Speaker traces roles of Jewish women

In a skillful comparison, Lori Lefkovitz likened tabloid personalities such as Monica Lewinsky and Woody Allen to biblical figures like Delilah or Jacob during a lecture Monday on "Bedrooms and Battlefields: a Feminist Reading of Sexuality in the Jewish Textual Tradition." During the address in the Van Pelt Library, she encouraged students to look at traditional Jewish roles in the Bible and throughout history "through a new lens." Lefkovitz is the director of KOLOT, the Center for Jewish Women's and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa. Her lecture was part of a series of events sponsored by the Jewish Renaissance Project -- a program designed to promote alternative views of Judaism specifically geared toward Jewish women. It was held in conjunction with Jewish Women's History Month. David Leipziger, the coordinator of the Project, praised "the intellectual honesty to look at [Jewish] issues from different angles and introduce Penn women to a different angle." The Project is sponsored by Hillel and several Penn departments. Lefkovitz began her address by noting that "all of the [literature] covers and hides the presence of Jewish women in history." "We don't even know who they are," she added. Lefkovitz analyzed the roles of women in the Old Testament, focusing on several women who used their exaggerated sexuality to end wars and ruin men. "The bedroom is the only battlefield in the Bible where men always lose," she noted. She explained that circumstances forced women in the Bible to change their personalities to achieve their ends, covering themselves in jewels and perfume in order to seduce men and gain "political power." Such overt sexuality is a form of role playing, and the women would use these guises to become "Yber-feminine" and acquire false power, she said. This concept of play-acting is one to which the audience could relate. Commenting on the similarity between the contrived femininity in the Bible and women's fashion at the University, College senior Ariel Blumenthal said she was "thinking about the black-pants girls on Penn's campus.? What women wear on campus and in the Bible, who are they really?" Despite the presence of Biblical characters such as Moses, who hid his Jewish identity to survive, Lefkovitz stressed that ultimately there was a point where people had to "out themselves as Jews." She used the example of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who recently discovered that her family members had disguised their Jewish past to escape the Holocaust. Lefkovitz explored the issue of identity even further, analyzing the stereotypical Jewish mother and "Jewish American Princesses," as well as current media figures such as Lewinsky and Allen in addition to Biblical figures. She claimed that the boundaries between the roles these people play and their "true" selves are often blurred. "We are who we aren't," Lefkovitz said. "That's always the case." Idana Goldberg, a second-year graduate student studying Jewish women's history, said she was glad that Lefkovitz was "uncovering women's voices to find their place in Jewish textual history."

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