. I am sure he is spinning is his grave with glee. In his Autobiography he mentiones doing exactly this. It gave a big boost in speed to his ship.
That should make for an interesting "prior art" patent fight.
@John - jet stream spinnakers
The only reason that a stratocruiser (remember them?) stays airborne is because of its relative motion to the air; air needs to be flowing over and under the wings to generate the lift. You will notice that if your airliner has a tailwind, you'll get to your destination sooner. The pilot can't reduce the engines to idle and coast along on the airstream: if he slows down to the same speed as the air, you'll fall out of the sky. So being towed along at altitude by a kite is not feasible.
The skull and crossbones, not for the piracy angle, but for its danger connotation.
@ Jonathan Richards - jet stream spinnakers
Damn, my plan would have worked perfectly, if it hadn't been for those pesky wings.
Back to the drawing board then. Let's do away with the wings and get lift from somewhere else. Rotors perhaps. Deploy a spinnaker from a helicopter. Choppers really are fuel-guzzlers, so there's even more scope for world-saving reductions in consumption. The effort from a whirlybird's engines has two components - lift, and forward motion. Tethering the wind at least would save the fuel used in propelling the vessel forwards. And probably move helicopters faster than they've ever moved before. Go green and go faster!
I hope I'm not going to hear next that choppers can't get high enough to harness the jetstreams. Enough with that "can't do" attitude - let your imagination reach for the skies. Think of the polar bears, man! The helicopter fuselage itself wouldn't need to get into the stratosphere, just the sail. A long enough halyard would do the trick.
In fact why limit ourselves to just spinnakers? A good Bermudan rig can sail upwind as well. And as I mentioned with my original aeroplane idea it needn't go on the top where it would interfere with the rotors. It could go underneath, upside down (in respect to sailing boats). Just stick a mast out the bottom of the chopper, with a jib and a mainsail and a boom.
This technological revolution may know no bounds! One day we'll sail to the moon.
@Nìall Tracey
Nice points you brougth up about the death of sailing ships being tied to their cargo loading.
However, where this idea falls down is that these modern cargo ships have no keel form at all, and are therefore unable to use the kite for much more than anything but dead downwind. On a traditional sailing vessel, there is some keel (even if it is not a full-on fin keel), that generates forward propulsion when on a reach.
If this idea proves workable, we will need a change in ship designs to give us back some element of keel form to allow a wider range of wind angles.
Given that modern steel ships sit pretty deep in the water, I'd've thought their hulls would provide adeqate keel without any additions. At least while empty...
Kites definitely don't have to drag you downwind. Kitesurfers can manage about 10 degrees or so upwind. A ship should be able to manage more.
I wouldn't count on it being trouble free though. Wind drops... kite in the water... ship runs over it...
It's hard enough when it's when it's just you, a board and a kite designed to be relaunched from the water. Foil kites (like this one) can be a nightmare.
could this be downscaled to power smaller craft? Like all those personal yachts the Algoreans and other enviro-weenies pour diesel fuel through when the Media isn't watching?
Though if this thing is fully automatic, reliable, and easy to use, would a yachter without sail-specific skills be able to take full advantage of this? If it only cost the equivalent of a secondary engine and a few tanks of fuel, then it'd be quite the option it have installed. And if it can pull a fully loaded freighter, how fast could it yank a twenty-foot boat? Wheeee!
supertanker with a dagger board?
Maybe not exactly, but not far off. Some passenger ferries already have retractable foils with active control for roll stabilisation. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt these designs to active centreboard duty. Might want to move the kite attachment further aft though...
Surely renaissance
not revolution
@John - jet stream spinnakers
Heliocopters have a maximum horizontal speed. Due to one blade moving forward while the other moves backwards. So when they reach this speed they'll flip. I'm not sure about if it's being dragged by a kite etc, but it will almost certainly proove lethal (which would seem to explain how helicopters don't like heavy winds)
@Colin Millar - Never underestimate ...
Never underestimate the data-loss capacity of a cargo ship carrying HMRC Backup Tapes hurtling towards $phishers...
(with apologies to Andrew Tanenbaum)
prior art?
Besides the "revolutionary" idea of sailing using wind, even Kevin Costner's boat in Waterworld had one of these kite sails.
Not, not prior art...
Not unless you're referring to kitesurfers. Then, I suppose you'd have a point. Nelson, et al, didn't use kites, they used sails - you know, big billowy things firmly attached to masts and yards?
As for the keelson issue - most cargoships are so deep draft that the hull itself serves the purpose. Even if it didn't, simply applying a little cross rudder, and you've met the need. Yeah, you might lose a couple of those percentage points of savings, but savings is still savings, even if it's not as much as before.
The winds, and steadiness of same, issue was explicitly addressed in the article - you get the kite up above about 1000 feet, and winds are much more reliable.
Modern attempts to recreate the modern sail have partly failed because of the relative sail area vs. hull size - You wind up with staggeringly large masts and sails to get any kind of real savings, and the added weight and complexity wind up deminishing your returns. Kites, OTOH, don't require massive, complex masts, and can reach stronger, steadier winds.
I like the whole idea, myself.
@ John
Helicopter blades are simply wings that are moving faster then the aircraft. If you stop the helicopter blades (in order to surf off the winds with your kite) your helicopter will fall out of the sky. As helicopters have a tendency to fall out of the sky anyway (even without a kite) your idea may not be the safest!
Quote: "If in your aircraft the wings are moving faster then the body - its a helicopter and therefore unstable"
Baseload power source
Why is one needed?
Sailing ships never had them. A ship on the open ocean can always drift, while one in coastal waters can anchor.
(Anchoring is a common technique in yacht racing when becalmed).
Foil technology does not equal sail technology
This is revolutionary insofar as it doesn't need a mast and it utilises high winds which are stronger and more reliable.
And no, it doesn't only work downwind. Just like a sail, the foil can make use of the Bernoulli effect.
@ Rich
Cargo ships have deadlines, hence the need for a base power source. A yacht can turn up at its destination whenever the hell it wants!
How about...
... making convicted felons do the rowing for you?
Harder than it looks
A couple of guys have been trying this for a few years on leisure sail boats, but it's a lot harder than it looks (the kite falling out the sky in lulls mentioned above is just one prob). See http://kiteforsail.com/ and http://www.kiteboat.com/kb_killer_kanaha.html
From the comments above, it's clear that most readers misunderstand how power kites work -- they act like wings generating lift, not like giant parachutes.
I also rather think the global warming skeptics utterly miss the point again... burning lots of oil inefficiently creates air pollution, wastes resources and ultimately costs companies and ultimately consumers more money. Whether or not you believe CO2 causes climate change, reducing air pollution, saving fuel and reducing costs are good. Even right-wing economic conservatives with a borderline-sexual obsession with the Wonders of the Free Market System can see that, surely?
Just ask yourself. What Would Bill Gates Do?
Only 1%? Best not bother then...
If everyone with a possible idea to reduce the ecological impact of their industry were to think "Oh, even in the best-case, idealist's-wet-dream scenario that'll only make a 1% reduction on emissions worldwide - what's the point in bothering?" then I'd hate to think what state our planet will be in a couple of decade's from now.
Yes, it's a small improvement, even at best.
But let's say it reaches even a 0.5% worldwide improvement. Then imagine that 9 other people have ideas which bring about similarly small improvements. Suddenly we have a 5% reduction. Start to seem worthwhile yet?
If this was going to do something aweful like cost the tax payer a few more pennies of their income (shock horror!) then I could see an objection - but when it not only saves on emissions but on cost as well, I can really see no reason to pooh-pooh the idea.
And also - isn't the idea of huge ships being pulled by giant kites just inherently *cool* in and of itself?
@ Lewis
I like to read any article by Lewis, especially those which touch on e.g. global warming or UK military procurement, aloud and in the style of Neil from The Young Ones.
It makes them seem slightly less shit.
A size of football field?
That's a lot of ad-space, man! Let Google invest in it, let them advertise and help us protecting the environment! Hey, don't be evil, guys - buy some kites for pour ship-owners! If they manage to enlarge those kites, I'll be happy to them in Google Earth!
BTW, what about zeppelins with kites? I mean, really BIG zeppelins with BIG kites (and with BIG ads, if you like)?
Storms and Weather
Let us not forget that ships have always been lost in extreme conditions. We have better weather forecasts now, but this system doesn't replace the conventional engines, and losing the sail need not endanger the ship.
But I wouldn't be surprised if few of these ships ever risked the Southern Ocean.
@ Edward Barrow
Mr Barrow.......
I agree 173%.
I have spent the last few years working out of the UK. Africa mainly. I'm in Madagascar right now.
I have seen more cheep Chinese shite over the past few years than I care to recall. Africa is full of the stuff. And it is all, uniformly and utterly shite.
Buying cheap is a false economy, everyone knows that.
Like doing your weekly shopping in a Spar.
The problem is thee are three million Irish who think Spar is the best place to do ther weekly shopping and 500milion [more ?] Africans who think China is the home of quality.
Answer is to stop buying from China.
Result : less cheap crap means less waste, means less pollution, less transportation costs and emissions and, heaven forbid, a UK manufacturing industry.
Heavens, whatever next.
@Hein Kruger
Don't laugh !! I hear that a fart-powered one is on the drawing board ....
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Hi guys! So I've decided to sell some of my K-pop albums. I'm going to have a pretty hectic Christmas this year with family visiting, and I'm broke LOL. I know it's not much, but these just kind of just sit on my shelf, and I know someone will enjoy these more than me! Even if none of these interest you, I would greatly appreciate it if you get this post out and about! :)
So here's what's for sale:
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If none of these interest you, take a look at this sale here!

subset: commoncrawl


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Beautiful! I love this albun!
wow..very good!
Stilt houses in Tai OThis photo was shot on film. Taken by porkchopsandy with a Lomography Horizon Perfekt loaded with Fuji Provia 400X (35mm) film in hong kong, Hong Kong. These tags describe this photo: xpro, expired, fuji, and provia. Date: 2011-10. This photo can also be found in the album Horizon。Provia400X。3 cities on 1 roll.


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I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.
Frida Kahlo. The painter was born on this day in 1907. She is at the top of my "if I had a time machine" list of people to meet.


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He said some of the darkest parts of the internet are the hateful youtube comments…ahhhj ahahaja sure
It's 2013 people, why is this such an issue?! #ad #cheerios
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This website is designed to keep you up to date on Life in the Black Americas.
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Archive for the 'sewing' Category
My First Successful Sewing Experience: Part 1 of 3
Pattern: Dress from Butterick B4712, diaper cover from McCall's M2213
Modifications: My armhole seams were pretty ugly so I added some bias tape to clean them up a bit.
While I made some nice newborn diapers and a great (and well used) baby sling when I was pregnant, my sewing track record is pretty ugly. Let's just say I wasted lots of time and money and leave it at that. Enter a live-in babysitter who can sew and who works at a fabric store… Emily gave me some great pointers on patterns, cutting and construction. For any other beginner sewers out there, this is what I've learned from the experience:
1. If you do not 1) use pins and/or 2) iron your pieces after each seam, you would be better off wadding up the cash you dropped on fabric and notions and torching it. It would be better to indulge your inner pyro than suffer the anger and frustration of a failed project. I know that sounds like a no-brainer but this was actually my greatest sewing challenge.
2. Transfer all of the markings from the pattern to the fabric. Of course you would do that. Why would you try to wing it? Trust me on this, I've tried and failed.
3. Follow the pattern instructions. When the pattern says to do something that you think sounds a bit too much, just do it. You will be grateful five steps later when you realize that you should have done what the pattern said to do way back at the beginning.
I like how the bias tape looks except in one spot. Do you see it here? I'm not going to rip it out and redo it but I'll never like that corner.
Check out the zipper! Not bad for my second one, I think. It's a little wonky at the bottom but you can't see it unless you're looking for it.
I'll have two more FOs in the next few days along with some notes on why knitting is better than sewing…
The Sewing Machine Ate My Knitting Mojo
Perhaps for lack of inspired knitting, perhaps because of the heat but whatever the reason, my sewing machine has lured me with its promise of quickly finished objects – near instant gratification compared to knitting. I say "finished" but the truth of the matter is that all of my sewn items need buttonholes or trim added so you won't see actual FOs for a few more days. You know what I mean by "finished"…
Here are some previews:
I've also been working on a pair of Anastasias with the Claudia's Handpainted (in Blue Sky colorway) that I won in Minty's blog contest a few months ago.
I think once I clear my knitting plate of second socks and gift knitting, my knitting mojo will come back. Until then, I slog along!
FO: Grapefruit Socks
Pattern: Basic Stockinette with short-row heel and wedge toe (CO 64 sts)
Yarn: Woolarina Superwash Sock yarn in Grapefruit colorway
These socks will be packed up this evening and shipped off to Ann, who graciously traded me some beautiful Sea Wool and Lang Jacquard for them! So much for a stash buster project! Ann, I hope these fit!!!
For weeks, I've been meaning to blog about the beautiful stitch markers that my sister-in-law, Xan, made for me. Aren't they pretty? Jewelry for my knitting needles!!! She's so talented. She can knit, crochet, sew, quilt, tile a bathroom floor… I just checked out some good baby knits books from the library so I plan on using these in a baby project that will debut soon. I must finish my socks first!
Speaking of socks, I've finished the first of my mom's Regia cotton socks, although I had to rip and reknit the toe once because I measured incorrectly. These socks are just OK in my book. Their overwhelming comfort makes up for the white ply (I assume that's the cotton part of the Regia blend) that makes them look a bit funny!
I do like how the striping worked out at the toe, don't you?
The crochet project is coming along quite well. I'm adding about one color strip a day so at this rate, it will take me all summer but that's just fine with me. Afghans aren't very portable projects anyway so this will be my at-home project.
After my last post, Maryse reminded me that there's no reason to apologize for crochet. She's right, of course. I know I'll get some heat for saying it but I strongly associate crochet with tacky, acrylic (insert household item here) covers that one sees at local craft fairs. It's because my grandmother used to have crocheted toilet paper roll covers in all of her vacation rentals. As if covering a roll of TP makes it look like anything other than what it is… So if I'm down on crochet, it's because of the toilet paper rolls.
Finally, I'll leave you with a preview of other crafty projects in the queue this summer:
Baby Sewing – No New Knitting
While there's not much knitting getting done here, I have made a little progress on a project that's been sitting around for a few months. As I've mentioned before, we use cloth diapers. Lots of cloth diapers.
When I was pregnant, I made about 200 flannel wipes by sewing two 9″x9″ squares of flannel together. The wipes were by far the most useful thing I made in preparation for baby Beatrix.
When Beatrix was a few weeks old, I realized that we could certainly use more wipes (you can never have too many). And they make great gifts. Unfortunately, they're only quick to make if you make a ton at once. Otherwise, they're fairly labor intensive. At the time, I bought more fabric, cut the squares out, matched fronts and backs up, and sewed. I never got around to turning them right-side out, ironing them, and topstitching them closed. Yes, I realize I could cut a few of those steps out if I had a serger but I don't have one and I'm not sure I'm willing to spend the money on one. So, to make a long story short, I turned them out and ironed them. I'll stitch another day and maybe we'll have more wipes before Beatrix leaves for college.
Don't you just love the colors?
I know, I know. Their intended purpose is to wipe a baby's butt. You needn't remind me. I still think they're cute.


text:
Review of _Feminism, Law, and Religion_
July 1st, 2014
Review of M. A. Failinger, E. R. Schiltz, and S. J. Stabile, Feminism, Law, and Religion. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013. 444 pp. $59.95.
By Aviva Richman
Reflecting a wide range of religious perspectives, the seventeen essays in this collection address what the editors describe as the problem of the "invisibility" of religious women's experience from feminist legal theory (xvi). The editors seek to respond to two opposite critiques of religious feminism, the critique from religionists who vilify feminism as a foreign threat, and the critique from secular feminists who vilify religion as a source of patriarchal practices. Rather than viewing religion as an obstacle to feminist goals, most of the essays presume that religion is (or can be?) a resource for the creation of a more equitable social structure, especially in the wake of limitations and perceived failures of liberal feminism. The overall project of the book, then, is based on the claim that religion has a role to play within a larger contemporary critique of liberal feminism particularly because religious traditions often stress concerns with human vulnerability rather than power, interdependence rather than autonomy, and responsibility to others rather than self-entitlement.
In any compendium volume such as this, a mark of success is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. To read these essays as a larger, multi-textured discourse on the nature and interaction of feminism, law and religion, rather than as discrete essays, one must consider the extent to which the contributors work with similar or diverging definitions of feminism, religion and law. To the extent that they diverge, do the authors consciously explain their choices regarding the way they employ and construct these key categories? I will consider each of these terms independently, and then summarize the different models presented for the interaction between feminism, law and religion.
The contributors show a wide variation in the extent to which they explicitly engage with feminism and consciously reflect on the feminist methods they employ. Some situate their own approach to feminism within a history of feminist theory (i.e., Preston), while others do not even use the term feminism (i.e., Butler) and one is explicitly anti-feminist (i.e., Barazangi). A few of the essays reflect a liberal feminist perspective, primarily focused on increasing women's power and autonomy, but are concerned with the unique problems related to achieving these goals for women in religious communities. For example, Frances Raday ("Modesty Disrobed – Gendered Modesty Rules under the Monotheistic Religions") is skeptical of a woman's consent to restrictive religious practices, such as modesty rules, and advocates for state support of women's exit options from oppressive religious communities. Similarly, Ayelet Shachar ("Privatizing Diversity: A Cautionary Tale from Religious Arbitration in Family Law") is skeptical of a woman's consent to arbitrate a divorce in a religious court rather than a civil court because this "consent" may be born of social pressures from the religious community, yet she also acknowledges that the possibility for exit from the oppressive religious environment is not necessarily a choice that will be taken by religious women. This leads her to discuss other ways the state can protect these vulnerable women. Many of the essays (i.e., Preston, Failinger, Cantrell) fall into a second wave feminist approach and suggest that religious feminism offers alternative ways of understanding women's dignity and empowerment rooted in vulnerability, service, or relationship as opposed to autonomy and power. For example, Preston, a Mormon scholar, deconstructs liberal feminism's deconstruction of women's oppression ("Deconstructing Equality in Religion"), which in her assessment was based on criteria enshrined in the male-dominated secular Enlightenment movement. She asserts the importance of defining liberation and equality in terms that are meaningful to religious women. In her view, being on the margins of institutional power in the Mormon church does not warrant political advocacy to increase women's roles; she sees her marginal role as an asset in cultivating Christian values of humility, patience, and service. Only one essay is explicitly focused on third wave feminism. Green ("From Third Wave to Third Generation: Feminism, Faith, and Human Rights") offers biographical sketches of third wave feminist activists who drew on their faith traditions to advocate for "third generation" human rights, shifting away from exclusive concern with sexuality and reproduction, and even exclusive focus on women, towards more global considerations of peace and sustainability. This essay contrasts with nearly all of the other essays in the book that do in fact focus on issues of sexuality, family, reproduction and women's social position. Perhaps also best categorized in a third wave feminist camp, two essays argue for far-reaching epistemological revolutions that reach beyond the particularities of women's experience and social status. Hartigan's analysis of Antigone, in light of Judith Butler's interpretation of the play, draws on female experience to claim that written, codified law must see itself as secondary to an unwritten sacred law that always eludes articulation. Barazangi suggests that one's understanding of Islam should be based on individual engagement with the Qur'an itself rather than through mediated (mis)interpretations ("the time has come for a transformative move to build a new structure for Muslim societies through an egalitarian interpretation of the Qur'an that restores the religio-moral rational authority of interpretation to each individual Muslim" [264]). Though both Hartigan and Barazangi employ what one might call a third wave feminist epistemology, ironically, Barazangi does not frame her work as an Islamic version of feminism even as she uses terminology familiar to feminism, such as "egalitarian." Instead, she chooses to describe her approach in terms internal to Muslim discourse: "each individual is responsible to balance [the spiritual, intellectual and social] roles in a specific time and at a specific place within the guidelines and the spirit of Tahwid" (273). In her judgment, feminist attempts to liberate Muslim women have only resulted in worsening conditions and violence. While Barazangi is the most explicit in her harsh rejection of feminism, there are also essays that seem to be non-feminist. Butler's close reading of Catholic Canon Law does not engage with feminist concepts in any explicit way; her main (rather apologetic) interest is to show that women's dignity is not affronted by Catholic restriction against ordination.
Clearly these essays have widely varying understandings of feminism, and some contributors, let alone many readers, would likely question whether some of the essays are in fact feminist at all. Is there any way that acceptance of restrictions on women's leadership roles can be interpreted as feminist? Can acceptance of a marriage system that includes a "bride-price" coincide with a feminist outlook? A less controversial title of the book could have been Women, Religion and Law, since all of the essays relate to women in some way even as they differ widely on the meaning of feminism, but that would have undermined a main point of the book. The book suggests that these are in fact exactly the debates and conversations that need to occur across religious and secular lines in order to complicate and advance feminist discourse. Thus, some of the essays aim to educate secular feminists about other models of feminism that come out of religious approaches and might be effectively employed in wider, even secular, contexts (i.e., Schiltz) while others suggest that secular feminists who want to work within a particular religious community need to be cognizant of how these women approach feminism differently (i.e., French, Shachar, Hammer) and should withhold misplaced judgment in order to be most effective in these communities. Barazangi's essay is certainly an outlier in its message that non-Muslim feminists should simply "get out" and stop trying to intervene in Muslim women's affairs.
Another point of divergence, perhaps more severe in terms of the extent to which the essays are involved in the same project, is how to define religion, a contested term that very few essays address explicitly. In the first section, "Feminist Legal Theory – Religious and Secular Encounters," all four essays reflect Christian perspectives. As such, religion is largely understood in theological terms (and law is mostly understood as American civil law). Jewish or Muslim perspectives in this section might have contributed alternative theories on the nature of religion and law, such as by understanding religion in terms of normative texts or practices. Indeed, the essays by Graetz and Quraishi-Landes in section three on Scriptural Texts relate to religion in terms of sacred legal texts, as does Butler's analysis of Canon Law in the last section. It is unfortunate that the Scriptural Texts section is so thin (only three essays) and that there are not more essays that engage in rigorous analysis of religious law related to women. Considering the title of the book it would only be logical for religion to be addressed more thoroughly in terms of its internal legal discourse.
In many of the essays, the careful definition of what counts as "authentic" religion is a critical factor in constructing a feminist religious approach. Many distinguish between institutional religion, which is subject to historical and cultural influences such as patriarchal practices, as opposed to an authentic religious core that transcends the vicissitudes of time and remains accessible and usable for religious feminists. For example, in the beginning of her essay, Preston explicitly excludes "individual spirituality" from her definition of religion, yet throughout the piece she stresses multiple times that personal prayer is a valuable tool offering women unmediated access to God, as opposed to the church where religious matters are mediated through male leadership. Stabile contrasts the ideal found in Catholic texts that actually permit women a number of leadership roles with social practice that limits women's participation in ways that simply aren't mandated. Making a distinction between law on the books and attitudes of Muslims, Quraishi-Landes suggests that religious texts allow for reconceptualizing marriage along more equitable lines than popular conservative attitudes would allow. Barazangi is especially adamant about the difference between authentic Islam, rooted in the Qur'an and one's personal endeavor to understand its meaning, and misrepresentations of Islam which reflect that Islamic authority has been "hijacked by Muslim males" (271). All of these examples reflect a similar process of isolating "real religion" from its historical-cultural garb. While this strategy of differentiation is certainly useful for feminist reclamations of their religious traditions, it is difficult to define and can be quite subversive. Is the authentic core defined through personal spiritual experience or through acceptance of certain texts as opposed to others? Barazangi's focus on the Qur'an as the authentic representation of Islam leads her to go so far as to dismiss even hadith as products of male misrepresentation.
For the most part, the essays treat the term "law" in two ways, some addressing civil law or civil legal authorities with others focusing on religious legal texts. In Christian contributions, where religion is generally confined to theology, the role of law is generally understood as civil law and policy issues, and how issues such as maternity leave in the workplace and same-sex marriage might be affected by theologically informed feminism. Of the essays that treat religious law, a few present religious law as anti-feminist (Shachar, Raday) and argue for intervention by state legal authorities to protect women from the oppressive rigidities of religious law. However, many essays that focus on religious law suggest that feminism should catalyze internal development within religious law itself. These essays stress the dynamic nature of religious law, in contrast to the essays that see religious law as anti-feminist, in part due to its rigidity. Graetz traces divergent positions on domestic violence within the canon of Jewish legal sources, and her account of diverse interpretations is implicitly geared towards the possibility for different responses in Jewish law today (it is strange that Graetz does not mention Avraham Grossman's important work on domestic violence in medieval Jewish texts). In one of the most rigorous and compelling essays in the collection, Azin is more explicit than Graetz about the feminist motivation behind her approach to Islamic law; her careful analysis of creativity and constraint in rape law is meant to pave the way for future creativity within the constraints of the Islamic tradition that can "augment sensitivity and justice" to women as both a "preservation and continuation of the juristic tradition" (338-339). In her portrayal, religious law is not the obstacle but the vehicle for furthering feminist goals. Quraishi-Landes agrees with this legal hermeneutic of possibility in theory but also recognizes that conservative social attitudes make fundamental change in Islamic law unlikely. Her pragmatic approach seeks out resources within a religious law that is not, and may not ever be, ideal. The two essays that focus on Catholic Canon law (Stabile, Butler) both identify the gap between relatively permissive laws regarding women and restrictive social practices and attitudes within the contemporary Catholic church, ultimately suggesting that religious legal texts can be an asset in formulating a religious feminist agenda. It is unfortunate that discussions of law are not informed more deeply by legal theory in any of the essays. None apply contemporary analytical categories of legal theory to religious legal texts (or to civil law for that matter). Perhaps this is because the book privileges religious women's experiences as a core lens of analysis over and above abstract analytical categories born of a specific intellectual discourse, but this makes it difficult for the book to be immediately useful in the discourse of legal theory. The essays more directly engage with the fields of feminism and religion.
To summarize, as the essays employ differing understandings of the terms feminism, law and religion, they also present models for differing kinds of interaction between these realms. In the essays that address secular law there are two main poles: those who argue for a role for "secular" law and legal authorities to intervene in religious community (Shachar, Raday)and others who argue that religious feminist perspectives and experiences should affect "secular" law. Christian contributions especially stress that theological concepts of humanity and gender should be brought into broader civil discourse on contemporary issues of law and policy. This is also the approach taken by Cantrell in her argument that Buddhist perspectives on anger could inform legal responses to domestic violence. Essays that deal with religious law also fit into two camps. Some suggest that feminism can initiate new legal interpretation. Others suggest that religious texts can aid internal feminist critiques of social practice within a given religious community, because often social practices and attitudes that negatively affect women do not align with the directives in sacred legal texts.
The essays that discuss ordination offer a telling demonstration of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Here, cultural and geographical differences lead to vastly differing circumstances and analyses of how feminism, law and religion interact. Sister Sara Butler ("Catholic Women and Equality: Women in the Code of Canon Law") offers a close reading of 1983 revisions in Canon Law that increased the role of the laity in the Church, thereby also increasing the roles for women. Even as the restriction against women being ordained as priests remains in effect, Butler argues that this does not reflect devaluation of women's dignity; in the hierarchical structure of the Church everyone has a specific religious vocation and for the vast majority of men and women this is as a member of the laity. Rebecca French ("Daughters of the Buddha: The Sakyadhita Movement, Buddhist Law and the Position of Buddhist Nuns") also deals with the issue of women's ordination, but her focus is on Buddhist nuns. Unlike Catholicism, Buddhist law allows for ordination of women, but this law has been neglected in many communities. Also unlike Catholicism, the social implications of non-ordination are quite stark; without the possibility of official ordination women lack access not only to full education but also to communal support for food and provisions. As a result, many non-ordained women in a number of East Asian countries are quite impoverished. The essay traces the advocacy work of one particular Buddhist nun to push for ordination of nuns on an international scale. Butler's apologetic stance defending the law on the books differs markedly from French's focus not on the law but on social circumstances of non-ordination. These essays raise the question of the extent to which lack of ordination reflects marginalization in religious community and leadership, but this question is not thoroughly addressed. The section would have benefitted from analysis of recent developments in women's ordination or quasi-ordination in the Orthodox Jewish world in both Israel and America. This example shows that the book includes perspectives from differing religious, cultural and geographic worlds that lead to quite disparate analyses of what is at stake in the interaction of feminism, law and religion. Yet, the book does not supply comprehensive or even thoroughly representative data to consider the larger questions that inevitably arise from the juxtaposition of the far-ranging approaches it presents. Most importantly, the theoretical work of unpacking the various models presented for the intersection between feminism, law, and religion is largely left to the reader. Future compendia of this sort would do well to focus on specific issues (i.e., marriage and divorce) and include more sustained engagement with religious legal texts through more explicit usage of legal and feminist theory, both within individual essays and in editorial introductions and conclusions.
Below is a brief summary of each essay:
Part 1 is entitled "Feminist Legal Theory – Religious and Secular Encounters," and all four essays reflect Christian perspectives. Tackling an element of Catholic theology, Schiltz ("A Contemporary Catholic Theory of Complementarity") discusses the theory of "integral complementarity," an understanding of gender that acknowledges both the differences and unique wholeness of men and women (she characterizes this equation as 1+1=3) and at the same time when combined with the Christian notion of free will leaves room for individual agency to express gendered identity in a personalized way. She suggests that the theory of integral complementarity can serve as a corrective to both the liberal notion of equality as sameness and the rigidities of gender essentialism, and would affect legal issues such as parental leave in the work place. From a perspective more focused on Catholic policy and practice, Stabile ("The Catholic Church and Women: The Divergence Between What is Said and What is Heard") addresses the gap between Catholic theology that respects the dignity of men and women and the general perception of the Catholic Church as discriminatory towards women, in large part due to social practices of the Church that diverge from its teachings. This gap has resulted in the exodus of women from the Catholic Church, and the Church's loss of credibility in contemporary public policy debates on issues of gender and family. Preston, a Mormon scholar, deconstructs liberal feminism's deconstruction of women's oppression,("Deconstructing Equality in Religion"), which was based on criteria enshrined by the secular Enlightenment movement. Alternatively, she asserts the importance of defining liberation and equality in terms that are meaningful to religious women. In her view, being on the margins of institutional power in the Mormon church does not warrant political advocacy to increase women's roles; she sees her marginal role as an asset in cultivating Christian values of humility, patience, and service. These three essays are deeply embedded within specific religious denominations. In contrast, this section's closing essay ("What is the Matter with Antigone?") is not denominationally confined (though Hartigan does contextualize her argument within a religious tradition that has "a distinct incarnational slant," i.e., Christianity). The most theoretically dense contribution to the volume, this essay offers a fundamental critique of western law rooted in an epistemological argument. Drawing on Judith Butler's interpretation of Sophacles' play Antigone, Hartigan contends that public, codified law can never be complete without making room for unwritten, sacred law (sometimes equated with morality) which at the same time necessarily destabilizes the certainty and authority of written law but also gives it life, love, and humanity without which the law would essentially become cruel and irrelevant. On a more concrete level, she critiques the excising of religious language and motivation from American legal discourse when religion is such a powerful aspect of most American's identities.
The second section, by far the longest, is entitled "Theological Insights Applied to Dilemmas of Woman's Social Existence." Five of the seven essays relate to women and family – particularly marriage and divorce and domestic violence. Ayelet Shachar critiques the concept of religious privatization as a model for the relationship between civil courts and religious law. Instead she calls for coordination between the civil and religious spheres of law in order to protect the women most vulnerable to potentially oppressive marriage and divorce law while simultaneously honoring these women's religious commitments. Asifa Quraishi-Landes ("A Meditation on Mahr, Modernity, and Muslim Marriage Contract Law") proposes two responses to the sale-transaction model at the basis of Muslim marriage in which the husband technically buys the wife. Her ideal response is to entirely recategorize Muslim marriage in terms of partnership law, but she acknowledges that this will require difficult interpretive work by legal experts and might not ever be socially accepted. In the interim she also advocates a more pragmatic response that strategically, if ironically, utilizes structures deeply embedded within the patriarchal marriage framework, such as the "bride-price," to ensure financial protection to women. Marie Failinger ("Co-Creating the Family: A Lutheran View of Marriage and Divorce Law") stresses the dynamic nature of family in the Lutheran tradition as a unit with an important and distinct role in service of God that must be continuously redefined based on particular social circumstances and ongoing acknowledgement of the ways in which people sin and harm each other. This dynamic model has implications for contemporary questions such as the state recognizing "nontraditional" partnerships, whether extra-marital, non-monogamous, or non-heteronormative. These three essays on marriage offer three different views of religious marriage. Shachar assumes that religious procedures are unlikely to change internally so that a state apparatus must intervene to effectively protect women, Quraishi-Landes sees possibility for internal religious change but acknowledges that religious social attitudes are conservative, and in Failinger's approach religious models of marriage are so dynamic that religion has a role at the forefront of social changes.
Juliane Hammer's essay on domestic violence ("'Men are the Protectors of Women': Negotiating Marriage, Feminism, and (Islamic) Law in American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence") exposes a pragmatic/ironic approach similar to that described by Quraishi-Landes' on marriage. Hammer discusses her surprise at the discovery that grass roots Muslim organizations utilize, rather than reject, patriarchal ideology in the Qur'an to respond to domestic violence in their communities. This gives her reason to question whether her liberal feminist assumptions are necessarily effective in religious communities that operate with very defined gender roles. In one of the few essays venturing outside the monotheistic traditions, Cantrell also addresses domestic violence ("With Compassion and Lovingkindness: One Feminist Buddhist's Exploration of Feminist Domestic Violence Advocacy"), contrasting the concept of "empowerment" in liberal feminism with Buddhist thought. Instead of stressing autonomy and valuing expression of anger in the face of violence, Buddhism focuses on the inter-connectedness of all beings and sees anger as disempowering in any context, whether by an abuser or by a victim. Rather than glorifying anger and immediately enacting a legal recourse toward separation and punishment, a Buddhist response to domestic violence would stress flexibility in the law so as to address the various and often changing needs of the multiple parties affected by violence.
The other two essays in this section come from entirely different perspectives that shift away from a focus on women in the role of wives. Green ("From Third Wave to Third Generation: Feminism, Faith, and Human Rights") offers biographical sketches of third wave feminist activists who drew on their faith traditions to advocate for legal and social change. She suggests a connection between their third wave feminist perspectives and their push for "third generation" human rights, especially in looking beyond issues of sexuality and reproduction and turning toward issues of diversity and pluralism, the material and cultural dimension of rights, and peace and sustainability. Nimat Hafez Barazangi's essay ("Why Muslim Women are Re-interpreting the Qur'an and Hadith: A Transformative Scholarship-Activism") is quite different from the rest. She does not address specific family or social rights in any direct way, but rather calls for a revolution in epistemology, describing the importance of recent efforts for Muslim women to interpret Qur'an on their own terms. The purpose of this shift is to liberate the authentic Muslim tradition from its history of misrepresentation through transmission by male scholars embedded in patriarchal contexts.
Part 3, entitled "Feminist Readings of Scriptural Texts on Women and Women's Rights," has only three essays. Frances Raday ("Modesty Disrobed – Gendered Modesty Rules under the Monotheistic Religions") examines texts related to modesty in the accounts of Joan of Arc, legal rulings against the Jewish movement Women of the Wall, and the case of a Muslim schoolgirl in England wearing a headscarf to school. She compares these religious discourses to contemporary "secular" discourse on the issue of women breastfeeding in public. In her analysis, gendered modesty discourse in all of these contexts is designed to restrict women's access and role in the public sphere. She advocates various kinds of state intervention to respond to religious suppression of women's rights, especially if women can make the claim that there is an internal basis within their religious traditions for the practices being condemned by religious authorities. Naomi Graetz ("Jewish Law: The Case of Wifebeating") summarizes the history of Jewish legal treatment of wife-beating, showing the range of approaches adopted in Jewish law and highlighting contemporary attitudes of denial and apologetics. Hina Azam ("Competing Approaches to Rape in Islamic Law") gives a sustained analysis of the legal debate between two Islamic schools – Hanafi and Maliki – in whether to characterize rape as solely a divine offense or also as a property offense. The differing approaches have implications in both procedural and evidentiary realms, making it much easier to prosecute rape in the Maliki school. The larger goal of this analysis is to show the dynamic nature of Islamic law which creates the possibility for further legal developments that could respond more fully to the needs and experiences of women.
The last section addresses "Women's Leadership and Standing within Religious Communities." Here, cultural and geographical differences lead to vastly differing circumstances and analyses. Sister Sara Butler ("Catholic Women and Equality: Women in the Code of Canon Law") offers a close reading of 1983 revisions in Canon Law that increased the role of the laity in the Church, thereby also increasing the roles for women. Even as the restriction against women being ordained as priests remains in effect, Butler argues that this does not reflect devaluation of women's dignity; in the hierarchical structure of the Church everyone has a specific religious vocation and for the vast majority of men and women this is as a member of the laity. Rebecca French ("Daughters of the Buddha: The Sakyadhita Movement, Buddhist Law and the Position of Buddhist Nuns") also deals with the issue of women's ordination, but her focus is on Buddhist nuns. Unlike Catholicism, Buddhist law allows for ordination of women, but this law has been neglected in many communities. Also unlike Catholicism, the social implications of non-ordination are quite stark; without the possibility of official ordination women do not have access to full education but also do not have communal support for food and provisions. As a result, many non-ordained women in a number of East Asian countries are quite impoverished. The essay traces the advocacy work of one particular Buddhist nun to push for ordination of nuns on an international scale. This chapter could have benefitted from analysis of recent developments in women's ordination or quasi-ordination in the Orthodox Jewish world, especially in comparison to Butler's work, and the question of whether ordination is or is not an indicator of full participation in religious life and leadership. In the final essay, Mary Szto ("Chinese Women Lawyers and Judges as Priests") offers an analysis of the gendered differential in China's legal marketplace, where women predominantly become judges rather than lawyers, suggesting that this pattern may be traced to longstanding religious tradition. Chinese religions involved parallel earthly and heavenly realms of justice, and this granted a role to priests to petition gods in legal cases. She sees women's role as judges to be parallel to the role of Daoist priests, a priesthood that was in fact open to women, while at the same time reflecting a religious preference for women to be in the stability of the home. Law firms, on the other hand, often involve practices that women see as antithetical to their roles such as heavy drinking and frequent business trips. Instead of religious influence serving only as a restriction on women's choices, Szto suggests the possibility that it may also allow women the possibility to "revive" religious rituals in the realm of law that can engender "trust, confidence, and ultimately justice."
Review of Rapoport-Albert, _Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666–1816_
June 17th, 2014
Review of Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbetai Zevi, 1666-1816. Oxford: Littman, 2011. 400 pp. $64.50.
By Joshua Schwartz
Ada Rapoport-Albert's recent monograph, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi: 1666-1816 is, in a large way, a follow up to her landmark article, "On Women in Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition."[1] There, Rapoport-Albert pushed back against what had become a dominant narrative in Hasidic studies, as proposed by Shmuel Abba Horodecky, the great, early scholar of Hasidic historiography, in his writings centered on the legendary female Tzaddik (charismatic leader) of Hasidism, the Maiden of Ludmir.[2] Horodecky claimed that the phenomenon of Hasidism was a watershed moment for gender politics in Jewish history, in which women were granted access to positions of power and authority untold of in previous eras, as typified by the famous Maiden of Ludmir, who became a Rebbe herself. In her research, Rapoport-Albert showed that the phenomenon of the Maiden was sketchily historical at best, and her legend, in its exceptionality, instead showed the limits which were maintained and even increasingly imposed on women. The egalitarian impulse Horodecky saw in Hasidism, Rapoport-Albert claimed, was itself a product of his twentieth-century Zionist ideology, projected backwards onto the historical object of his romantic yearning for a "useable past." As underscored by a more recent article, the early twentieth century saw the first, systematic formation of a "female constituency" in Hasidism, specifically in the Chabad community, but even then it was a conservative reaction to the growing position and liberation of women in the secular sphere, to which the Hasidic community was losing ground.[3] In short, to Rapoport-Albert, there was nothing that inhered within Hasidism that lent itself to egalitarianism. We can let her words resound as a final thought, for now:
The movement possessed no ideology aspiring to equalize women's religious or social status to that of men, nor did it set out to educate them in Yiddish, or to elevate them to positions of authority as rebbes.[4]
Her new monograph, however, marks a turning point in her thinking. Previously, she had written that Hasidism itself was an inheritor of a kabbalistic tradition which itself inherited the patriarchal norms of rabbinic Judaism.[5] Rapoport-Albert now argues that the Sabbatian movement represented a bellwether moment for women's liberation within Jewish history, a "veritable gender revolution that the Sabbatian movement envisaged, and in no small measure put into effect."[6] Hasidism, then, is represented as not merely a continuous link in a chain of female suppression but rather as a particularly conservative reaction to women's liberation that exploded outward along with the Sabbatian heresy, seeking to maintain Jewish mystical spirituality, and even the populism, but jettisoning any blurring of gender roles or lines.[7] Women were taken out of the sphere of agency and transformed into discursive objects, representing the possibility of egalitarianism, which was only possible in a far-flung messianic future, that is to say, not now. Hasidism continued the pre-existent trend in Kabbalah, in which the feminine was representative of the material and was thus the staging ground for redemption, as embodied by the transmutation of the physical into the sublime and spiritual.[8]
But what, exactly, was the egalitarian revolution posed by the Sabbatian heretics? In her impressive and well-researched tome, Rapoport-Albert seeks to explore this question both from a number of different historical angles, spanning the range of the Sabbatian movement, from its inception through the Frankist outgrowth, where she locates an especially liberatory moment. Rapoport-Albert grounds the possibility of female religious authority in the precedent set by the history of female prophets. Beyond the Bible's Deborah and Chuldah, medieval and early modern Jewish spiritualism included significant examples of female visionaries, seers, and even prophets.[9] Rabbinic authorities, who were universally male, engaged in an attempt to undermine and cease such moments of and opportunities for charismatic power,[10] perceiving its spontaneity and direct claim to religious authority as threatening to a religious system structured on a system of law as interpreted by sanctioned authorities.[11] The Sabbatian movement was led and spread by such charismatic leaders, throwing open the gates of prophecy within its mystical conventicles, which spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.
The availability of leadership roles to women was the main feature that, to Rapoport-Albert, distinguished Sabbatianism as a radical, unqualified example of women's equality within early modern Jewish history. This trend reached its culmination in the apotheosis of Eva Frank (1754-1816), the daughter of Jakob Frank (1726-1791). In the longest chapter of the book, "The Redemptive 'Maiden,'"[12] Rapoport-Albert not only identifies the presence of women in the court of Frank, but also suggests that they were deemed necessary, complementary to the equally necessary males. She writes, "Precisely by virtue of being female, they were construed as necessary complements to the figures of the redeeming males – a concept that appears to be rooted in kabbalistic tradition."[13] While Rapoport-Albert is correct that the theme of gendered complementarity is structural within kabbalistic ontology, it is an odd claim, since such complementarity turned so often into instrumentality. While Rapoport-Albert is surely correct that the physical presence of women within Frank's court was a significant shift from previous monogendered kabbalistic environments (such as the circles of the Zohar or the Arizal), I believe she goes too far in marking the radical difference for women in Sabbatianism. After all, just like female figures of authority in Hasidic history,[14] Eva's charisma, even her messianic and divine status, was due to her relation to the messianic figure of Jakob Frank. Rapoport-Albert is surely correct, on a material basis, that women had a greater role to play, but in terms of discursive agency, her claims go a bit too far. Similarly, the figure of the Maiden of Ludmir, like female charismatic figures from other Christianity or Islam, was able to transcend the political limitations of her sex through her celibacy, so was celibacy offered as a means for women in the Sabbatian movement to gain access to privileged spaces.[15] Today, we can be critical of a kind of egalitarianism which does not allow for the full presence of women both as spirit and as flesh.
Lastly, I wish to treat the topic of the heretical and the messianic, an argument regarding which, in a sense, is the core of Rapoport-Albert's impressive monograph. Running through the book is an implied, and sometimes explicit, argument that rabbinic Judaism is necessarily and unavoidably patriarchal, and that the only way for Judaism to attain gender egalitarianism is through heresy. In this position, Rapoport-Albert adopts an ideological position within the Sabbatian literature itself, one distinctly modern, in which the heretical is adopted as an intentional identity and posed against religion. In his major text, The Words of the Lord, Frank says, "Jacob maintained the honour of his Lord even when he was in the place of other gods. So, too, must we maintain the honour of our Lord, and how shall we do this? By discarding every law and every religion. (§219) He further said, "All the religions that have existed up to now… they must all be cut down. (§708)[16] Frank self-consciously viewed himself as a heretic, as an opponent of religion. Heresiology is a major feature of many normative religions, in which authorities maintain the discrete lines and integrity of their tradition and community by declaring certain positions and/or practices "heretical." Only in the modern world, in which a space has been carved out for the non-religious, can one step outside of one's inherited sphere and position oneself as an opponent of religion. The heretical has become chosen and positive, both for Frank and for Rapoport-Albert, who saw it as the only means by which Judaism could attain a state of egalitarianism.[17]
As noted above, a major point in Rapoport-Albert's gender critique of Hasidism was its deferral of equality to a continuously-deferred messianic age. She writes,
An exception may be found in the eschatological theme of the elevation of women, and the intensification of female power, that occurs from time to time in the homiletic literature of Hasidism … Far from advancing the spiritual empowerment of women in the here and now, it serves primarily to highlight the contrast the promise of this empowerment in the utopian future and its absence from the mundane reality in the present.[18]
Here, Rapoport-Albert creates a sharp distinction between messianism and heresy, or perhaps normative messianism and heretical messianism. To her perspective, the Hasidic positing of gender egalitarianism is a fantasy used to highlight the unredeemed nature of this very unredeemed world. In this manner, Rapoport-Albert implicitly subscribes both to the authorities who opposed Sabbatianism as well as the Sabbatians themselves (or at least Frank), consenting to their marking the Sabbatians as heretics in contrast to normative, traditional Judaism. This is an odd position for an historian to take, as the question, ultimately, is a metaphysical one: has the Messiah come or not? If he has, then it is completely within the bounds of normative rabbinic Judaism that gender equalize, whereas if he has not, then, at least within the internal logic, such a belief is heretical. Indeed, Rapoport-Albert undoes her own claim, as, in a footnote, she acknowledges that the relative progressivism of Chabad, in terms of gender, is due to the Lubavitcher Rebbe's genuine belief that the Messiah had already come.[19] As Elliot Wolfson has extensively shown, in his analysis of the teachings of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,[20] the equalizing of genders was structurally imbricated within the Rebbe's messianic theory. Again, though, it bears repeating that, on a material level, Rapoport-Albert's point is absolutely sound, that women's exclusion was maintained and even strengthened, in Hasidism, despite its theoretical pretensions. As a question of Jewish ideology, though, her consigning of gender egalitarianism to the sphere of heresy is unnecessary, as is evidenced by contemporary efforts within the Modern Orthodox and Halachic Egalitarian Jewish communities, who believe in maximizing female access to religious authority or fully equal obligation and privilege within the law, respectively. That question, however, is beyond the scope of this review, though I hope to treat it in the near future.
[1] Ada Rapoport-Albert, "On Women in Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition," Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky, edited by A. Rapoport-Albert and S. Zipperstein (London: 1988), 495-525.
[2] See S. A. Horodecky, He-Hasidut ve-ha-Hasidim, 2nd ed. (Tel Aviv, 1943), IV:68ff and the abridged one-volume edition translated into English, Leaders of Hasidism (London, 1928), in the chapter entitled "The Maid of Ludmir," pp. 113ff.
[3] Ada Rapoport-Albert; "The Emergence of a Female Constituency in Twentieth-Century HaBaD;" in Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry Presented to Immanuel Etkes, Vol. 1: Hasidism and the Musar Movement; Edited by David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 2009); pp. 7*-68* (English section).
[4] Eadem, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi: 1666-1816 (Oxford: Littman, 2011), 5.
[5] Eadem, "Women and Hasidism," 495-6.
[6] Eadem, Women and the Messianic Heresy, 13.
[7] Rapoport-Albert takes especial exception, writing, "Against the background of the bold, Sabbatian redemptive vision which, as we have seen, had promised to deliver the equality and liberation of women – acknowledging their prophetic inspiration, investing them with power as autonomous agents, and fully engaging them en masse as an active constituency of the messianic movement – hasidism's disregard for women is particularly striking." See eadem, Women and the Messianic Heresy, 295.
[8] Rapoport Albert writes, "Perceived as physical, and above all sexual, [women] became the objects of spiritual transformation without ever being allowed to engage in it actively as subjects." See ibid., 267. Though she does not make the connection herself, Rapoport-Albert is in strong alignment with views propounded by Elliot R. Wolfson, who has, in innumerable locations, detailed the discursive utilization of the figure of the feminine in the ontology of Jewish mysticism.
[9] See ibid., ch. 2: Historical Precedents and Contexts, pp. 57-79.
[10] In this way, the conservative reaction to mystical prophecy was structurally similar to the misnagdic opposition to Hasidism, though, Rapoport-Albert's point is underscored, since the charismatic figures in that later case were also universally male.
[11] Rapoport-Albert notes that female charismatic figures are revisioned as those possessed by demonic spirits (dybbuk), who need the spiritual assistance of a male charismatic figure. See ibid., 283ff.
[12] Here, I believe Rapoport-Albert attempted to draw a linguistic parallel between the mythic heroine of the falsely lauded Hasidic movement and the true, historical figure of women's authority in the Sabbatian movement, Eva Frank.
[13] Ibid., 179.
[14] See eadem, "Emergence," 56*-59*.
[15] See eadem, Women and the Messianic, 36, 43 59-60,81, and 253-254. Rapoport-Albert never quite squares the circle with the libertine element within Sabbatianism, which she also describes as part of the liberation of women (who are so frequently associated with the sexual) within the movement. She did, though, provide us with a fantastic edition of a fascinating textual artefact from the Frankist movement, entitled "Something for the Female Sex: A Call for the Liberation of Women, and the Release of the Female Libido from the Shackles of Shame," printed here as an appendix (pp. 299-345). In it, Rapoport-Albert draws fascinating connections between the Frankist movement and nascent women's liberation within Central Europe.
[16] Cited in ibid., 257n.79.
[17] Interestingly, seven years prior, Shaul Magid, in an article published in Nashim journal, wrote a stirring and passionate defense of egalitarian Judaism, which was only truly possible through heresy. In his conclusion, he writes, "I firmly believe that with all their historical/critical apparatus and creative energy, modern Judaisms have the wherewithal to meet the challenge of making holistic sense of Judaism and gender, and that this includes confronting the limitations of a purely halakhic solution. To do this, however, we must be willing to construct new boundaries, creating a new theater for our own halakhic language." (pp. 209-210) See Shaul Magid, "Is Egalitarianism Heresy?: Rethinking Gender on the Margins of Judaism," Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues 8 (2004): 189-229. Since Rapoport-Albert's book is ostensibly a work of history, it is not surprising that she did not refer to Magid's paper in her research. However, it is quite an interesting parallel!
[18] Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic, 273n.18 and cf. 129-131n.65.
[19] Ibid., 272-273n. 39.
[20] See Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 200-23.
Review of Fraade, _Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages_
May 22nd, 2014
Review of Steven D. Fraade, Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. Leiden: Brill, 2011. 628 pp. $261.00.
By Jon Kelsen
Steven Fraade's Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (Brill, 2011) derives its title from an appreciation of the multiple convergences of legal and narrative literatures. First, Fraade contends, legal literature, like narrative literature, plays a rhetorical function in the creation of "nomo-narrative worlds." Conversely, Fraade highlights the legal import which even narrative literatures often carry. Furthermore, Fraade presents a sustained appreciation of the ways in which legal literature 're-narrativizes' earlier material, as in Philo's Special Laws, Josephus' politeia/constitution, the Damascus Document, and the Mishnah (see, e.g., pgs. 21-26. I would add, inter alia, that the same applies to how modern works such as Bialik and Ravnitsky's Sefer haAggadah re-narrativizes more standardly defined narrative material by removing them from earlier redacted contexts and reorganizing them; these new organizations themselves qualify as commentary). To take the last example, while the Mishnah is not a work of narrative per se (notwithstanding the narratives and legal ma'asim therein, and bracketing even Avot 1:1), its very reorganization of earlier legal material into its orders, tractates, and chapters effectively frames the contents differently.
Somewhat analogously, regarding debates surrounding whether midrashic texts are primarily the result of oral or written production, Fraade points out that most positions share the common assumption that oral productions represent an earlier (and more popularized) mode of production than the written, formalized, and elitist mode. Yet, Fraade argues, the relationship is not a purely linear one: "given rabbinic literature's "conceit" of orality, the oral elements of its rhetoric are signposts not so much of an oral stage that lies behind their extant textualities, as of the oral stage that lies before them, the stage upon which their rabbinic scripts remain to be played…" (pg. 379, emphasis in original). In other words, the line between the oral and the written becomes blurred when we pay attention to the uses of literary productions beyond investigating only their redactional history.
In short, therefore, Fraade (playing off of Robert Cover's celebrated essay "Nomos and Narrative") prefers to speak of nomos as narrative, complicating the distinction between these two genres. "It is not just a question of how accompanying laws and narratives frame, justify, and authorize one another, but how their two modes of discourse interpenetrate one another…we can speak of the normative force of narrative and the narrativity of law…" (pg. 12).
Legal Fictions is divided into three primary sections: the first set of studies focuses on the Dead Sea Scrolls proper; the second set is a collection of studies comparing the scrolls and Rabbinic literature; and the third focuses on Rabbinic literature itself. Unlike his previous book (From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy), a systematic analysis of a one midrashic work, Legal Fictions is an anthology of essays written by the author over a long period of time. (Nonetheless, many textual examples in Legal Fictions draw on deuteronomistic material and their interpretive histories). These essays address a wide range of mostly particular (or what Fraade terms 'anecdotal') case-studies, such as philological investigations of individual terms, and comparative interpretations of biblical passages. Some of the essays reach beyond the particular, addressing larger issues such as rabbinic polysemy and pluralism, the affinities and distinctions between the genres of 're-written Bible" and midrash, and the extent to which Second Temple period biblical interpretation may or may not be said to foreshadow or linearly lead one into rabbinic interpretation. Yet even these more ambitious topics are tackled via ever careful, close readings of particular texts, local instantiations, and case studies. The method is one of induction rather than deduction, and Fraade is always careful to avoid making claims or introducing sweeping categorizations that cannot be fully sustained by the source material, even (or especially) when other prominent scholars have attempted to do so.
It is unclear that Legal Fictions succeeds as a cohesive, unified work. Since each chapter was originally its own essay, they each begin with their own introductions, many of which are repetitive. This can make it a bit disorienting to read the book straight through. However, this is mitigated by extensive footnoting and cross-referencing, allowing the reader to locate each point and essay within the matrix of the work as a whole. This allows for, first, an appreciation of the way this master scholar connects disparate data points and insights in constructing larger arguments, and secondly for an appreciation of core themes of Fraade's many writings. Nonetheless, in an undergraduate or graduate course setting, it might be more useful to assign individual chapters for reading rather than the work as a whole.


text:
08.12.2005, 16:43 #1 An Army of twothecivickid
An Army of two
The reason for this thread is because I'm a Vet, and I'm about to rejoin the Army with my wife and I wanted to know of anybody's experiences, tips or anything else with the military and their spouses.
- Werbung
08.12.2005, 16:49 #2 An Army of twoTexas Tornado
My neighbors are dual military which can be a problem at times with the kids. Right now they are geographical bachelors because she is at the USASMA Academy here and he stayed in Maryland where he is a Vet in the Army. The kids are here with her, she has to bring them to daycare at 5 am. What a drag...The only thing I know is that they are usually entitled to be stationed together, so when one gets orders, the other one can go with him / her. The reason the husband stayed behind is because they own a house there and he has awesome hours and can come down here for a long weekend every 2 weeks...
Good luch and which MOS are you signing up for?
08.12.2005, 19:03 #3 An Army of twoVegasGirl
Well, though the military tries to keep married soldier couples stationed together it is not a must and does not always work that way... especially nowadays with all the deployments etc.
08.12.2005, 19:23 #4 An Army of twoserabe
I think it's really tough when you're a dual-military couple. If you have kids and both of you get deployed at the same time, the children have to do without both parents for a year. And sometimes it's not easy to find adequate care for them for that time. Also, it's possible that one of you goes TDY or gets deployed or stationed some place while the other one is at a different duty station. And then, when the first one returns home, the other one goes TDY/gets deployed or gets stationed somewhere else like Korea. Military families don't spend much time as a whole as it is these days. But when you're dual military it's even more likely that family time will come short. My respect goes out to all dual military couples, especially the ones who have kids. But I could not imagine having that for our family since military life is stressful enough as it is for us with just one partner in the Army. Good luck to you guys!
14.12.2005, 13:31 #5 An Army of twothecivickid
I said that all wrong, I'am sorry, I meant that I will be joining and my wife would then be a dependent, but not in the military, again sorry about the confusion. Oh and to Daggy's question, I was a 19D Scout the first time I was in, but if possible I would like to be in a medical position. I'm still hashing that out with the recruiter.
14.12.2005, 13:54 #6 An Army of twogarfieldshome
well, you and your family will have healthcare through the army. housing will be available for you, depending on where you will be stationed at. off post privat rental is available too. any idea where you will be stationed at?
14.12.2005, 13:57 #7 An Army of twothecivickid
No, not yet like I said I still have somethings to hash out with the recruiter, I haven't actually joined yet, I have taken the physical though. If I had a choice I would stay in Germany for a little while, if it had to be stateside I would say Colorado, or California.
14.12.2005, 17:25 #8 An Army of twoVegasGirl
Hm, if you're a vet there is little else to tell you about military life... maybe with the exception of the terrible deployment rate right now, but I don't know when you were in so that could still be the same.
Do you have any specific questions in regards to the life of a military spouse?
I assume you weren't married when you were in before...
And if you don't mind, tell us a bit about your wife... how does she handle seperations, moves, military decorum etc? How rooted is she in her/your current life? Does she realize there is no easy fast out once you're back in?
As for an assignment in Germany... my guess would be that your chances of that are pretty good... well, atleast your wife would be in Germany, you on the other hand would more than likely end up spending a good protion of that assignment deployed in the desert.
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Do You Write Ads?
Posted By Bryan Eisenberg On February 23, 2007 @ 6:51 am In Advertising,Persuasive Copywriting | No Comments
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