Jewish Feminists

"Ultimately, even Orthodoxy is bound to change. Every tradition remains alive by changing, even though every tradition likes to represent itself as permanent and changeless. Orthodoxy itself has changed over the centuries, and will go on changing as Orthodox women become more active as students of Talmud, which is already starting to happen both here and in Israel. And yes, I do believe with the theologian Judith Plaskow that a purely male God is nothing but an idol made in man's image, so if we want to avoid idol-worship, our understanding of God has to change."

"all art is political. Either it is politicial or it is wallpaper. I like to say that poetry which takes no risk is like wallpaper. It makes a pleasant background...Homer is political. Dante is political. Shakespeare is political. Milton is political. But it is usually only the art that comes from dissenting or revolutionary movements that gets called political...Of course, art is not merely political-it is many other things too. That's what makes the difference between art and propaganda. Propaganda is good for the moment, but art stays good, stays fresh, when the moment has passed. Tsvetayeva is a beautiful example. So is Akhmatova."

"I think it's inevitable in any religion that some people are psychologically and emotionally attached to past tradition, while others have one foot in the past and want to take that next step into the future. Does this produce tension? Of course it does, and that tension is healthy. It is a sign of life. The same is true of American democracy. Where would the radicals be without conservatives, and vice versa? We push and pull at each other, we call each other bad names, and somehow we move forward. In spite of tragedy."

"“I am and am not a Jew." That is the opening sentence of The Nakedness of the Fathers. I love that sentence. I think it grabs people, and it should. I want my readers to feel the kick of contradiction, the torsion of tension. Not only in myself but in themselves. Contradiction and tension are part of life. Where would poetry be without tension? There is tension even in the music, the rhythms of poetry, between the pull of traditional meter and the urge toward open form. And what's wrong with contradiction? You don't hear Whitman saying he wants to resolve his contradictions. Not at all. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Life is like that. Face it. Denial is death."

"I believe that the most important homage one can pay to the dead is to try to help life prevail: to love the great whirlwind of life, to praise it, to nourish it, never to try to reduce it to something less than life. I hope my writing shows this. When I was pregnant with my first child, I found myself thinking often about the vileness of war in general and the horror of the Holocaust in particular, and wrote the line "whoever has died, I make this child for you." Adorno is exactly wrong, I think: after the Holocaust, one not only can write poetry, one must. Hatred and death are to be fought against with all the strength of one's life-and in my case, that means through art."

"I don't think of poetry as therapy for the poet. Poetry can be therapeutic for its readers, by articulating for them what they cannot say for themselves, and enabling them to understand their experience as belonging to a larger pattern. But not for the poet. Spilling one's guts isn't what it's about, either. Finding the truth that lies beneath or behind the truth you already know, finding a form for it, creating a piece of beauty-that is the poet's task. You might say that poetry is diagnostic, rather than therapeutic. Poetry is a diagram of reality. A distillation of reality, that may make us free. You might also notice that there is a fair amount of joking in those poems. I think it is important to leaven tragedy with levity. That's something I learned from Allen Ginsberg."

"Acts of violence enter my poems because we live in a violent world."

"Much more killing has been done by people who believed in heaven than by those who didn’t."

"My writing is always a gamble. I take the risk of going deep into myself, trusting that if I can go deeply enough, and translate the complex of feelings within myself into articulate language, it will be meaningful to others. We are all islands, but connected—so to speak—on the ocean floor, where human experience is very much shared in common."

"I typically don’t work in fixed forms, because I like a poem to have a feel of improvisation about it."

"It seems to me that poetry helps women claim spaces for themselves whenever the poet is true to her experience, true to her sensation and emotion. Our thinking does tend to be dominated—colonized, you might say—by the history of patriarchal thought and language, but it is still possible to think independently if you make up your mind to do it and be vigilant."

"Part of the task, of course, is simply insisting that female experience is human experience and worthy of being explored in literature. Before the women’s poetry movement, topics such as pregnancy and childbirth, mother-child relationships, sex, love, and marriage from a woman’s point of view, illness and aging from a woman’s point of view, were not considered “universal” enough for poetry. Ha ha ha. Women were silenced and condescended to when they wrote using the material of their own experience. But as Shostakovich said (speaking of Yevtoshenko’s Babi Yar poem mourning the massacre of the Jews of Kiev during World War II, defying the official cover-up), “Art destroys silence.” To bring what is silenced into speech is to make a space."

"The idea that eroticism and spirituality should be separated is a travesty of both. Read the Song of Songs, a poem which is utterly erotic and utterly spiritual. Or read the great Persian poet Rumi. Or the Hindu Mirabai. All mystical poetry is erotic, uses erotic language, because it desires fusion with God. This is true of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu devotional writing. And all lovers see the beloved’s face and body as divine."

"Experiment is valuable but so is tradition."

"Anger has always played a role in poetry. Without anger there would be no Dante, no John Milton, no Jonathan Swift, no Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams]]—to name a few large examples. All satire derives from anger. Most of the poetry written in Eastern Europe in the postwar period is charged with anger...What is relatively new for poetry is women expressing anger, which horrifies many readers because it is such an unfeminine thing for women to do. Women are supposed to be nice and courteous, and leave the violence to men...The anger in twentieth-century women’s poetry, beginning with Plath and continuing with Adrienne Rich and many others, especially Black women, has been thrillingly salutary, cleansing the air."

"I am opposed to Orthodoxy in all its forms. Orthodoxy—“right” thinking, “right” dogma—depends on the assumption that your group, your authorities, already know everything there is to be known about God and what God wants us to do in this world. Orthodoxy pins God down to petty human formulations and pretends they are changeless and eternal. What could possibly be more arrogant?"

"Let us never suppose that the structures of our human minds can contain God."

"I’d like to see new codes of morals that have less to do with respecting authority and berating sin, and more to do with human kindness and the celebration of both love and sexuality. I’d like to see the end of dualism. I’d like to forget about heaven and hell and concentrate on trying to improve life for everyone on this earth. I’d like everyone to recognize that worshiping a God in man’s image is idolatry. I would like every feminist to see herself as a midwife engaged in the task of re-birthing God the Mother who was swallowed by God the Father in pre-history."

"The problem is that Orthodoxy has most of the best lines. This means that feminists, both men and women, will ultimately have to create language as powerful and resonant as the language used in religions today. New liturgy, new psalms, new tales, new parables, new revelations, new scriptures—standing beside the old, drawing from the old, yet embodying alternative spiritual realities. We are very far from this now. Most of the writing that attempts to be progressive is flat and uninspiring."

"I began as a poet in the 1960s, and became a feminist poet in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, I discovered I was a feminist Jewish poet."

"I grew up as a third-generation atheist-socialist Jew. My religious training consisted of being told that religion was the opiate of the masses."

"For Jews, God is an option."

"I wrote my first poems on pregnancy and childbirth in 1964–’65, based on my first two pregnancies. I was living in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and I found myself thinking, why don’t I have any models, where are the poems about pregnancy and childbirth? I realized finally that it was taboo, and that you’re not aware that your taboos are taboos until they’re broken."

"I write about this in very first sentence of The Nakedness of the Fathers: “I am and am not a Jew.” I am a Jew by blood, but according to Orthodox Judaism, I have no status. I think that being half in and half out is a great driver, a great source of energy. Poets are outsiders by definition."

"Poetry gives you permission to put into language what your reality is without sounding like an op-ed. I don’t think I ever get very far from politics; sometimes what I write is overtly political, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s always there. Just like being a Jew is always there. The difference between writing prose and writing poetry for me is that when I’m writing prose I know what I think before I start to write and when I’m writing poetry I’m just crawling into the dark. If something doesn’t surprise me I know it’s not a good poem. Poetry is very often problem solving for me, like there’s something I don’t understand and the only way I have of untangling it is by writing."

"The strike is proving more and more to be an insufficient means which must be supplemented by other means in order to continue to be the workers’ most effective weapon"

"The woman should not only be married to the man, but fight beside him as a comrade [auch Mitkämpferin und Gesinnungsgenossin werden], since she is subject to exactly the same undignified living conditions as he."

"We must bring women into the union, and not only as producers; it is also the power of women as consumers that needs to be activated, and this can only be done by joining forces in the organization. This is the most important and noble task of the Syndicalist Women’s Association."

"We must never forget that woman was ignored, seen and treated as intellectually inferior, for so long that we can hardly expect the sudden and surprising success of our activities for the time being. The inevitable consequences of a thousand years of slavery cannot be undone at once. Its repercussions are sure to be felt for a long time, felt at any rate more than we should like. Those who expect something different in this regard have failed to grasp the enormity of the problem; the great tragedy of woman has slipped past them without a trace."

"As long as the woman is not experiencing a renaissance, cannot be dreamed of a renaissance of humanity."

"The revolutions in Russia and Central Europe, the inevitable results of the great genocide, also brought so-called suffrage women, which had long been the ideal of the bourgeois and social-democratic women’s movements."

"The right to vote has by no means been forged by women in the revolution and its achievements, as so often claimed by socialist politicians; on the contrary, it has led them into a new world of deception which must alienate them from any defensively revolutionary view of things."

"The old deluded faith in the parliamentary activity as the road to redemption, which has so long doomed the German working class, and which, after long and painful experiences, finally began to lose its old halo among the broad circles of the working class, has been strengthened anew by women’s suffrage. All the bitter experiences and disappointments of the past will have to be made again, until finally the female half of the people has convinced itself of the uselessness and harmfulness of parliamentarism for the cause of proletarian liberation. And it is precisely for this reason that our work is of double and triple importance."

"The bearers of the reaction will make use of women’s ignorance; they will constantly strive to exploit the material misery of the proletariat, which is palpable to woman to the highest degree, for their shady plans to exploit political capital. Thus, the political indifference of women will become a powerful factor of the nearest future, which will give all reactionary measures of parliament the sanction of the “popular will.”"

"The organization of women on the basis of anarcho-syndicalism is as necessary as the organization of male workers on the same basis. That’s why we have to support each other and go hand in hand in our work."

"Wherever possible, we should call small women’s clubs into being, pleasantly and tastefully furnished and equipped with libraries, where the comrades can meet anytime to read or to speak on important issues, and where they can bring their children, if necessary. Common work rooms are also an excellent means for this purpose. One would have to try to promote efforts of mutual aid in cases of illness, etc. to the best of their ability to connect the individual woman more firmly with her new circle through friendship ties. Similarly, groups may be considered for the promotion of artistic or similar endeavors. Also, the housing complex with a central kitchen [Einküchenhaus] should be mentioned at this point. In all these connections and groupings, our main concern is to bring the women closer to one another, thus creating a more intimate and lasting companionship between them."

"Let us not fail to take advantage of the present opportunity, and let us become familiar with the thought that we may yet be destined to bury this old society, whose history was written with the blood and tears of the wretched poor, to build over its ruins a world of freedom on the unshakable foundations of communal labor and mutual solidarity."

"Let us show that we are not only willing to feed on the harvests of the past, but that we also feel the courage and the excitement in ourselves to lend a hand, to push the wheel of time forward and to open the gates to a new becoming."

"Well then, sisters, young or old, girls and women, manual or intellectual laborers, come to us and join our covenant, so that the great work of social liberation may reach its consummation. Unite with us to foster a brighter future for us and our children, in which the exploitation and domination of the broad masses by privileged minorities will be a thing of the past. Let no one tell you that you are not capable of contributing to this grandiose work. Each of you, but also everyone, without exception, can contribute their mite to the common goal. We only have to want it. Let us want it, then, so that our children will not to throw the accusation in our faces that we live as slaves and brought them into the world as slaves, so that they too can wander through life laden with the curse of bondage."

"Let us show them that we did not willingly bear the yoke that was imposed on us, and that we rebelled against the violence done to us so that the gates of freedom may be opened for them."

"By no means you should work too hard, and thereby ruin your health. Your health is more important than any book in the world."

"We have to take things as they come, since we are not the masters over our own fate."

"The best people in this rotten world have to suffer most, suffer constantly"

"You will be glad to hear Sasha dear that also Rudolf has started to work, at last: he actually begun to write his memoirs...Never before he was in such a state of spirit and how happy I am to see him in his present state. He is so absorbed by his work that I cannot get him away from the desk. A new spirit came over him, living through once more every phase of his youth. He has only done two chapters by now, but you can tell already that it is going to be a very interesting work, and I hope a valuable document."

"My very worst worries are Rudolf’s tours, they are killing us both. If only we could get along without lecture-tours we would both be happy. But alas, how should we exist? I don’t know how it was at your time here, now lecture tours are physical and mainly mental torture. Rudolf simply loaths it and he is the most miserable man in the world when he is on route. He never enjoyed speaking, but worst of all when he has to lecture in Yiddish or English. The tour begun very miserably, his mood is simply terrible. He was happy at his work, he lived in it, got young once more, and it was a pleasue to see him at his desk. Now he had to put it aside and take up work which instead of being a pleasure is a physical and mental torture, so you can imagine how he must feel."

"The mass is a tremendous giant with a very loyal brain ad without initiative Sasha. Give that giant the possibility to stuff his stomach, no matter with what, and a roof over his head, and just leave him in peace and he will not bother at all. Yes he can also under given circumstances be lashed into doing things, but no matter what you can use him for good, you can for evil. You can have him for Czarism, for Bolsehvism, for Hitlerism and for Fascism. That’s why war is inevitable Sasha. He will be ordered to fight his “enemy” and he will fight that fool. Yes, he also makes revolutions, if he is driven to it, but just make and leave it to the others to rip the fruit. You may think that I am pessimistic dear friend, but I am not, I just see things as they are, and by realising the bitter reality, I assure myself how much there is to do in order to turn that lazy giant to an active individual, a thinking giant, instead of being always a means to an end, to all those who are determined to use that dynamic of force. I am convinced that we will succeed in our efforts one day, but there is a tremendous task indeed in front of us. We are the only group of people who keep on telling the lazy giant that he has to begin to think for himself using his brain or he will never achieve anything worthwhile, and therefore we have so few to follow us. All the other parties or schools make it easy for him, by telling him: you just follow us and we the thinking part of humanity will do all there is to be done to bring you all the happiness you desire. They all try to make it easy for him but we."

"Our worst enemy is not Fascism or even Hitlerism but the so called communism. It is not so terrible difficult to convince honest thinking people of the danger and the …. of other dictatorships but very different indeed to make people see any danger at all in the Russian despotism in Bolshevist dictatorship. Communism became a fad also here and people are taking to it very much because it is getting more and more respectable and is going into fashion."

"I am convinced that out time will and must come. Yet we must look facts in the face, and admit, whether we like it or not that, the dictatorship over, the masses will not vanish with the vanishing of Hitler and Mussolini. The so called dictatorship of the “proletariat” will keep the world in captivity for quite a long time after Hitler and Mussolini will vanish and be forgotten."

"My friends Rudolf and Milly Rocker"

"We came from different worlds, worlds as unrelated and strange to each other as the little town of Slotopol in the Ukraine and the ancient city on the Rhine where I was born. As to how and why life brought us together, a whole story could be written about it without getting closer to the truth. The how may perhaps be explained; the why is as unfathomable as life itself...We found each other, and although each came from an entirely different world, we built a world of our own together. This, alone, was the essence of our union...I lived with her for fifty-eight years. We knew bitter privations and experienced many hardships, but none of them could destroy our quiet happiness. There was something in our life that can hardly be described, a hidden temple which we alone could enter...We had to endure many a malicious thrust of fate, but we also experienced many joyful hours, such as are granted to few and cannot be bought. When we were alone together in our free evenings, I would read aloud to Milly many of the world’s great books. Over the years we enjoyed hundreds of works by writers of every nationality and every period. A unique atmosphere pervaded then our home, exhilarating and purifying...We were never bored with each other, and always found that which was worth while and made life more beautiful. Had Milly been in accord with everything I said, this would not have been possible. But her native intelligence allowed her to form her own opinions on everything, and she was able to express them with skill. When, on such occasions, the discussion became heated, she would suddenly smile, put her arms around me and say: “We really are a funny couple.” At that we would both burst out into happy laughter. We never had to seek the blue bird of happiness afar; it was in our midst...When two people whom fate brought together share a companionship as long as ours, they gradually become inseparable. This happened with us, too. Whenever the name of one was mentioned, the name of the other was echoed. Thus we became the “romantic pair,” as our Spanish friend Tarrida del Marmol once called us in jest."