“The Woman Who Talks”: A Qualitative Case Study in Feminist Jewish Rhetorics

ABSTRACT

Jewish rhetorics recently garnered critical attention in rhetoric studies, resulting in extensive scholarship attempting to carve out the field’s jurisdiction. Jewish feminist rhetoricians, for example, often use Jewish rhetorics to reclaim women’s religious experiences. But recovering the secular voices of Jewish women is also essential to understanding Jewish rhetorics, evinced by an anonymous group of nineteenth century women. These women use secular Jewish topoi—exile, tzedek (justice), and zikaron (memory)—to articulate their identity as American Jewish women, demonstrating both Jewish rhetorics’ potential as a cultural rhetoric and topoi’s ability to empower marginalized communities through exclusionary practices.

Notes

1. I am grateful to RR reviewers Wendy Hayden and Lisa Shaver for their recommendations for revision. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Britt and Laura Gonzalez for their invaluable guidance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Slotkin

Alexander Slotkin is a PhD student in rhetoric and writing at the University of Florida and a recent graduate of Northeastern University’s MA program in English. His research interests rest at the intersection(s) between writing, cultural rhetoric, and critical theory, namely in relation to discourse, power, and epistemology. Readers may reach him at [email protected].