Lost on the Map of the World : Contemporary American Jewish Women's Quest for Home in Essays and Memoirs, 1890-Present

by Kafka, Phillipa

• ISBN13: 9780820455426
• ISBN10: 0820455423
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

<> explores Jewish-American women's enduring quest from ca. 1890 to the present to find a home(land) where they can have a Jewish identity and still enjoy gender equality. Originally, many were torn between obedience to confining patriarchal tradition and the attractions of an upwardly mobile secular lifestyle. Others opposed all traditional patriarchal constraints against women everywhere and engaged in political activism to improve the quality of all lives, not only their own. In contrast, many <> Jewish-American women have succeeded in integrating feminism into their Jewish identity, although they have so far failed in their quest to do so in Israel.

Author Biography

Phillipa Kafka, Professor Emerita and former Director of Women's Studies, Kean University in Union, New Jersey

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(4)
Part One: After the Pogroms and the Holocaust, ca. 1890-1945	5	(82)
A Willing Embrace of the Shadow: Cultural and Textual Hybridity in Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers	7	(18)
Philippe Codde
Return to Poland	25	(62)
Barbara Finkelstein
Part Two: Into the Feminist Movement, ca. 1950-1980	87	(68)
``O, my Shehena who shall live in your tent?'': Gender, Diaspora, and the Ambivalence of Return in E. M. Broner's A Weave of Women	89	(28)
Ranen Omer-Sherman
From Pariah to Professor Emerita	117	(22)
Phillipa Kafka
Written in and Read out: Why Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was not Considered ``Jewish Writing''	139	(16)
Tobin Belzer
Part Three: The ``New Wave'': ca. 1980-	155	(98)
Narrative from the Field	157	(22)
Batya Weinbaum
The Candelabra and the Typewriter	179	(6)
Batya Weinbaum
Searching for God in the Sierra	185	(18)
Ruth Knafo Setton
Selections from Drawn from Water	203	(50)
Dina Elenbogen
About the Contributors	253