Humanities Staff

Professor Melissa Raphael-Levine

Position
Professor of Jewish Theology

Contact
Email: mraphael@glos.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1242 714775

Professor Melissa Raphael-Levine teaches Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Gloucestershire.She has published numerous articles in the fields of religion and gender and feminist theology, specialising in the sacred/profane distinction in Western religion, Feminist Thealogy (sic) and Jewish Theology.She is the author of Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (Oxford University Press, 1997); Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess (Sheffield Academic Press: 1999); The Female Face of God in Auschwitz:A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (Routledge, 2003), shortlisted for the Koret Jewish Book Award in 2004, and  Judaism and the Visual Image: A Jewish Theology of Art (Continuum, January 2009).

Professor Raphael is an Honorary Research Scholar at the University of Wales, Lampeter and sits on the International Board of The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. She is Visiting Professor in Theology at the University of Chichester and is a member of the European Society for Women in Theological Research and an Associate Member of the Centre for Comparative Studies in Religion and Gender, Bristol University. A regular braodcaster on radio and television, she is also a member of The Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and The American Academy of Religion.Professor Raphael also sits on the national committee of the Association of University Departments of Theology and Religious Studies. Professor Raphael has been a delegate of the British Government on the International Task Force for Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.  In 2008 she was the Sherman Lecturer in Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, and the 2008 Granville-Goodspeed Lecturer in Theology at Denison University, Ohio.

Single-author books

Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

Introducing Thealogy : Discourse on the Goddess (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999/ Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 2000).

The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (London & New York: Routledge, 2003).

Judaism and the Visual Image: A Jewish Theology of Art (Continuum, January 2009).Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

Articles

'Doing Green Justice to God: Immanentism in Contemporary Feminist Spirituality', Theology in Green 5 (1993), pp. 34-41.

'At the East End of Eden: A Feminist Spirituality of Gardening Our Way Past the Flaming Sword', Feminist Theology 4 (1993), pp. 101-110.

'Feminism, Constructivism and Numinous Experience', Religious Studies 30 (1994): 511-526.

'"Cover not our blood with thy silence": Sadism, Eschatological Justice and Female Images of the Divine.' Feminist Theology 8 (1995): 85-105.

'What is Feminist Theology?' in Joe Jenkins, Christianity (London: Heinemann, 1995).

'Hermeneutics', 'Models of God', 'Salvation', 'Laws of Purity': essays for An A-Z of Feminist Theology (ed.) D. McEwan and L. Isherwood, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

'Truth in Flux: Goddess Feminism as a Late Modern Religion', Religion (1996) 26, 199-213.

'J. Ellice Hopkins: The Construction of a Recent Spiritual Feminist Foremother', Feminist Theology 13 (1996), 73-95.

'Thealogy, Redemption and the Call of the Wild', Feminist Theology 15 (1997), pp. 55-72.

'Real-izing the Material: Spiritual Feminism and the Resacralization of the Earth', in R. Carter and S. Isenberg (eds.) The Ideal in the World's Religions: Essays on the Person, Family, Society and Environment (St Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1998), pp. 379-398.

'Experiential Religious Education and the Constructivist Paradigm' in M. Littledyke and L. Huxford (eds.), Teaching the Primary Curriculum for Constructive Learning (London: David Fulton Press, 1998), pp. 173- 188.

'Thealogy and the Parthenogenetic Reproduction of Femaleness' in M.A. Hays, W. Porter and D. Tombs (eds.), Religion and Sexuality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 213-225.

'Goddess Religion, Postmodern Jewish Feminism and the Complexity of Alternative Religious Identities' Nova Religio , 1 (1998), pp. 198-214.

'Monotheism in Contemporary Goddess Religion: A Betrayal of Early Thealogical Non-Realism?' in D. Sawyer and D. Collier (eds.), Is There a Future for Feminist Theology? (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 139-149.

'" I am who I will be": The Representation of God in Postmodern Jewish Feminist Theology and Contemporary Religious Education', British Journal of Religious Education, 21 (1999), pp. 69-79.

'When God Beheld God: Notes Towards a Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust', Feminist Theology 21 (1999), pp. 53-78.

'When God Beheld God: Notes Towards a Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust'  and excerpts from The Female Face of God in Auschwitz reprinted in:

• D. Cohn-Sherbok (ed.) Holocaust Theology: A Reader (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002), pp. 245-248.
• S. Frank Parsons (ed.) Challenging Women's Orthodoxies in the Context of Faith  Heythrop Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Religion and Theology, (Aldershot and Burlington USA: Ashgate Press, 2000), pp. 73-88.
• Reprinted and translated for Schlangenbrut (2004).
• Steven Katz (ed.) Wrestling With God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust (NY: Oxford University Press 2007).

'False Goddesses: Thealogical Reflections on the Patriarchal Cult of Diana, Princess of Wales' in W. Griffin (ed.), Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2000) pp. 89-102.

'"Refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love" (Song of Songs 2:5): Jewish Feminism, Mystical Theology and the Sexual Imaginary', in L. Isherwood (ed.), The Good News of the Body Feminist Explorations in the Religious Construction of Female Sexuality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) pp. 54-72.

'The Face of God in Every Generation: Jewish Feminist Spirituality and the Legend of the Thirty-Six Hidden Saints', in U. King (ed.), Spirituality and Society in the New Millennium (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), pp. 234-246.

'The Price of (Masculine) Freedom and Becoming: A Feminist Critique of the Use of the Free Will Defence in Post-Holocaust Jewish Philosophy' in Pamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack (eds.) Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Perspectives (forthcoming London and New York: Routledge, 2003).

'Holiness in extremis: Jewish Women's Resistance to the Profane in Auschwitz' in Stephen Barton (ed.) Holiness Past and Present (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2003), pp. 381-401.

‘From Women’s History to Feminist Theology: Gender, Witness and Canonicity in the Religious Narration of the Holocaust’ in Ursula King and Tina Beattie (eds.) Gender, Religion and Diversity: New Perspectives (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 101-112.

‘Is Patriarchal Theology Still Patriarchal? Reading Theologies of the Holocaust from a Jewish Feminist Perspective’, Journal of Feminist Studies of Religion 18 (2002), pp. 105-13.

‘Judaism and Gender’, in Lindsay Jones (ed. in chief) Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan, 2005).

‘Thealogy’, in Lindsay Jones (ed.) Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan, 2005).

‘Menstruation’, in Lindsay Jones (ed.) Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan, 2005).

‘Patriarchy and Matriarchy’, in Lindsay Jones (ed.) Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (New York: Macmillan, 2005).

‘’Witnesses to Presence: Reading Jewish Women’s Holocaust Testimonies as Holy Texts’ in The 12th Yearbook of the European Society of Women in Theological Research, Amsterdam, Peeters, 2006, pp. 103-114.

‘Standing at a Demythologised Sinai?: Reading Jewish Feminist Theology Through the Critical lens of Radical Orthodoxy’ in Rosemary Ruether and Marion Grau (eds.) Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to ‘Radical Orthodoxy’, (New York and London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), pp. 197-214.

‘Judaism and the Gendering of Violence’, in Linda Hogan and Dylan Lehrke (eds.) Religions, Peace and War, Wipf & Stock, Princeton Theological Monographs, 2008.

‘Jewish Feminist Theology’, in Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Sheila Briggs (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2006).

‘The Mystery of the Slashed Nose and the Empty Box: Towards a Theology of Jewish Art’ Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 1 (2006), pp. 1-19.

 ‘The Kiss of the Shekhinah: Narratives of Divine and Human Motherhood in the Holocaust’ Temenos 1 (2006), pp. 93-110.

‘The Gendering of Religious Emotion’, in John Corrigan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religious Emotion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 181-199.

“Shekhinah’s Kiss: Tracing the Inter-Face between Motherhood and God in the Holocaust. With an after-word in response to Luce Irigaray’s ‘Towards a Divine in the Feminine’” in Gillian Howie (ed.), Women and the Divine: Transcendence and Feminism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 205-226.