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PLACING JEWISH WOMEN INTO THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF RACE, CLASS AND GENDER
Abstract: This paper places Jewish women into the feminist and sociological conversation of identity, oppression, and the intersectionality of "gender, race, and class." More specifically, it reveals the resistance to include Jewish women in this discourse. Why is this oppression different from all others (or not)? Why have Jewish women been marginalized from the sociological discourse on inequality and oppression?
Why has the feminist community denied Jewish women the voice to express their specific concerns as Jews and as women? Why is this occurring when much of the `difference of Jews' is similar to that of other marginalized groups? And what is the sociological, theoretical, and political significance of this `othering' process?
Keywords: Jewish women, antisemitism, intersectionality of gender, race, and class.
This paper places Jewish women into the feminist and sociological conversation of identity, oppression, and the intersectionality of "gender, race, and class." More specifically, it uncovers (again) the political, economic, historic and social climate in which these categories currently exist I offer this critique to improve upon the work completed so far. An understanding of the placement of Jewish women and intersectionality is crucial, I believe, since "...race-ethnicity, gender, or class [cannot] be correctly understood if isolated from one another, for they have been constructed and experienced simultaneously." (Amott and Mattaei 1991:5). The way we experience gender oppression differs based on our other identities of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and religion. Similarly, our experience with racial or ethnic oppression also varies by class, gender, sexuality, and religion.
Although Jewish feminists have attempted to place Jews into this dialogue, the discourse on and about "race, class, and gender" has limited this possibility. This "marginalizing discourse," which excludes Jews, is partially due to the way we construct the notions of oppression and anti-Semitism as well as the categories of race, ethnicity, and class. Intersection theorists argue that all oppressions are interlocking and thus fit under the "matrix of domination" (Collins 1991:234). However, the orthodoxy which takes "gender, race, and class" to be the fundamental and immediate oppressions excludes religion, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and other `categories' from membership into the intersection. The ability to name oppressions is a mode of power and those who produce...