Religion and morality: Akedah theology and cumulative revelation as contradictory theologies in Jewish Modern-Orthodox feminism

The present article examines the way in which Jewish theology deals with the potential clash between Divine injunctions and moral imperatives. I take Modern-Orthodox feminism (“religious feminism”)¹ as my test case, scrutinizing some of the ideas it has developed about dealing with contradictions between religion and moral principles. The decision for religious feminism is based on the fact that its theoretical writings offer a trenchant moral critique of religious patriarchalism and the injustices done in its name, chiefly to women, but also direct this criticism inward, in pursuit of internal revision of the religious system, in a process that tries to preserve the obligation to obey Divine commands rather than challenge them. This leads to the question of whether a religious approach that has accepted certain moral principles (in this case, gender equality) can serve as a privileged model for examining the relationship between religion and morality.