Wrestling with God and Evil
Channel: Yale Divinity School
Date: 2012-10-17

Dr. Judith Plaskow, Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Manhattan College, delivers the annual Ensign Lecture entitled, "Wrestling with God and Evil."

In the lecture, Dr. Plaskow shares a section of a book on God and feminism that she is currently working on with fellow Yale graduate student Carol P. Christ. The lecture traces the development of her understanding of the relationship between God and evil from her adolescence to the present, with special attention to the impact of feminism on her concept of God. 

Judith Plaskow is professor emerita of religious studies at Manhattan College and Sally Priesand Visiting Professor of Jewish Women's Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. She is a Jewish feminist theologian who has been teaching, writing and speaking about Jewish feminism and feminist studies in religion for over forty years. With Carol P. Christ, she is co-editor of Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion and Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, anthologies of feminist theology used in many women's studies and religious studies courses. With Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, she co-founded the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, co-edited it for its first decade, and is currently co-editor with Melanie Johnson-DuBaufre. She is author of Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective and The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics 1972-2003. She is also a past president of the American Academy of Religion. She and Carol Christ are currently at work on a book tentatively entitled Goddess and God After Feminism.