S/He Created Them is a feminist retelling of biblical stories, the purpose of which is to make the Bible contemporaneous, relevant and religiously meaningful. The tales look at the intimate lives and thoughts of the characters who populate the Bible by retelling each story in contemporary language, sometimes adding dialogue and description, and at other times recovering and reinventing tales. Some of the stories deal with the typical feminine concerns of motherhood, barrenness, resentment about polygamy, the after-effects of being raped, the joys of shared gossip, the tribulations of the aging process, and the unique relationship of siblings. The stories also dwell on the tensions between relatives such as Isaac and Ishmael, Rachel and Leah, Sarah and Mrs. Lot, Miriam and her mother Yocheved. The characters being portrayed are complete persons without being idealized, often petty and troublesome. The order of the midrashim is chronological. They start with a moving account of Adam and Eve's confusion at being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and end with Deborah the Judge's self-portrayal of her own loneliness and the challenges of being a female leader in a patriarchal society. Naomi Graetz is consciously feminist when she attempts to imaginatively rediscover a past in which biblical women were active participants and suggests that women's form of leadership might lead to a better world.

Naomi Graetz is the author of The Rabbi's Wife Plays at Murder (Shiluv Press, 2004); S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories (Gorgias Press, 2003) and Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Jason Aronson, 1998). She has written many articles about women and metaphor in the Bible and Midrash. She writes and does workshops about "difficult texts" that are part of Jewish tradition. Graetz has been teaching critical reading skills at Ben-Gurion University in the English Department since 1974. She describes herself as a feminist Jew who is grounded both in Jewish tradition and feminist thought who has to grapple with problems of modernity while seeing the value of tradition. Her latest areas of interest are: what Jewish texts have to say about trafficking in women, and interfaith interpretations of texts. She is writing a book with Rabbi Cathy Felix about when rabbis are married to rabbis.

Reviews

"S/he Created Them is a thought-provoking retelling of a number of familiar biblical stories, making them more relevant to modern times, not by setting them in the 21st century, but by emphasizing the contemporary attitudes in old tales. The stories make for easy and enjoyable reading."--Louise Sobin Hersh, Women's League Outlook

Table of Contents

• Why I write Midrash
• Beginnings
• In Search of Lost Paradise
• The End of the Line
• Noah The First of the Just
• The Moment of Indecision
• SarahÆs Three Lives
• In The Shadow of his Father
• Sisters
• A Daughter in Israel is Raped
• The Old Man and His Grandsons
• The Discredited Prophetess
• The Daughters of Yocheved
• When Will it Be My Time?
• Mother in Israel
• About the Author