New Torah Commentary from Women of Reform Judaism

The URJ is about to publish a new commentary on the Torah that is written entirely by women. I believe each parasha will have four commentaries. The final one will be "contemporary reflections" and I have written a piece for the parasha "Tzav." I chose to focus on the sacrificial system and the exclusively male priesthood. I trace the way the sacrifical system was replaced in Christianity with the mass(note the continuity of the priests) and in Judaism by the famly meal(note the role of women as presiding ritual specialists). It was fun to write. I got to read Susan Sered's study of elderly Jewish women in Jerusalem, Women as Ritual Experts, Elizabeth Ehrlich's Miriam's Kitchen: A Memoir and the cookbook compiled by women in Tereizenstadt, Cara de Silva's In Memory's Kitchen. I also had the occassion to quote one of my favorite teachings from Hayim Soloveitchik's piece "Rupture and Reconstruction in Contemporary Orthodoxy." In it he claims(and who am I to argue?) that there is an old Yiddish expression that "A yiddishe bala-busta takes instruction only from her mother." The editor of the whole series, Tamara Ashkenazi, a Bible scholar whom I deeply respect, seemed to like my piece. I hope others do as well.