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The Torah
A Women's Commentary
by Rabbi Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Rabbi Andrea Weiss
1414 Pages8.50 × 11.00 × 1.80 in
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The groundbreaking volume The Torah: A Women's Commentary, originally published by URJ Press and Women of Reform Judaism, has been awarded the top prize in the oldest Jewish literary award program, the 2008 National Jewish Book Awards. A work of great import, the volume is the result of 14 years of planning, research, and fundraising.
THE HISTORY: At the 39th Women of Reform Judaism Assembly in San Francisco, Cantor Sarah Sager challenged Women of Reform Judaism delegates to "imagine women feeling permitted, for the first time, feeling able, feeling legitimate in their study of Torah." WRJ accepted that challenge. The Torah: A Women's Commentary was introduced at the Union for Reform Judaism 69th Biennial Convention in San Diego in December 2007.
WRJ has commissioned the work of the world's leading Jewish female Bible scholars, rabbis, historians, philosophers, and archaeologists. Their collective efforts resulted in the first comprehensive commentary, authored only by women, on the Five Books of Moses, including individual Torah portions as well as the Hebrew and English translation.
The Torah: A Women's Commentary gives dimension to the women's voices in our tradition. Under the skillful leadership of editors Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Rabbi Andrea Weiss, PhD, this commentary provides insight and inspiration for all who study Torah: men and women, Jew and non-Jew. As Dr. Eskenazi has eloquently stated, "we want to bring the women of the Torah from the shadow into the limelight, from their silences into speech, from the margins to which they have often been relegated to the center of the page - for their sake, for our sake and for our children's sake."
The Torah: A Women's Commentary is the culmination of fourteen years of work by more than 100 female theologians, historians, sociologists, scholars, anthropologists, poets, rabbis, and cantors from the United States, Canada, Israel, and South America. The result of their exhaustive research, thought, and discussion is an eminently readable 1,500-page volume, unique in its synthesis of traditional interpretation methods and critical approaches with more contemporary, topical methods that give new meaning to the text.
Rabbi Dr.Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is the Effie Weiss Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She is the first woman appointed as professor to the rabbinical faculty in HUC-JIR’s long history. Earlier she served on the faculty of the University of Denver, as well as directed the Institute of Interfaith Studies, and co-founded Denver's Jewish Women’s Resource Center.
Rabbi Dr. Eskenazi is the Editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (URJ Press, 2008, with Andrea L. Weiss, Associate Editor), the winner of the 2008 Jewish Book of the Year Award given by the National Jewish Book Council. This unique and 1,400 page commentary purposes itself to bring the voices and visions of women to the interpretation of the Torah in the 21st century. She also authored The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth (with T. Frymer-Kensky), which won the Women Studies Award by the National Jewish Book Council (2012).
Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, PhD, is the Head of Seminary at Hebrew Union College overseeing the rabbinical and cantorial programs. From 2018- June 2025 she served as Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost and Associate Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College. She received a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and was ordained by Hebrew Union College in New York in 1993. She earned her doctoral degree in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She is the founder of the American Values, Religious Voices campaign, co-editor of American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days, 100 Letters (University of Cincinnati Press, 2019, with the second volume entitled, American Values, Religious Voices: Letters of Hope from People of Faith, forthcoming in Fall 2022). She was associate editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (CCAR Press, 2008), which won the Jewish Book Council’s 2009 Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award. Her other writings include Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of Samuel (Brill, 2006) and articles on metaphor, biblical poetry, and biblical conceptions of God. Her current research focuses on an in-depth study of biblical metaphors for God entitled “God in the Biblical Imagination: The Mechanics and Theology of Metaphor.”
Inspired by the cacophony of diverse voices and led by the publication of this important book, we are able to inch ever closer towards wholeness, and thus to holiness.
- "Why Women's Torah Commentary Matters Today More Than Every Before" by Rabbi Hara Person, Publisher of CCAR Press and CCAR's Chief Strategy Officer, The Forward
The Torah: A Women's Commentary is a work that causes us to ask difficult questions, to look at our Torah in new and exciting ways, and continues the important work of giving voice to all within klal Yisrael.
- "Leading Torah Study: Framing the Message" by Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt, Assistant Rabbi at Temple Sholom of Chicago
Study Guides are now available from WRJ for each parashah
Just For This Podcast: Rabbi Hara Person on The Torah: A Women’s Commentary
A Reflection on The Torah: A Women’s Commentary:
