Translated into English, this book doesn't just fill a niche, it opens up a new perspective on the relations among Jewishness, gender and modernity in Europe. It will certainly spark new and creative thinking by anyone wise or lucky enough to dip into its contents. The writings are made all the more valuable by an excellent introduction that provides a context for the history of Jews and women in France as well as the position of women with the Jewish tradition.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
reviewed by Paula E. Hyman
The interest in women s experience and writing is still too new to have yielded many collections of women s self-expression. Nor do general collections of Jewish writing give women their due, particularly when standards of literary significance prevail. Women writing about women are often deemed to be focused on the trivial, and, therefore, few women writers pass the test of literary significance.
This splendid collection seeks to remedy that literary amnesia by focusing on works of Jewish women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries writing in French. Though they were not necessarily born in France, all the authors live or lived there, as do the vast majority of Jewish women who write in French (though there are likely a few from Canada or Morocco). The selections, translated into English for this volume, reflect the editors focus on the writers Jewish identities and their relationship to France. Although the editors have included many genres, from personal letters to newspaper articles and essays, poems, autobiography, short fiction and novels, most of the excerpts are from works of fiction, and most date from the second half of the twentieth century.
The editors have enabled English readers, undoubtedly unfamiliar with most of these writers except for the best known, such as feminist theorist Hélène Cixous and philosopher Simone Weill to place the individual works in a broader context. A useful brief initial essay discusses the history of the Jews in modern France and the question of whether there is a tradition of Franco-Jewish women s literature, and each writer is provided a biographical and critical introduction as well as a bibliography of her oeuvre. The selections are long enough to convey both the issues of interest to the writer and her particular style. Dominant concerns among the writers are the shifting, and problematic, nature of Jewish identity and the intersection of gender and Jewishness...
What emerges from this collection is the striking diversity of French Jewry. Although the editors suggest that these writers share certain characteristics a more visceral relationship to Jewish identity than that expressed by most Jewish men, a different (but unspecified) approach to Jewish history and culture, an awareness of the specific discrimination they faced as women Jewish women writing in French are just as varied as their male relatives and concerned with similar issues.
...
Scholars will find this collection valuable for their teaching and research, but this book reaches out to a non-academic audience as well. All readers will be grateful to be introduced to authors are more than historical curiosities. Twentieth-century fiction writers like Régine Robin and Paula Jacques focus on multiple dislocations the Soviet Revolution, emigration from Poland, and the uprooting of Egyptian Jews from the society that had been home to them. The Holocaust and the antisemitic Vichy regime figure prominently in the
works of even more of the writers, shaping their understanding of the Jewish experience. If there is a theme shared by these Jewish writers (and perhaps as well by a majority of Europeans who lived through the bloody last century), it is the vulnerability, societal as well as personal, that they perceive as the dominant element in their lives.
There are some surprises in these selections.... Most importantly, the volume introduces readers to a variety of writers whose refletions on the modern Jewish experience are fresh and engaging and it stimulates further reflection on the question of gender and Jewish culture. --Paula Hyman in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, Fall 2008
The interest in women s experience and writing is still too new to have yielded many collections of women s self-expression. Nor do general collections of Jewish writing give women their due, particularly when standards of literary significance prevail. Women writing about women are often deemed to be focused on the trivial, and, therefore, few women writers pass the test of literary significance.
This splendid collection seeks to remedy that literary amnesia by focusing on works of Jewish women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries writing in French. Though they were not necessarily born in France, all the authors live or lived there, as do the vast majority of Jewish women who write in French (though there are likely a few from Canada or Morocco). The selections, translated into English for this volume, reflect the editors focus on the writers Jewish identities and their relationship to France. Although the editors have included many genres, from personal letters to newspaper articles and essays, poems, autobiography, short fiction and novels, most of the excerpts are from works of fiction, and most date from the second half of the twentieth century.
The editors have enabled English readers, undoubtedly unfamiliar with most of these writers except for the best known, such as feminist theorist Hélène Cixous and philosopher Simone Weill to place the individual works in a broader context. A useful brief initial essay discusses the history of the Jews in modern France and the question of whether there is a tradition of Franco-Jewish women s literature, and each writer is provided a biographical and critical introduction as well as a bibliography of her oeuvre. The selections are long enough to convey both the issues of interest to the writer and her particular style. Dominant concerns among the writers are the shifting, and problematic, nature of Jewish identity and the intersection of gender and Jewishness...
What emerges from this collection is the striking diversity of French Jewry. Although the editors suggest that these writers share certain characteristics a more visceral relationship to Jewish identity than that expressed by most Jewish men, a different (but unspecified) approach to Jewish history and culture, an awareness of the specific discrimination they faced as women Jewish women writing in French are just as varied as their male relatives and concerned with similar issues.
...
Scholars will find this collection valuable for their teaching and research, but this book reaches out to a non-academic audience as well. All readers will be grateful to be introduced to authors are more than historical curiosities. Twentieth-century fiction writers like Régine Robin and Paula Jacques focus on multiple dislocations the Soviet Revolution, emigration from Poland, and the uprooting of Egyptian Jews from the society that had been home to them. The Holocaust and the antisemitic Vichy regime figure prominently in the
works of even more of the writers, shaping their understanding of the Jewish experience. If there is a theme shared by these Jewish writers (and perhaps as well by a majority of Europeans who lived through the bloody last century), it is the vulnerability, societal as well as personal, that they perceive as the dominant element in their lives.
There are some surprises in these selections.... Most importantly, the volume introduces readers to a variety of writers whose refletions on the modern Jewish experience are fresh and engaging and it stimulates further reflection on the question of gender and Jewish culture. --Paula Hyman in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, Fall 2008
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for anyone who wants a different sampling of Jewish writers in the world.,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Daughters of Sarah: Anthology of Jewish Women Writing in French (Paperback)
English isn't the only language Jewish writers ply their trade in. "Daughters of Sarah: Anthology of Jewish Women Writing in French" is a collection of essays and stories from French Jewish women from the past two hundred plus years. The writings reflect on many subjects, not just those regarding France or Jewish culture. "Daughters of Sarah" is a must for anyone who wants a different sampling of Jewish writers in the world.
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