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Women in Judaism:
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| Spring 2002 | Volume 3, Number 1 |
Bread and cake cake and bread which is better, I myself think that bread when there is good butter is better than cake, bread and butter but when there is no bread and butter then there is cake Marie Antoinette was quite right about that. [Gertrude Stein, "The Coming of the Americans," in Collected Writings of Gertrude Stein (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 648.]
This article analyses several Holocaust stories from the first English translation
of Israeli writer Savyon Liebrecht's work. A child of survivors, Liebrecht's collection
examines the lingering echoes of the Holocaust in Israel, its effect on the children of
survivors and the sometimes bizarre behaviour of those parents. Setting her tales within
families, Liebrecht's tales also describe the conflict that results from the insensitivity
of the second and third generation, which seek to silence those who need to tell of their
mind numbing experiences in the camps and the tragic consequences of this lack of
understanding. And on one occasion, Liebrecht enters the concentrationary universe to
depict the sexual exploitation and killing of Jewish girls by German soldiers.
Both Godberg’s play and Hareven’s short story illustrate the failure of
the Israeli to come to terms with the Holocaust catastrophe. In Goldberg’s play the
characterization of the protagonist runs against the popular myth of the Holocaust victim
gratefully embracing the hope of a new future embodied in the heroically idealistic
Israeli. Hareven’s story rules out the possibility of a mutually accepted coexistence
between the Israeli and the Holocaust survivor. Both works present the treatment of the
outsider as a reflection of the emotional insecurity of the majority group, since the
arrival of the survivor undermines the Zionist ideological tenets of the "negation of
the Diaspora" and the creation of the "new" Jew in Eretz Israel.
Yona Wallach (1944-1985) is both a major poet and an outstanding personality in the
history of Hebrew literature. Challenged by the enigmatic nature of her poetry, literary
critics tend to attribute its obscurities to the modernist and postmodernist milieu from
which she emerged, deeming it essentially indecipherable. Presenting a close reading of
two of Wallach's meta-poetic poems: "Precisely" (Bediyuk Nimrats), a four part
poem from her 1969 collection Shenai Ganim (Two Gardens), and "Let the Words"
(Ten la-Milim) that opens the 1985 collection Tsurot (Forms), this study exposes the
traditional, essentially Romantic foundation of her work. It features Wallach's struggle
with the enduring philosophical question pertaining to the origin of language and words'
meaning while highlighting her deep-rooted faith in the inherently natural character of
language and words' propensity to directly reveal the essence of things.
The subject of why the Rabbis adopted a matrilineal principle is the subject of much
debate; as yet no clear answer to this question has been put forward. Indeed there may not
be one single factor involved in the Rabbis change to matrilineal descent but a variety of
influences that reflected the social and economic reasons of the period in question. This
article offers one possible explanation, encompassing the ideology of hesed, which
was an attribute specific to women, and an ideology, which was of paramount importance in
the salvationist aspect of post Temple Palestine.
Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah. University of
Cambridge Oriental Publications, 57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Reviewer:
Carole R. Fontaine
[ Review ]
Baron, Dvora. The First Day and Other Stories. Translated by Naomi Seidman with Chana Kronfeld. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Reviewer: Esther Fuchs. [ Review ]
Meyer, Kurt. They Called Her Jewgirl: a novel. Pentland Press, 1999. Reviewer: Judith Segal. [ Review ]
Ochs, Carol. Our Lives as Torah. San Francisco: Jossey - Bass, 2001. Reviewer: Rebecca Schwartz. [ Review ]
Cardin, Nina Beth. Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope:A Jewish Spiritual Companion for
Infertility and Pregnancy Loss. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999. Reviewer:
Rebecca Schwartz.
[ Review ]
Setton, Ruth Knafo. The Road to Fez: a novel. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001. Reviewer: Daniel M. Jaffe. [ Review ]
Bitton, Michéle. Poétesses et lettrées juives: Une mémoire éclipsée.
Paris: Editions Publisud, 1999. [French]. Reviewer: Sara Carlen. [ Review ]
All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.
© 2002 Women in Judaism Inc.