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Fall 1995
In this issue: Rituals for healing after a mastectomy: a prayer, a mikveh immersion and a women’s-group ceremony. In Marcia Falk’s alternative feminist prayer book, words you can utter with conviction. Manya Shohat, the tough female visionary who really invented the kibbutz. Getting your Jewish marriage annulled by the Catholic church. Erica Jong on mothers, daughters and Jewish men.
My First Days at Kheder
by Pauline Wengeroff, translated by Henny Wenkart
A vivid—-and rare—-autobiographical portrait of Jewish girls’ school days 165 years ago, at the dawning of the Enlightenment. Wengeroff’s story, according to scholar Shulamit Magnus, represents the first time a major epoch of Jewish history is refracted through a female lens. Plus...Susan Schnur on gendered Jewish history, telling us that loss characterized Jewish modernity for women—-but not for men.
Getting Annulled
by Terese Loeb Kreuzer
What happens when the Catholic Church cancels out a Jewish-Jewish marriage? Here are the travails of Jewish women whose ex-husbands have decided to remarry Catholic women.
A Foretaste of the Prayer Book to Come
by Rabbi Susan Schnur
The long-awaited new prayer book from the gifted poet and liturgist. Finally we have prayers and blessings we can utter with conviction—in English and (even more wonderful) in re-imagined and re-gendered Hebrew.
- Sh'ma: Personal Declaration of Faith by Marcia Falk
- Blessing before Going to Sleep by Marcia Falk
- Putting on the Prayer Shawl by Marcia Falk
- Blessing the Beloved by Marcia Falk
- Humble Hour by Malka Heifetz Tussman
A Special Section on Mastectomy
Breast cancer touches the lives of more and more Jewish women. Three new ceremonies that can help us through: a bris, a mikveh immersion, and a women's-group ritual.
- What God Takes: Bris and Mastectomy by Leslie What
- Mastectomy: Twelve Months After Surgery by Jerilyn Goodman
- Helping a Friend through Breast Cancer: Our Experience by Bonnie Resnick, Margy Hirsch and Sara Hoppe
Our (forgotten) Foremother: Manya Shohat (1880-1961)
by Shulamit Reinharz
Who was Manya Wilbusevitz Shohat, and why didn’t we know before this that she rode wild horses, smuggled arms to Russian revolutionaries, insisted on teaching Arabic to Zionists, and invented the kibbutz?
Free-Associating
by Robin Epstein
A college student pays a call on the novelist who practically invented guilt-free sex, and talk to her about mothers, daughters and Jewish men.
Susan Schnur on “The Nakedness of the Father” and “Her Face in the Mirror”
Rachel Kadish on “No Words To Say Goodbye: A Woman's Journey from the Soviet Union into America--The Extraordinary Diaries of Raimonda Kopelnitsky”
Susan Schnur on “She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism”
Susan Schnur on "Making Stories, Making Selves: Feminist Reflections on the Holocaust"
Susan Schnur on "A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community"
Susan Schnur on "Jewish American Woman Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical and Critical Sourcebook"
Susan Schnur on ”Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women's Resistance”
Susan Schnur on “Genesis: The Beginning of Desire”
Shira Zeltzer on “Auschwitz and After”
N.L.M on “Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States,1900-1965 ”
Susan Schnur on "When a Grandparent Dies: A Kid's Own Remembering Workbook for Dealing with Shiva and the Year Beyond "
Naomi Danis on “The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne”