Review - American Jewish Archives

248 American Jewish Archives
fully ignorant of the degree to which womanhood itself is a social
construct defined by powerful institutions and patriarchal forces.
Norma Fain Pratt's essay on Yiddish women writers in America between
1890 and 1940 is unusual in its attention to issues of class and diver-
sity, as well as in its acute observations on the gender divisions in
radical Yiddish circles in the early decades of the twentieth century.
The loss of audience experienced by these women was two fold:
both the Yiddish speakers and readers and the radical politics of
this period gave way to other voices.
Several of the essays take up questions they never get around to
answering, such as Hellerstein's limited treatment of canon issues in
a study of two Yiddish anthologies, Wexler's discussion of Yezier-
ska's "relation to form"(160, 178), and the long list of questions posed
by Horowitz about women's Holocaust memoirs (266), which are
forgotten in her conclusion (280). On the other hand, Lapidus Lerner's
essay on Esther Raab is sharp and focused; one can disagree with
some of her readings while appreciating the method and the texts.
Sokoloff's essay on Agnon's In the Prime of Her Life is a rich piece of
analysis, which explores not only the way Agnon creates a complex
female character but also how the traumas of young Tirzeh become
a metaphorical embodiment "of the struggle of the Hebrew language"
to achieve rebirth while dealing with its past (232). A wonderful essay,
it is marred only by the weak fit it has with the proclaimed agenda
of the anthology: like the medieval and Renaissance essays, it is a
study of a male construct of a female persona, and not a woman's
voice at all.
Not a personal fan of Cynthia Ozick, I found Blacher Cohen's es-
say surprising for the uniformity with which it depicted Ozick's
"prophetic" voice. Ozick "warns. .. chastises. .. rebukes. .. warns.. .
makes necessary distinctions.. . cautionsn(287); she "censures . . . in-
veighs.. . berates"(288). Indeed, she "compassionately views" Edel-
shtein, one of her literary creations, only when he "rail [sl against" and
"ridicules" other Jews, and then "transforms her sympathy into cas-
tigation"(289) for him as well. Ozick readers are forewarned.
Yael Feldman's study of Shulamit Hareven and Shulamit Lapid is
another masterful essay, reworked from an earlier article. She con-
centrates on a specific genre the "quasi-historical novel: which she
claims camouflages.. . in different degrees of displacement, the