This is an extraordinary time to be writing as a woman. We follow centuries of silence. The world is all before us. And it is within us. Half the exp… - Alicia Ostriker

Poetry gives you permission to put into language what your reality is without sounding like an op-ed. I don’t think I ever get very far from politics; sometimes what I write is overtly political, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s always there. Just like being a Jew is always there. The difference between writing prose and writing poetry for me is that when I’m writing prose I know what I think before I start to write and when I’m writing poetry I’m just crawling into the dark. If something doesn’t surprise me I know it’s not a good poem. Poetry is very often problem solving for me, like there’s something I don’t understand and the only way I have of untangling it is by writing.

Ultimately, even Orthodoxy is bound to change. Every tradition remains alive by changing, even though every tradition likes to represent itself as permanent and changeless. Orthodoxy itself has changed over the centuries, and will go on changing as Orthodox women become more active as students of Talmud, which is already starting to happen both here and in Israel. And yes, I do believe with the theologian Judith Plaskow that a purely male God is nothing but an idol made in man's image, so if we want to avoid idol-worship, our understanding of God has to change.

The problem is that Orthodoxy has most of the best lines. This means that feminists, both men and women, will ultimately have to create language as powerful and resonant as the language used in religions today. New liturgy, new psalms, new tales, new parables, new revelations, new scriptures—standing beside the old, drawing from the old, yet embodying alternative spiritual realities. We are very far from this now. Most of the writing that attempts to be progressive is flat and uninspiring.