The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Like much twentieth-century feminist writing today, this book crosses the boundaries of genre. Biblical interpretation combines with fantasy, autobiography, and poetry. Politics joins with eroticism. Irreverence coexists with a yearning for the sacred. Scholarship contends with heresy. Most excitingly, the author continues and extends the tradition of arguing with God that commences in the Bible itself and continues now, as it has for centuries, to animate Jewish writing. The difference here is that the voice that debates with God is a woman's.

In her introduction, "Entering the Tents, " Ostriker defines the need to struggle against a tradition in which women have been silenced and disempowered - and to recover the female power buried beneath the surface of the biblical texts. In "The Garden, " she reinterprets the mythically complex stories of Creation. Then she considers the stories of "The Fathers, " from Abraham and Isaac to Moses, David, and Solomon - and their wives, mothers, and sisters. In "The Return of the Mothers, " she begins with a radical new interpretation of the book of Esther, includes a meditation on the silenced wife of Job and the idea of justice, and concludes with a fable on the death of God and a prayer to the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God. Ostriker refuses to dismiss the Bible as meaningless to women. Instead, in this angry, eloquent, visionary book, she attempts to recover what is genuinely sacred in these sacred texts.

Genres: Poetry, Religion, Feminism, Jewish, Gender, Judaism

Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the God of Abrahamic scripture did to Adam, this book breathes life into the dust of the archaic texts of the Torah /Talmud /Bible, proving that they are indeed living documents, one that plays itself out in the contemporary world, where women can add valuable insights to long-held, exclusionary interpretations.

Here, Ostriker delves “inside the language, the place of interpretation, the place of dialogue, interrogation, commentary, laughter, the place of holy disobedience, the site of persistent stubbornness, wrestling, and the demand for blessing," (141) to reconfigure and reintegrate the feminine and the terrestrial with the god of Abraham.

This work started slowly, in my opinion, but ended fiercely. It ended so strongly, in fact, that I had trouble narrowing down which poems and stories were my favorites. The number mounted as I kept reading. This book reignited my interest in the Abrahamic scriptures and legends that compose what feel like dominant metanarratives, specifically, when considering the repulsive acts occurring in Gaza by the Israeli state and how the U.S. seems to be barreling down on its path to White Christian Nationalism. Beyond this, Ostriker does a great job critiquing and rescuing these literary works from the tiresome belief systems that have been extracted from them for thousands of years.

Ostriker is proof that a sharp mind, one in tune with Spinoza’s god, can breathe life into the most withered of species.

[Nia · Rating 2 out of 5]

While in general I did not like this book, I really did like the call to the Shechina at the end of the book. There were also some interesting comments on King David regarding possibly deliberate hero-building for a new and/or needy nation that had essentially been, previously, a failed nation-state.

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I would sacrifice everything I have for the ability to weave memoir into literary criticism into Midrash into Jewish feminist theology...

[Patty]

Interesting, but not enough to keep reading.

[Haley Starshine ;) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just a fantastic book. Totally encapsulates the human spirit of the stories of the Hebrew Bible, and is just a pleasure to read in and of itself: the prose (and verse, at times) is beautiful as it strikes the perfect balance between descriptive and terse, the down-to earth insights into these heroes and legends is striking in how familiar these towering figures become, the connections Ostriker draws between the Biblical world and our own (whether it's her grandfathers or the Holocaust) only adds to that. I have exactly two criticisms:

One, after the amount of time Ostriker spends on the first few moment of Genesis -- the garden, Noah, Abraham (tackled from the viewpoints of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar!) -- it seems like later stories, while just as rich as studies of human and divine nature, are given disproportionately little time on display.

Two, there are moments where Ostriker references Rabbinic and literary analysis of the Bible, and to someone who has experience studying it, it's jarring. To someone who hasn't studied the barren mother stories as instances where God is able to insert himself into the female act of creation, Ostriker's mentions of it probably look like more poetry, but to people who have, it's startling and brings you out of the flow. The Nakedness of the Fathers is part poetry, part literary criticism, but the critical part is cunningly disguised -- except where it's not.

And after those nitpicks, a moment of pure adulation, because it's well-deserved: "Intensive Care" is just stunning. The book as a whole is wonderful, of course, but even if it weren't, "Intensive Care" would be worth slogging through a book of much lesser quality with much less impressive prose just to get to this story, which is shattering and affecting and just the right penultimate note of the book to end on.

This is an amazing, thoughtful book. 10/10, would recommend, will probably read again at some point.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a creative, feminist, personal response to the narratives of the Hebrew Bible; it is a kind of autobiography-through-Genesis etc. It re-frames well-known stories and fills in female silence with poetry. It also re-interprets these stories in the context of a young Jewish girl growing up at the time of the holocaust, and carrying that with her throughout her life. Though published in the early nineties, this text still feels contemporary and urgent. Its blending of genres is something that has become characteristic of feminist biblical criticism and I see it as one of the foundational texts of this movement.

[Jason Allen Ashlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

If ever Goodreads were to add more stars--ten, twenty, one hundred--this book would earn them each.