Customer Reviews

Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman

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Helen Jacobus Apte was a remarkable woman. Readers gain an intimate view of a pre-feminist world by reading her very private diary. A Southern Jewess who valued her Southern and Jewish origins equally, Apte lived a comfortable life and served as an articulate witness to vital events in early 20th Century American life. Apte's writing is beautiful and she makes even the most mundane subjects poignant with the quality of her insights and prose. A clear talent,she apparently failed to recognize her ability or chose - for one reason or another - to share it only with her diary. Fortunately for us, her grandson, who discovered the diary long after Apte's death, brought it to publication complete with a series of highly-informative supportive essays which help readers appreciate the times in which his grandmother lived. Apte was a true romantic and may have been one of the last Victorians. In many ways her values are so remote from ours today, that it's a stretch to appreciate her; which makes reading Heart of a Wife a satisfying exploration into real-life history.

Heart of a Wife: The diary of a Southern Jewish Woman opened up a window to a world that was completely foreign to me despite a common European Jewish heritage. Helen Jacobus Apte was born in 1886 Georgia and was first generation American but did not have any of the immigrant characteristics and values that I would have expected. She derived her set of values and standards from the dominant Victorian culture rather than from Jewish Tradition, yet she did have an important place in her heart for Judaism.

She spoke of her intention as a new bride to light shabbat candles every week and we know that she was active in her temple and in Jewish Charities, but it is unclear if she did observe Jewish Rituals throughout her life. There is no mention of a seder and Rosh Hashana was referred to as "The New Year" with little elaboration. Marcus D Rosenberg, her grandson,acknowleges that " Readers may find it curious that so little in it is identifiably "Jewish". In some ways of course, everything in it is Jewish. Judaism was behind Helen's clearly liberal social conscience. Her Religion not only guided her views of life and death but also shaped her views of duty and responsibility."

Helen's parents immigrated to the United States from Germany and I am amazed that her connections to her European past could have been so cleanly severed. I could not imagine a woman of her intelligence and supposed social consciousness would not be more aware of the the plight of European Jewry during the thirties and forties and not feel some connection to it. (If she did, she never mentioned it.) Rosenberg explains in his essay that Helen identified as a Southern American who happened to be Jewish" and that was common in that time and Place.

Marcus Rosenberg does a wonderful job of setting the historical context and establishing identities of family members. His essays offer great insight into the times and the events which influence her. I do think he has a more romantic image of his grandmother than she deserves. I was very disappointed by Helen Jacobus Apte. I thought that she had great talent and potential but was too self absorbed to have any positive effect on those around her, and certainly not on the world.

Was Helen Apte truly a typical Southern Jewish Woman? I hope that she was not. She was the stereo-typical Southern Belle, spoiled , self-centered, with a constant case of the "vapors". Although she alludes to world events, none of them seemed to touch her. Only "The 1910 Cigar Strike," which affected her directly and financially, seemed to really matter. She was the center of her world, and she seemed to use her ill health to her best advantage.

I enjoy reading diaries, especially from the past, and gaining more insight into people's thoughts and feelings. While I didn't dislike Helen Jacobus Apte as much as some other reviewers did, I did think that her diary was a trifle boring. I found myself skimming through parts of it, although it did give a fairly good picture of Southern life in that time period. Overall, I'd say this book was a mild disappointment.

My book group and I came to this book with great anticipation. We had read the favorable newspaper and magazine reviews, and looked forward to an engaging, well-written "period memoir." Instead, we found a self-absorbed woman living a privileged, pedestrian life in the South. That she was Jewish, we discovered, figures only in the title. What were the professional reviewers reading ... or thinking?

This is the worst book I have read in ten years. All the wife did was complain.

this book showed great research and the editor, Marcus Rosenbaum, obviously spent long hours working on it.

This book was boring. It basically told of a rich woman who was bored all the time, so therefore kept up extrmarital dalliances to amuse herself. How stupid! What a waste. What really infuriated me was the constant complaint of how she could have been a writer, yet lacked the education! What a cop out! With all the money she had, she really had NO excuse. She had no excuse, with or without money! She certainly read enough, a book a day! Wouldn't we all love to be able to say we have that kind of time on our hands! there were plenty of women writers during her lifetime to emulate. If her role in society was to raise a child and her own daughter was so independent and she wasn't able to have more.........GEEZ, there's plenty of kids, without parents, who could have benefited from her lack of children! I believe the Jewish faith practices benevelonce, leaving the world a better place than you found it, SHEEEEES, somebody should have slapped her silly, and told her to WAKE UP, quit thinking about YOURSELF.....poor YOOOOOOU! I was sorely disappointed to say the least!