In Jewish Feminism and Intersectionality, Marla Brettschneider calls necessary attention to the possibilities for growth in a field that is itself a reflection of intersectionality studies. At the heart of Brettschneider's argument is the contention that Jewish feminism, as an intellectual and activist project, has paid little attention to the category of race. More specifically, Jewish feminism and feminists have greatly focused on the experiences of Ashkenazi Jewish women while neglecting to include those of Jewish women of color. Simultaneously, Brettschneider contends that the larger field of intersectionality studies has generally ignored the perspectives of Jews and Jewish issues with anti-Semitism remaining especially absent from a large list of concerns and areas of study.
To support these positions, Brettschneider focuses on a diverse set of theoretical and empirical cases. She first situates her thinking within broader philosophical conversations of intersectionality. In particular, Elizabeth V. Spelman's work on race and gender in ancient Greek philosophical texts is utilized as a way of highlighting the ontological differences between prominent theorizing in the field and a potentially more complex and nuanced understanding of intersectionality infused with Jewish feminist queer perspectives.
Brettschneider also sheds light on the theoretical possibilities of Jewish feminist intersectionality through an analysis of the personal history and intellectual work of the writer Jamaica Kincaid. Born in Antigua and educated under the British colonial system, Kincaid moved in 1965 to the United States at age sixteen to work as an au pair. Subsequently, many know of her work as a writer who has touched on themes of Caribbean culture, colonialism, imperialism, and mother/daughter relationships. However, Brettschneider is interested in situating Kincaid's work and her life to push against ideas of diaspora and home-as-Zion. As a brown-skinned, Afro-Caribbean Jewish woman who has lived a large chunk of her life in a white rural town in Vermont with very few Jews, Kincaid serves as an example of a life and body of work that challenges our idea of “home” and reminds us of the possibility of creating similar and new homes in unexpected places.
Turning to the world of popular culture, Brettschneider shines a spotlight on the 1950s radio program and television show The Goldbergs, and the ways in which intersectionality theory can serve as a framework to understand its popularity and, ultimately, its demise. First based in the Bronx in the post-World War II period, The Goldbergs eventually relocate from a largely ethnic minority urban locale to white suburbia. At the moment when its producers decided to move the show's location, we see the rapid end of a decades-long successful television show which was eventually replaced in popularity with another sitcom headed by a female comedian, The Lucille Ball Show. Brettschneider argues that the failure of The Goldbergs to thrive at precisely the moment when the show moves to the suburbs is primarily attributable to the lack of interest in viewing Jewish suburban life as well as the inability of Jews to thrive in their new geographical setting. In many ways and despite the fact that Jews in the post-World War II era were transitioning to the suburbs, to viewers, the Goldbergs were only The Goldbergs when they lived in the minority ethnically dense Bronx.
The next three chapters of the book focus on the application of intersectionality theories to Jewish queer rituals and Jewish feminist sexual and reproductive justice. Regarding coming-out rituals, Brettschneider discusses an example of a group of Jewish radical queers who developed a coming-out ritual that pushes against the idea of coming out as a one-time moment of self-discovery. She emphasizes that rituals such as pride parades and life-cycle moments for coming out or transitioning can evolve into “essentialist spectacles” that do not take into account the on-going processes of intersectional identity work.
Brettschneider's final case looks at the empirical realities and messiness of transracial adoption and the role that white, European-heritage Jewish feminists have played in this area of reproductive justice. The often joyful celebration of multiracial Jewish families, made possible through the opening up of avenues to allow for transracial/transnational adoption, has come at a substantial cost for women and families of color whose reproductive justice and freedoms to give birth to and parent their children have been taken away from them, especially through increased surveillance and criminalization via state welfare policies and drug and immigration laws. Brettschneider's aim with this case is not to reject transracial adoption outright but to challenge white, Jewish queer feminists to constantly seek to understand and push back against the ways in which this process continues to strip women of color and their families of their reproductive power.
As empirical illustrations for some of Brettschneider's contentions, the case studies presented provide an incredibly compelling argument for the reconceptualization of intersectionality for Jewish feminism to include greater attention to race. The particular examples of the tensions wrapped up in transracial adoption and reproductive justice, in addition to further examples from the author's own experiences and those of her family and community members, provide a persuasive and incredibly timely account of the nuances of racism that are alive and well within larger society and within the American Jewish population. To deal with these problems, Brettschneider accurately maintains that addressing these problems cannot happen through an additive approach to Jewish feminism—this would undermine the central tenets of intersectionality. Instead, she argues that a fuller and more rewarding approach to a new intersectionality pertaining to the work of Jewish feminism would begin from a starting point of incorporation of Jewish feminists from across multiple spectrums, including race. This approach is important not only for academic work in the field of intersectionality, but it is also especially critical to move American Judaism to become fuller, vibrant, and a truer reflection of those who are a part of this larger community but who may often feel like they don't belong.
