'Uncovered': Examining Halacha through a female lens - review

Uncovered: Women’s Roles, Mitzvot, and Sexuality in Jewish Law is primarily a halachic work. Its author, Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash, has spent decades immersed in what the rabbis have to say about the lives of Jewish women. 

In her introduction, she identifies as “gradually moving from frustration to acceptance to empowerment by finding a ‘seat at the table,’ so to speak, of halachic discourse.”

It’s possible to see Uncovered as two separate books – the halachic material presented in an orderly fashion, and the meta-conversation about how Barash, and many other women, deal with the material that has only recently been learned in depth by women scholars. 

Barash explains that the book is based on the Women and Halacha courses she has taught. She is clearly a skilled teacher; the book’s material is well organized. 

Each of its nine chapters includes source material from biblical verses, Talmudic discussions, and classical and contemporary responsa, in Hebrew/Aramaic and English, presented chronologically. 

She summarizes the various approaches in each chapter, such as women and “time-caused” (more popularly known as time-bound) mitzvot such as tzitzit, tefillin, and saying Shema; women and hair covering; women wearing pants; women and Torah study; and women’s sexual expression in and before marriage. 

The real contribution Uncovered makes to the literature by and about Jewish women is Barash’s own musings and interpretations, based on her understanding of contemporary practice. 

As an example, when discussing the issue of kol isha (the prohibition against hearing a woman’s voice, that applies to Jewish men), she writes, “This restrictive ‘innovation’ prohibiting women from singing in front of men or even being heard at all in the synagogue when saying Kaddish has been adopted by many as the only legitimate halachic approach to kol isha, but it does not need to serve as the final note.”

A female Halacha student's personal journey

In the appendix, Barash shares more of her personal journey as a female student of rabbinic and halachic texts. She reveals that she has been studying Talmud since the late 1980s. In this concluding essay, she describes what many traditional Jewish women sense but don’t necessarily have the words to articulate. 

“This absence of women’s voices from the endless texts about women’s bodies, signs of virginity, detailed discussions about menstrual flow, sexual permissibility, and breast development is jarring. Once uncovered from the shroud of traditional male-authored exegesis, many unsettling questions about female identity and agency emerge.”

She speaks about how, when women learn these texts, they see them differently from men who study them. These differences are frustrating, at least for the beginning female student of Talmud. 

“While most men are able to delve into the legal conversations in an impersonal way, my experience from the world of a women’s beit midrash (hall of Torah study) is that one cannot remain indifferent to statements that objectify women in a way that is no longer acceptable in modern society.”

Uncovered: Women’s Roles, Mitzvot, and Sexuality in Jewish Law is not the first book to cover the topic of women and Jewish law. Some books on this topic, generally written by men, simply present the texts as they understand them, answering questions such as “Are women permitted to wear tefillin?” or “What does Halacha require when a woman is raped?” 

Other authors of such books, generally women coming from a liberal Jewish perspective, use the status of women in rabbinic law as a cudgel with which to attack traditional Jewish observance. 

What Barash tries to do in this book is strike a balance between halachic literature about the lives of Jewish women – literature that has been exclusively composed and interpreted by men for centuries – and the implications of that literature when studied by contemporary women. 

It’s not an easy task and, to her credit, Barash doesn’t whitewash or pretend that the resolution is a simple one. The reader is left with the impression, however, that she is grateful to be included in the conversation. 

The reviewer is a freelance journalist and editor of Ten From The Nations: Torah Awakening Among Non-Jews and Lighting Up The Nations.

Leonard Nimoy’s original black and white images were shot with film and hand printed by him in his darkroom. All photographs are signed and numbered. They can viewed at Michelsohn Galleries, Massachusetts and are available for purchase. https://www.rmichelson.com/artists/leonard-nimoy/shekhina/

• UNCOVERED: WOMEN’S ROLES, MITZVOT, AND SEXUALITY IN JEWISH LAW
• By Nechama Goldman Barash
• Urim Publications
• 393 pages; $32