“So the Kids Won’t Understand”: Inherited Futures of Jewish Women Writers by Zohar Eeda Weiman-Kelman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaCtion of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair Professor Naomi Seidman, Professor Judith Butler, Professor Daniel Boyarin Fall 2012 III “So the Kids Won’t Understand”: Inherited Futures of Jewish Women Writers ©2012 by Zohar Eeda Weiman-Kelman 1 AbstraCt “So the Kids Won’t Understand”: Inherited Futures of Jewish Women Writers by Zohar Eeda Weiman-Kelman Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Chana Kronfeld, Chair Reading poetry in Yiddish, Hebrew and English from aCross the twentieth Century, this dissertation examines how literary lineage is constructed and challenged by Jewish women in Eastern Europe, AmeriCa and Mandatory Palestine. Between Jewish women’s limited aCCess to the past and the preCarious future of Yiddish, I offer a queer genealogy based on nonlinear transmissions, affeCtive ConneCtions and cross-temporal encounters. This genealogy serves as an alternative to teleological heteronormative narratives of Jewish history, whiCh the lens of Yiddish and the lens of women’s writing CompliCate. Reading women writers undermines the binding value of the past, for women’s literature emerged despite and against historiCal silencing and erasure. While many feminist projeCts have aimed to reCover women’s lost pasts, I explore what it means to write without a past, what the stakes are for recovering the past, and what CompliCations arise when the past is not quite gone. At the same time, pronounCements of the “death of Yiddish” pose a Challenge to politics of futurity (those politics conceiving of the now in service of that which is to Come). Indeed, the fact that seCular Yiddish speakers are no longer made in the bedroom but in the Classroom means the value of Yiddish cannot depend on having a future, at least not one wedded to heteronormative reproduCtion and language transmission. Instead, I embraCe the challenge of formulating a Cultural legaCy that is not primarily invested in biology, the nuClear family or the future, echoing queer theories of temporality, kinship and soCiality that have questioned the priorities produced by reproductive politics. In searCh of alternative histories and alternatives models of history, this dissertation turns to the interwar period as a moment of past possibility for the Jewish future. FoCusing on Jewish women’s poetry of the period, each chapter offers a different model of lineage as a means of reaChing baCk to this poetry. Through the work of early Hebrew poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam, the IntroduCtion formulates a queer Jewish keyt/Chain of transmission that serves as the methodologiCal model of the 2 entire dissertation. Chapter One looks at how 1920s poets Anna Margolin (writing Yiddish) and Leah Goldberg (writing Hebrew) formulated their poetiC identity through the histories of non-Jewish others, whereas Chapter Three shows how Jewish lesbian writers of the 1970s such as Irena Klepfisz and Adrienne RiCh could reaCh baCk to the women writers who preCeded them within Jewish history. Through real-life, literary and imagined enCounters of writers such as Adrienne RiCh and Yiddish poet Kadya Molodowsky, as well as between myself and writers of the 1920s and the 1970s, I create a queer dialogue that replaces (hetero-)normative models of Cultural transmission and the ConfliCt/Continuity they assume. Between these two Chapters, Chapter Two uses the erotic poetry of Celia Dropkin and the erotics of Yiddish at large to intervene in Contemporary ConCeptions of Yiddish, as I attempt to replaCe the fetishizing of Yiddish with fetishism in Yiddish. Employing transgressive sexuality expressed in Dropkin’s poetry, as well as in early sexology, Yiddish arChives and Contemporary kink, I offer an affeCtive genealogy based on erotic activation past and present. Taken together, the three chapters produce queer lines of lineage that Challenge the present approach to the past and the dictate of looking forward to the future, instead turning back to and with Jewish women’s writing. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Coming Together: Queer Histories and/of Jewish Women’s Writing Chapter One 18 What to ExpeCt When You’re Not ExpeCting: Resisting Futurity through Hebrew and Yiddish Women’s Poetry Chapter Two 49 What Every Boychick Should Know: ACtivating the ErotiCs of Yiddish Chapter Three 82 (1920s) Yiddish women Writers and the (1970s) Lesbians who Love them Coda 119 Mir Zaynen Do/We’re Here We’re Queer: Interventions in the Present of Jewish History Bibliography 128 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Looking baCk on my original “Statement of Purpose” for my studies at Berkeley, written in Jerusalem in 2004, I am amazed to see how Closely my final projeCt mirrors my initial intentions, in ways I Could not have antiCipated. The Department of Comparative Literature at Berkeley proved to be the perfeCt home for this projeCt, giving me just the right amount of struCture and flexibility, especially thanks to EriCa Roberts’ help navigating my options and obligations. I feel extremely blessed to have had exceptionally engaged and devoted guidance; Chana Kronfeld, my Chair, taught me invaluable lessons not just in Hebrew and Yiddish literature, but also in how to reimagine teaChing, Collaboration and the balanCe between aCademia and politiCs. Naomi Seidman helped bridge my love for Glikl of Hameln and feminist theory. Our conversations, whether in Berkeley, Amherst or Warsaw always kept me on my toes. Both Chana and Naomi generously read multiple drafts of this dissertation, often giving opposite advice and always providing challenging questions steeped in love and enCouragement. It is my goal to join the keyt/chain sCholarly matrilineage they have begun. I am tremendously grateful to Judith Butler and Daniel Boyarin who agreed to join my Committee onCe I realized how perfeCt they were for my project—for indeed I was in dialogue with them all along. I also owe deep thanks to my earlier teaChers at Berkeley, Barbara SpaCkman and Elizabeth Abel, who invited me into the realms of the queer and the fetishistiC and helped me make them a respeCtable plaCe where my projeCt Could dwell. I had the good fortune to have Pani MiChelle instruct me in the wonders of Polish and Chana Bloch lead me into the world of Jewish AmeriCan women’s writing. Two dissertation writing workshops, one of Gender and Women Studies and one of the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, gave me preCious feedbaCk at CruCial stages of the writing process. The Posen foundation summer seminar on the literature of Jewish seCularism gave me tools to frame my methodologiCal introduction. The Townsend Center for the Humanities’ DisCovery Fellowship fed my interdisCiplinarity with dinners and Conversation, as well summer researCh opportunities for my first three years at Berkeley, and the Berkeley Fellowship and Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship supported me for four blissful years of concentrated study and writing. The Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Dissertation Fellowship gave me a muCh needed final year of support. Grants from the AmeriCan CounCil of Learned SoCieties, the Helen Diller Foundation, Foreign Language and Area Studies, Jewish Studies, Comparative Literature and Gender and Women Studies funded my many researCh trips to New York, Poland, Germany and Israel/Palestine. In all of these plaCes precious friends and Colleagues made me feel at home, helping me bridge aCademia, art and aCtivism. I give many many thanks to all the inCredible people along the way who shared with me their heads and their hearts, their books and their beds. And the final thanks, to my family, who have hung on remarkably well for the ride, to those who let go, and to Lisa Ruben. iii A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the Constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who Cannot indulge the passing dreams of ChoiCe who love in doorways Coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at onCe before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our Children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the Center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silenCe us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomaChs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomaChs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welComed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive - Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn 1978 1 Introduction Coming Together: Queer Histories and/of Jewish Women’s Writing You are to me enthused annunCiation, Commanding Another essenCe to keep. You are to me un-expected enCounter, rejoiCing Before it still has seen the light. 1 I open with Hebrew poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam’s 1932 poem, “at li b’sora” [to me you are annunciation]2 as an expeCtant text of the Jewish past, awaiting my queer interpretation.