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Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal: 21st Anniversary Issue Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. 21st Anniversary Issue: Conversations on Creativity, Activism, and Jewish Feminist Identity. Ed. Clare Kinberg. Volume 16: 1 (Spring 2011). Reviewed by Evelyn Torton Beck, Women’s Studies Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, College Park, USA Even more than I had anticipated, reading and rereading this 240 page volume of Bridges (possibly the last print copy of the journal) was not only a pleasure, but a deeply satisfying experience; unique in its format, it is among the best that Bridges has produced in its twenty one years of publication. The issue is constructed around a series of conversations between previous contributors to the journal. While some contributors deliberately chose partners they knew personally or with whose work they were familiar, others were paired by the editor; but however they ended up together, the pairings worked well. Conveying the richness, honesty, and spontaneity of these conversations (whose themes overlap and intertwine) proved to be a challenge. How was I to convey the depth and complexity of these thirty- five separate essays (and twice that many voices), which continued to speak long after I had closed the volume? Not surprisingly, these exchanges combine the personal with the political, the particular with the universal. The conversation partners include poets, novelists and visual artists; rabbis, modern orthodox, secular and atheist; academics and community workers; young and old; Jews by choice and born Jews; Sephardic and Ashkenazi, Caucasians and African-Americans; lesbian, heterosexual and queer Jews; able-bodied and physically challenged, reaching across multiple lines of linguistic, geographic, ethnic and racial differences.
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