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Book Review: Models of the Family in Modern Society

faces were ‘defaced’ and dehumanized by torture. Religion is not reduced to an ethics of care, however, for Raphael takes the mystical position that God is truly immanent in the world. She develops this insight using 16th century kabbalistic cosmology as a feminist post-Holocaust resource. God’s Shekhinah (female presence) dwells with the Jewish people in exile, even if God’s face is hidden. Using female imagery, she describes the motherhood of God that is both ‘infinitely strong as the presence of unconditional love and also thereby infinitely vulnerable to harm’ (p. 125). In a reversal of patriarchal notions of God’s power, human beings are responsible for redeeming God. The Jewish covenant with God is fulfilled when individuals uncover God’s face in each other’s faces and mend the suffering and brokenness of the world, a process called tikkun (reconciliation). The task for Jews after Auschwitz is to resist the patriarchal covering of God’s feminine face in all eras of Jewish history including the present. Raphael finds redemptive acts and divine presence in Auschwitz, although she rejects the attribution of instrumental purpose to the Holocaust as necessary for Jewish redemption. Her emphasis on women’s domesticity and the femininity of God exhibits a cultural feminist approach. It is a weakness of the book that the reader can detect a preconceived feminist theology overlaid on to Jewish women’s Holocaust experiences. It is not Auschwitz that guides theological reflection, but theology that selectively employs Auschwitz testimonies. Raphael is well aware of this objection and defends her project as a ‘reconstructive, narrative interpretation’ of Holocaust literature, rather than historiography (p. 17). Unlike postmodern theologians who resist universal discourses and metanarratives, Raphael insists that constructive theology must offer a unified system of meaning. Her inclusion of Auschwitz within the redemptive process neglects the unredemptive voices of victims, not because the author is insensitive to their plight, but because her feminist theology presumes the validity of God’s presence. This important and eloquent book will fascinate readers interested in women’s spirituality, Judaism, Holocaust studies, or feminist theology. S A R A H K. P I N N O C K Trinity University, San Antonio