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I Did It My Way: Women Remaking American Judaism.

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I Did It My Way: Women Remaking American Judaism. Edited by Riv-Ellen Prell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007. xii + 331 PP.

The editor of this collection of essays, Riv-Ellen Prell, characterizes the volume as a product of the "thirty-five-year gestation of American Jewish feminism" (I). The feminist movement has brought about profound changes of form and content in religious life, and the book aims to portray those changes on several planes, treated in its three sections. Part one of the book, "Reenvisioning Judaism," deals with the new feminist theology--an enterprise that boldly exposed the intense patriarchal biases of the biblical and rabbinic traditions but also found novel ways of understanding the lives of women by reading between the lines of the Bible and expounding on its omissions. More broadly, it has proposed a fundamental revision of Jewish theology, including its concept of God and its understanding of revelation.

Part two, "Redefining Judaism," examines feminism's influence at the local, practical level, and considers its effects on various Jewish denominations. Taking an historical-cultural approach, the article on Reform Judaism examines how that movement's communal...

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