TAKING BACK GOD: AMERICAN WOMEN RISING UP FOR RELIGIOUS EQUALITY
Leora Tanenbaum
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. 368 pp. $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-374-27235-7

Reviewed by Ellie Barbarash

Taking Back God describes the experiences of ninety-five American women, aged nineteen to ninety-five, as they strive for advancement in five different religious traditions. Leora Tanenbaum interviewed women from Catholic, Evangelical, and Mainline Protestant, Muslim, and Orthodox Jewish communities to reveal the common threads in their struggles for women’s religious inclusion, including Tanenbaum’s own experiences working for equality within a life of committed Orthodox Jewish observance. Women’s voices come from the mainstream, and their beliefs and actions for change are based upon devoted study of original sacred texts. Across the board, they express similar concerns: a desire for enhanced women’s leadership, women’s representation in the language of liturgy, and clear recognition that the female body has also been made in the image of God.

Taking Back Godoffers an insider’s view of women’s daily struggles. Chapters devoted to each religious practice cover institutional and personal responses to women’s tactics, theology, and creativity as they work for change. The book gives a wide context to American women’s efforts to create change from the middle of the religions that support their lives.

Ellie Barbarash lives in Philadelphia is studying to be a Kohenet (www.Kohenet.org). Her creative work has appeared in Bridges: a Jewish Feminist Journal, and she is working on a memoir of her mother's family in Hungary and NYC in the early 1900's.

Return to the Archive