Jewish philosophy, a subfield which most often goes by the name “Jewish Thought,”
has a canon: Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen, and Emmanuel Levinas. Although some scholars would quibble about a name or two on the list, generally, scholars in the field of Jewish thought agree that there is a canon and about who is in it. When all the philosophers in a canon are men, central questions, categories, and lines of reasoning that seem universal can be shaped by writers’ own masculinity. They can purport to write about a general, even universalizing Judaism, but nevertheless describe it as a primarily male enterprise.
This might suggest that Jewish women thinkers do not exist or have not existed in the past, but that is untrue. They have. Scholars have also written sophisticated analyses of gender and Jewish thought. In many ways, then, it is surprising that the canon has remained so durably closed.
This collaborative project brings together scholars of Jewish thought to add women and non-binary people to this canon—historical, contemporary, Sephardi or Mizrahi, disabled people, and cis and trans women thinkers. Expanding the canon in this way will also inspire us to think about the genre of Jewish thought, such as what it would look like to consider letters, memoir, poetry, or even art as thought. Funded by IU’s Institute for Advanced Study and the Center for Religion and the Human, co-organizers Sarah Imhoff (IUB) and Andrea Dara Cooper (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill) are organizing a series of workshops for scholars. The project will continue with the production of an edited volume for both classroom and scholarly use.