cover image SHIKSA: The Gentile Woman in the Jewish World

SHIKSA: The Gentile Woman in the Jewish World

Christine Benvenuto, . . St. Martin's, $23.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-312-31146-9

At best exhaustive and provocative, and at worst exhausting and inflammatory, this study addresses the role gentile women ("shiksas") played in the Bible and, to a point, explores the role their contemporary sisters play in American Judaism today. Discussion of biblical gentile women is thorough, from the better known Hagar and Jezebel to the lesser known Cozbi and Zimri. However, though journalist Benvenuto concedes that her contemporary subjects "are individuals, each with her own history and perspective" and are "not intended to represent the full range of gentile women raising children in, or on the edge, of the Jewish community," a tone of strident indignation permeates the book. Benvenuto tells a tale of relentless exclusion, of gentile wives being shut out of shul life. Of her almost 30 interviewees, only two women have enough self-conviction to be comfortable in their choices, and Benvenuto dismisses as "implausible" one Jewish leader's claim that she has never heard "any negative attitudes towards non-Jewish women expressed." Although only two men are featured, one alone and one as part of a couple, Benvenuto offers the generalization that "young Jewish men still seem to count shiksas before they fall asleep at night, [while] married men... tend to deny that a partiality for gentile women played a role when they chose their non-Jewish wives." Few topics within Judaism are as volatile or as potentially divisive, and this account appears more likely to fan the flames than contribute to serious, constructive dialogue. (Mar. 18)