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Press Release: Rabbi Malka Drucker meets with American Women Spiritual Leaders to discover how their unique Perspective Creates and Heals Communities New York, April 14, 2003. White Fire: A Portrait of Women Spiritual Leaders in America (SkyLight Paths, Hardcover / $24.95), by Rabbi Malka Drucker, with photographs by Gay Block, brings together the stories of thirty-one women who reveal the new spiritual landscape in America. For the first time women hold powerful places of leadership in traditional as well as innovative spiritual centers. As Americans seek guidance with the difficult situations they're facing, they are expanding the expression of their faith paths, and incorporating new traditions. Many are seeking a face of the divine that is warm, near, and welcoming to all. Women are answering this need by creating inclusive communities of spirit. Rabbi Malka Drucker, called to become a rabbi at the age of fifty, met with and interviewed over 50 women spiritual leaders in America to explore their personal and professional lives. Her encounters led to insightful profiles that reveal both the struggles and disappointments; and the satisfaction and success. The author shares her ambivalence about other faiths and her effort to find a way to see the good in all these disparate paths and the commonality of being women spiritual leaders. Gay Block's powerful photographic portraits reveal each woman's intense calling. The subjects represent a wide variety of beliefs, backgrounds, and temperaments: they may be rabbis, ministers, or priests; cloistered, locally known, or internationally known; celibate or grandmothers; scholars or faith healers. Some serve in denominations that have accepted women ministers for a hundred years; others are part of groups that still don't allow women full rights to spiritual leadership. What they share, besides their gender, is a deep passion to serve. "I imagine this book as an ingathering where women have come together to tell their stories about what it means to be a woman, a person of faith, and a leader," says Drucker. "Listening to them in ensemble reveals that all their differences are less important than how much they share as women spiritual leaders." The title "White Fire" comes from an ancient mystical Jewish belief that the holy books are written with "black fire upon white fire". The black letters on the page are the black fire - the story of men. The space around the letters is the "white fire" - this is the invisible power of women. The black fire could not be read without the surrounding white fire, so the white is already important, though invisible. The belief is that someday we are able to fully understand the white fire, the world will finally be in balance. |
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