Scenting Abrahamic Masculinities, 2021

Religion and Gender, 2012

A review of Sarah Imhoff's Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism for H-Judaic.

Gender Forum: Gender and Jewish Culture, 2008

"Concentrating on the foundations of monotheistic religions, Magda Romanska’s contribution “Performing the Covenant: Akedah and the Origins of Masculinity” re-evaluates the covenant between Abraham and God from a gender perspective. Drawing on Derrida and Kierkegaard, she analyses the male ethics of self-sacrifice as well as the gendered connection between death and wisdom. In an analysis of Sarah’s part in the story she then describes the systematic exclusion of women from the covenant with God, and hence from the possibility of becoming an ethical subject within this logic. The mechanisms through which this exclusion is achieved are shown to be manifold – the ritual of circumcision, binding men to each other and collectively to God, is elaborated on alongside the narrative silencing of Sarah and Abrahams privilege of being able to hear the voice of God. Sarah’s death, in this context, operates on a very different level than the sacrifice requested of Abraham and reveals that the only path to the divine open for women is to become the subject-object of sacrifice." - Editorial, Gender Forum: Gender and Jewish Culture, 2008

Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society, 2006

American Jewish History, 2013

Though elements of the patriarchy pre-date Judaism, its emergence as an organized theology and social system is unique to the Jewish people. For millennia, biblical exegesis has underwritten not only patriarchal authority, but history itself. However, the veracity of the Bible as both a moral and historical authority has been challenged not only by an objective science of archaeology, but by historical inquiry free of religious and gender-biased presuppositions. This is salutary for women, since the patriarchy – traced, as it is, back to its metaphoric roots in the biblical person and authority of Abraham – has been the philosophical and practical foundation of women’s subservient status through its iterations as Christianity and Islam

Religion and Gender, 2011

Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2014