EEWC Conference 2004

Interfaith Panel Explores Wisdom's Personae

by Linda Bieze

Echoes from the 2004 EEWC Conference

Three scholars of Jewish and Islamic scriptures presented papers at a plenary session on Friday morning entitled, "Wisdom/Hokhmah, Torah, and Fatimah." They helped conference attendees understand that Wisdom appears in many different personae in these faiths, as well as in the Christian faith.

Wisdom and Jewish Torah

Dvora Weisberg, who teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, presented a fascinating view of Jewish understandings of the Hebrew scriptures in "From 'Lady Wisdom' to the Torah of Moses: The Preeminence of Study in Jewish Tradition."

While the "Lady Wisdom," or hokhmah, of Proverbs 8, who was the focus of much of the EEWC conference, joined the scriptural canon during the Second Temple Period of Judaism (515 BCE to 70 CE), Weisberg chose to focus on the representation of wisdom as Torah, which grew during the Rabbinic Period (70 to 600 CE). The rabbis elevated study of Torah to the level of a religious ritual, or mitzvah, worthy for its own sake and the highest calling to which a man, and only a man, could aspire. She illustrated this with the story of Hillel, who sacrificed half his earnings to attend Torah school and so longed to hear the rabbis teach that he nearly froze to death on a snowy roof, trying to listen through a skylight.

Weisberg described three ways women were regarded in the world of the rabbis.

1. Women were exempt from the study of the obligation to study Torah and, in fact, were not to be taught any Torah, since "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

2. Women were both smart and a bit scary. For example, rabbinical commentary on 1 Samuel 1:11, the story of Hannah's prayer to God for a child, claims that the text shows Hannah uses her knowledge of Torah to threaten God, as it were, with embarrassment if God does not give her a child -- she will, in essence, establish a fertility ritual to get her child. Her manipulation of the law to work in her favor "scares men to death," said Weisberg.

3. Women were to make great personal sacrifices to support their husbands' study of Torah. Weisberg related two Talmud stories of husbands who abandoned their wives and children for dozens of years, with their wives' consent and encouragement, to pursue their studies.

Weisberg posited that during the Rabbinic Period women did have their own wisdom circles, which the rabbis would have called "witchcraft," but these are not recorded in the scriptures of Judaism, which were compiled by men. It has only been in the past 30 years that Jewish women have been able to "gain rigorous training" in Jewish texts, often studying them with a feminist interpretation.

But why should women study these ancient, androcentric texts? Weisberg offered three reasons: first, to reclaim them in order to create an "engendered" contemporary Judaism; second, to make these texts informative for future generations of women and men; and third, to increase women's authority in the Jewish community, for authority is gained only through textual study.

Finally, Weisberg encouraged listeners to remember that the religious texts of any tradition are women's heritage as well as men's. "The most dangerous thing anyone can do," she concluded, "is cede them to the other side."

Fatimah in Shi'ite Islam

Bridget Blomfield, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology and Islamic studies at Claremont Graduate University, teaches at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Her paper was entitled, "Fatimah the Radiant: A Vessel of Light for Shi'ite Muslim Women."

Fatimah is especially revered among the Shi'ah, who make up about 15 percent of all Muslims. According to the Shi'ah, Fatimah existed before her own birth as a form of light, and she represents an endless cycle of creation and dying. She is found in the wisdom of the human heart.

Fatimah was born to the Prophet Muhammad and his wife Khadijah. Muhammad was overjoyed when the angel Gabriel told him his child would be a girl. Mary the mother of Jesus was one of the midwives who attended the child's birth. Fatimah married Muhammad's cousin Ali and had five children. The Shi'ah believe that she transmits the light of the Prophet. Blomfield argued that, because of the direct lineage of Fatimah from Muhammad, Islam can be considered a matriarchal faith.

One story that exemplifies Fatimah's behavior tells how she gave her own beautiful wedding dress to a poor bride who had no wedding dress. In doing so, said Blomfield, Fatimah "wraps women in the fabric of love." We can do this also when we reach out to someone who has less than we do.

Fatimah has many attributes. She is an intercessor between the physical and spiritual worlds. She is pure and virginal but also sensual. She is a "redemptrix" for those who suffer and weep. She represents suffering, compassion, faith, hope, redemption, and love.

According to Blomfield, "The heart of wisdom is the deep, internal knowing that springs out in the tears of life. . . . When we come together as women in suffering, a compassion rests under our suffering and Fatimah is present." Shi'ite women observe this through an annual grieving ritual, an opportunity to bond together in sorrow.

Wisdom, Blomfield maintained, is within each of us. It is not acquired, like knowledge. When we take a breath and sense Fatimah within us, we experience wisdom. Men, as well as women, can have the feminine wisdom of Fatimah. She is like a doorway to an empty space. Through prayer, we fill our empty spaces with the light of wisdom that enters us through this doorway.

Women in Muslim Teaching and Practice

Riffat Hassan, who teaches at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, is a Muslim feminist theologian who was born in Pakistan. Her paper on "Women in Normative Islam vs. Muslim Practice" explained why study of the Qur'an from a non-patriarchal perspective is essential to activism for changes in the treatment of women in Muslim societies.

Hassan opened by acknowledging that Islam was developed in patriarchal cultures that forbade women to study sacred texts for centuries. Islam recognizes five sacred texts, the most authoritative of which is the Qur'an. The next-most authoritative, the Hadiths, record the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The Hadiths and the remaining three sacred texts, however, cannot contradict the Qur'an, she explained.

In 1974, Hassan began a systematic study of the Qur'an passages that deal with women, trying to interpret them from a non-patriarchal perspective. She "discovered that the Qur'an is not only egalitarian but is weighted in favor of women" and other oppressed groups. Alongside her theological studies, Hassan became and remains an activist for putting equality into practice.

Through her study, Hassan also recognized three ideological assumptions about women that underlie Islam, as well as other faiths:

1. God's primary creation, Adam, was male, while woman, who was created from man, is secondary.

2. Despite her secondary status, woman was primary in guilt.

3. Men are fundamental, while women, created to help men, are instrumental.

These assumptions, she suggested, grew out of the second creation account in Genesis, what she calls "the rib story" of the creation of Eve.

Unlike the Hebrew scriptures, the Qur'an has 30 creation passages, which use three generic terms for human beings. The term "adam," which is used 25 times in the Qur'an, refers specifically to humans as vice-regents of God; 21 of these occurrences refer to humanity as a whole, while the other four refer to specific prophets. So the Qur'an is more egalitarian than the Hebrew scriptures in treating the creation of human beings, Hassan noted.

In her teaching, however, Hassan found that most Muslim students believe "the rib story" to be the true account of human creation. However, this story does not appear in the Qur'an but only in the Hadiths, which are considered true only when they do not contradict the Qur'an. The Hadiths, in fact, suggest that woman was created from a crooked, disembodied, 13th, left rib! This discovery raised one of the driving questions of her study: Why are Qur'an passages subverted in practice by the Hadiths?

When people ask her why she studies theology when so much change is needed in Muslim society, she responds with a metaphor: "If a train gets off track, you have to stop the train and take it back to the point at which it got derailed and then put it back on track. You have to realize, all my sisters, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and others, we got derailed at the point of creation -- so we have to take this train back to the point of origin! So this theological work is absolutely essential, no matter what our field of endeavor."

As an activist, Hassan sees the Qur'an misused against women, resulting in "honor crimes" and other violence against them. She is encouraged, however, by Muslim women's groups, which are in the forefront of change in Muslim society. But she is also discouraged by the worldwide polarization between peoples and faiths, "because the prime victims of terrorism are women."

Following her main remarks, Hassan spoke briefly about the Muslim understanding of wisdom, or Al-Hikmah. The Qur'an refers to God giving the prophets the Book and the Wisdom, which indicates that they are not the same thing, as scripture and wisdom often are understood in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Wisdom, she explained, is a gift of God that enables people to understand the Book in a holistic sense of both comprehending and living the teachings of the Qur'an. God grants wisdom to anyone willing to receive it, to live it out in the world, and to become a prophetic figure.

After hearing these scholars of Judaism and Islam explain some of the many faces of Wisdom, conference participants could not help but feel encouraged to be "doers of the word, and not merely hearers" (James 1:22). These women from other scriptural faiths are not discarding their sacred texts but finding equality within them. In the same way, EEWC has a unique role in searching and interpreting scriptures within the Christian faith, rather than jettisoning the Bible as hopelessly patriarchal, as some feminists have done.

Linda Bieze, an EEWC coordinator emerita, is a writer and editor living in Grand Rapids, MI.

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