Naomi R. Goldenberg

I really enjoyed this. It's a fascinating insight into the social and religious change present in the US of the 70s. I think that it falters slightly in projecting that change into the future though, particularly in the prediction of witchcraft and new religions rising up to overtake the more traditional western religions. In hindsight, witchcraft and new age religions plateaued in the 90s, and a general move away from religious belief has been the predominant growth for the last 10-15 show more years.

The author really does nail exactly how detrimental religion has been to humanity though, specifically the role it has played in the oppression of women, deification of men, and exactly what it robbed from all of us by not telling stories of women throughout history and religious text.

I really enjoyed the witchcraft sections, as I had never heard the specifics of that belief system laid out in an orderly fashion. I completely get the appeal of it as a counter culture to Christianity, which has severely oppressed womankind for thousands of years. The deification of women in general, the idea that a woman could see herself as an image of a goddess, the focus on the stages of life and cycles of being, etc, were all probably very good things for the time.

The book sort of loses itself a bit in the final chapters, and doesn't really contain a satisfactory conclusion, it just kind of ends. I suspect that these chapters were short essays compiled into this collection. Each section itself is very well written, and absolutely full of great quotes on the damaging effects of religion and what needs to change in order to undo that damage.

I would be very interested to read a follow up from Goldenberg on her current thoughts about the shape of feminism in religion. show less

Asserting that the reverse of the biblical text "And the Word was made flesh" is true, that it is in and through the flesh that every philosophy, every discourse, is born, Goldenberg explores her own divided identity as feminist, atheist, and Jew. "Through a series of insightful, passionate, and sometimes humorous essays, Goldenberg examines the way (feminism and psychoanalysis) interact with, contradict, and deepen one another."--Hypathia.