LAUSR

The primary objective for this review is to reinforce Yiddish studies based on queer theory because until recently, Yiddish research was dominated by instructional, descriptive or established approaches of literary criticism in the widest sense. The relatively new field of queer theory draws from methods that allow researchers to immerse themselves in a specific topic through uncommon perspectives that are suited to understand a multidimensional world. Yiddish poems are a part of Zohar Weiman-Kelman’s in-depth study of Jewish women’s poetry that goes beyond common social norms and that was long overdue. Accordingly, the author presents a collection of women writers’ Yiddish, Hebrew and English poems from the late nineteenth century to the 1990s and is generating a queer view on literary history. Central to this view is the multiplicity of the poets’ worlds in respect of different generations in their historical, societal, biological and linguistic dimensions. Subsequently, the author rejects hegemonic traditions of interpretations that have not been questioned until some decades ago. This becomes evident when Weiman-Kelman challenges the cliché of the “Yiddishe mame” as a traditional concept that is not just a harmless folkloristic construction but adheres to a hegemonic symbol where the “mame” holds the family together and is also expected to bear sons who will become the primary agents to propagate Yiddish culture. Apart from Yiddish, the author steeps deep into previous documents and writing, as well as archival material, in order to reconstruct the writers’ traumas or desires. Weiman-Kelman identifies three crucial turning points regarding Jewish women’s poetry beginning with Jewish women’s writing in America in the late nineteenth century, the interwar Hebrew and Yiddish text productions by Jewish women and the emergence of lesbian writing beginning in the 1970s. The book starts with a Hebrew poem by Yokheved Bat-Miriam and its translation byWeimanKelman who also presents the poet’s exchange with writer Rachel Bluvstein that manifests itself in the poem “Ivria.” This exchange points to the writer’s open but still impossible passion for another woman. In reflecting on the tragic past of two lovers, Weiman-Kelman emphasizes the current responsibility of acknowledging women who carried this burden throughout their lives. The book contains an introduction to the concepts of queer theory in relation to Jewish women writers’ poetry, and six chapters presenting a variety of poems and a coda that connects the present with Jewish literary history. The author links a selection of poetry by Kadya Molodowsky, Adrienne Rich, Emma Lazarus, Anna Margolin, Leah Goldberg and Eve Sedgwick. In the last chapter, Weiman-Kelman presents Irena Klepfisz’s Yiddish-English work, who combines the two languages in some of her poems, which can be seen as a multidimensional link between cultures, languages and self-conceptions. Overall, the book contributes to research in women literary studies and is a valid example of applying queer theory.