Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant
    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant
    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant
    Ebook297 pages1 hour

    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant

    By Shachar Pinsker

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Presents the work of two American-born women who wrote and published a substantial body of Hebrew poetry between the 1930s and 1960s.

    Although Anne (Chana) Kleiman—who died in 2011 at the age of 101—was the first American-born Jewish woman to publish poems in Hebrew, and Annabelle (Chana) Farmelant—who is still living and occasionally publishing—wrote a substantial body of Hebrew verse from the 1940s to the 1960s, their work is virtually unknown today, even to those familiar with Hebrew literature in America. In Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant, editor Shachar Pinsker recovers the singular voices of these women, introducing their captivating and wide—ranging poetry and placing it in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts.

    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant's work in a large range of themes, moods, and styles, translated into English for the first time by Adriana X. Jacobs and Yosefa Raz. It includes Kleiman's poems that were collected and published in a 1947 U.S. volume and a selection from two of Farmelant's poetry books, published in Jerusalem in 1960 and 1961. The translators have furnished the poems with copious notes, illuminating linguistic and cultural sources of the poetry and making it more accessible to contemporary readers. Pinsker introduces the volume with a background on the poets' lives and work and a look at the state of Hebrew literature in the first half of the twentieth century. The volume also includes an unpublished essay by Anne Kleiman, addressing Hebrew poet Anda Pinkerfeld and her poetic work, which sheds an important light on the dialogue between women's Hebrew poetry written in American and in Palestine during the same period.

    Readers and scholars of Jewish, American, and Hebrew literature and cultural history, as well as those interested in poetry, gender, and women's studies will enjoy this unique bilingual edition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne State University Press
    Release dateJan 15, 2016
    ISBN9780814341377
    Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant

    Read more from Shachar Pinsker

    Related to Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Poetic Lenses

      Dec 11, 2019

      FOR our fifteenth annual look at debut poetry, we chose ten poets whose first books struck us with their formal imagination, distinctive language, and deep attention to the world. The books, all published in 2019, inhabit a range of poetic modes. The

      2 min read

    • Article

      Native American Poetry Anthology Vibrates With Powerful Voices

      Sep 16, 2020

      U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo serves as lead editor of this new collection, which showcases a range of poems as vast as the continent.

      3 min read

    • Article

      How the Federal Writers’ Project Shaped a Generation of Authors

      Oct 16, 2023

      The Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s proved an education in art and empathy. The post How the Federal Writers’ Project Shaped a Generation of Authors appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Anthologist

      Feb 14, 2024

      The Weird Sister Collection: Writing at the Intersections of Feminism, Literature, and Pop Culture (Feminist Press, February 2024) assembles selections from Weird Sister, a blog launched in 2014 to bridge mainstream cultural and feminist criticism wh

      1 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Oct 10, 2018

      In the second poetry collection by Laura Da’, Instruments of the True Measure, out this month from the University of Arizona Press, the history of the Shawnee comes into focus. Da’, who is Eastern Shawnee, portrays life on the American frontier durin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Appropriation As Racial Hoax

      Jan 1, 2021

      Dear X: In 2015, The Best American Poetry series anthology included a poem titled “The Bees, The Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve.” Perhaps you remember this poem, in particular the fact that it was authored by a White, male poe

      28 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Is Everywhere

      Aug 20, 2018

      Poetry Is Everywhere
      5 min read

    • Article

      Youth Nonfiction

      Jan 10, 2024

      By Walela Nehanda. Feb. 2024. 400p. Penguin/Kokila, $19.99 (9780593529492). Gr. 10–12. 616.99. Nehanda is a Black, queer, nonbinary writer and activist who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2017, at 23 years old. This is their survival story, told in p

      27 min read

    • Article

      The Literary Lives of Mid-Century Nuns

      May 8, 2023

      It's time we understand why the nuns of this era were drawn to writing and publishing poetry. The post The Literary Lives of Mid-Century Nuns appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Poet at Work

      Oct 11, 2017

      The Poet at Work
      16 min read

    • Article

      Announcing Our New Editors

      Aug 30, 2018

      Announcing Our New Editors
      5 min read

    • Article

      Focus on Poetry

      Feb 28, 2024

      Acts. By Spencer Reece. May 2024. 128p. Farrar, $27 (9780374100834); e-book (9780374721930). 811. Following his memoir, The Secret Gospel of Mark (2021), Reece’s third poetry collection, his first in a decade, also takes its title from one of the boo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 14, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      In Poetry’s Church

      Jun 29, 2024

      In Poetry’s Church
      11 min read

    • Article

      Transatlantic Flights

      May 3, 2024

      Transatlantic Flights
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Poet At Work

      Oct 11, 2017

      The Poet At Work
      15 min read

    • Article

      New Titles

      Dec 12, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      6 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 7, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      In This Time of War

      Apr 10, 2024

      HAVING worked on peace and justice initiatives for Palestine and Israel for twenty-five years, and published poetry on the subject, I’ve been devastated in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s assault on Gaza. The former killed

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Story Of The People, By The People

      Nov 25, 2021

      THE ORIGINAL WHAT IS HISTORY? was the published version of the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered by E.H. Carr at the University of Cambridge in early 1961. It was available in a slim Penguin version in 1977 when I prepared for the General

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores - Shachar Pinsker

      WOMEN’S HEBREW

      POETRY ON

      AMERICAN SHORES

      POEMS BY

      ANNE KLEIMAN AND

      ANNABELLE FARMELANT

      TRANSLATED BY

      ADRIANA X. JACOBS AND

      YOSEFA RAZ

      EDITED BY

      SHACHAR PINSKER

      © 2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

      201918171654321

      Library of Congress Cataloging Number: 2015954826

      ISBN 978-0-8143-4136-0 (paperback); ISBN 978-0-8143-4137-7 (ebook)

      Designed by Bryce Schimanski

      Typeset by Westchester Publishing Services

      Composed in Adobe Caslon Pro

      CONTENTS

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction: Meager Gifts from Desert Islands—American-Born Women and Hebrew Poetry

      SHACHAR PINSKERa

      POEMS BY ANNE (CHANA) KLEIMAN

      Translated and with Notes by Yosefa Raz

      Translator’s Preface

      Droplets

      Spring

      The Spring

      Again, Spring

      In the Straits

      Seas and Wind

      Candles Burn

      Behold

      To the San Francisco Delegates

      Yizkor/In Memoriam

      Toward the Light

      From the Mountaintops

      I saw them in hiding

      I Only Heard Your Voice

      To Dr. Nissan Touroff

      On the Threshold of the Midrasha

      Be Not Afraid

      What Can I Give to You?

      Suddenly, you have become dear to me

      My Longings

      To Lake Michigan

      To the Musician

      In the motionless heavens

      Today, I wept a great deal—

      And always, but always, a hidden hand

      Now, just as last year

      I know not wherefore

      And all is pained

      Last night you placed your hand on mine

      Now I wander lonely

      When Will You Come?

      Your Eyes

      This Is Another Dream

      You

      Cease and Desist

      I Want to Die

      ON ANDA PINKERFELD AND HER POETRY

      by Anne (Chana) Kleiman

      Translated and with Introduction and Notes by Shachar Pinsker

      POEMS BY ANNABELLE (CHANA) FARMELANT

      Translated and with Notes by Adriana X. Jacobs

      Translator’s Preface

      Selections from Desert Islands

      Desert Islands

      Moment

      The Unwed Maiden

      A Song of Autumn

      New Moon

      Skyscraper

      Blinding Light

      When Europe Died

      American Trip: A Dramatic Poem

      Return to Zion for Your Spirit

      The Israeli Parrot

      Lullaby

      Renewal

      In the World’s Heart

      The World Is Like a Poem

      Builder

      Everyone Agrees

      Far to Near

      Cycles for Moshe, My Father Z"L

      Farewell, Love

      Shira Aviva

      Job

      Change, No Change

      Eros

      Selections from Flowers of Identity

      Sad Roots

      ID

      Flowers of Identity

      The Wall

      The Circus

      Revenge in Nature

      Jacob and Autolycus

      Jealousy

      Narcissus

      Confession

      A Riddle

      The Bee’s Kiss

      Two Muses

      Bridges

      Blurred Lines

      Race to the Star

      Kite

      For a Bird

      Notes

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      First and foremost, we are grateful to Adina Kleiman and her family for sparking the idea for this project and for their support through its duration. Several years ago Adina approached Yosefa Raz with the idea of translating Hebrew poems by her mother, Anne (Chana) Kleiman. Through the poems’ translation into English, she thought she would gain a better understanding of her mother’s work and be able to share it with the rest of the family. Later Adina approached Shachar Pinsker to study the poems and give a lecture about Kleiman in the context of American Hebrew literature on the occasion of the first reading of the translations, which took place in October 2006 at Northwestern University. These early engagements with Kleiman’s work encouraged us to think about creating this volume. We’re only sorry that Anne Kleiman, z″l, did not see this project to fruition; however she was able to attend the reading and lecture and to see some of Yosefa Raz’s translations in print. We also extend our deep gratitude to Annabelle (Chana) Farmelant for taking the time to meet with us on many occasions to discuss her poetry and her experiences as a mid-twentieth-century American Hebrew poet.

      We thank Michael Weingrad, Alan Mintz, and Wendy Zierler for their support for the project at various stages and invaluable comments on the manuscript. Yosefa Raz extends special thanks to Maria Melendez Kelson, Chana Kronfeld, and Allan Kensky, whose insightful comments on the drafts of the Kleiman translations helped reveal their light. Adriana X. Jacobs is particularly grateful to Michael Walek for sharing his insights on Farmelant’s biography and to Asya Graf and Eran Tzelgov for their very careful and critical readings of the Farmelant translations at an early stage. Shachar Pinsker would like to thank Deborah Dash Moore, Anita Norich, and the fellows of the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies during the academic year 2013–14, which was dedicated to the topic of Jews and gender.

      We are also grateful to the organizers and participants of the seminar Locating Gender in Modern Jewish Literature (Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, December 15–17, 2014), where Shachar Pinsker’s introduction was first presented, and of the colloquium Rediscovering America: New Scholarship on American Hebrew Literature and Its Impact on the Study of Modern Jewish Literature (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, December 4, 2011), where Adriana X. Jacobs spoke on Farmelant. The archival research for this project was extensive: thanks go to the staff of the Gnazim Institute in Tel Aviv and the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago, as well as to Mattie Taormina at Stanford University’s Special Collections, for making crucial materials available to us.

      Funding from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan supported this project from beginning to end. A Diller travel grant from UC Berkeley supported Yosefa Raz’s archival and translation work.

      Working with Wayne State University Press has been a wonderful and rewarding experience. Special thanks to editor-in-chief Kathryn Wildfong, who believed in this project and made sure everything about the publication of this bilingual volume went smoothly. Thanks to Kristin Harpster and Mindy Brown for the copyediting and production of the volume, and to Amit Ben-Yehuda for his professional production of the Hebrew version of the poems.

      Yosefa Raz’s translations of Kleiman’s In the Depths (which appears in this volume as In the Straits) and Seas and Wind appeared (in slightly modified form) in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal 12, no. 1 (2007): 80–89. An earlier version of To the San Francisco Delegates appeared in Bridges 12, no. 2 (2007): 70–73. Adriana X. Jacobs’s translations of Farmelant’s Skyscraper, Desert Islands, Renewal, Far to Near, and The Unwed Maiden first appeared in her article Hebrew on a Desert Island: The Case of Annabelle Farmelant, Studies in American Jewish Literature 34, no. 1, special issue, ed. Kathryn Hellerstein and Maeera Shreiber (Spring 2015): 154–74. Some of the materials in Shachar Pinsker’s introduction first appeared in American Jewish History 79, no. 2 (2013): 182–86.

      Work on this volume spanned the better part of a decade. It is the culmination of a project that was collaborative from the very beginning, and the three of us are grateful for each other’s help, dedication, and generosity.

      And last, but not least, we thank our families.

      —Adriana X. Jacobs, Shachar Pinsker, and Yosefa Raz

      Introduction: Meager Gifts from Desert Islands

      American-Born Women and Hebrew Poetry

      SHACHAR PINSKER

      I

      This volume seeks to fill a significant gap in Jewish American literature and Hebrew literature. In 2003 Alan Mintz wrote that the existence of a substantial body of Hebrew literature written on American shores is one of the best-kept secrets of Jewish American cultural history.¹ A decade later it seems that the secret of Hebrew literature in America has been revealed. In the last few years, many articles and three new scholarly books on American Hebrew literature have been published.² With this renewed interest and abundance of new materials, the story of American Hebrew literature is finally getting some of the attention it truly deserves. Nevertheless, there is a substantial lacuna in this field, which has to do with the presence of women writers in this literary and cultural endeavor.

      Hebrew literature in America was written and read by a small minority of Jews, and yet Daniel Persky, a prominent Hebrew writer and journalist, counted in 1927 (the height of the movement) no fewer than 110 active writers of Hebrew in America.³ So where were the women writers in this number? After all, it was precisely in the 1920s and 1930s that women began to be active in Hebrew literature, mostly in poetry, in Europe and Palestine, as well as in Yiddish literature in America and Europe (and even Palestine). Indeed, until very recently scholars assumed that American Hebrew literature, which flourished between the 1900s and 1960s, had been the exclusive domain of East European immigrant men, as well as very few American-born writers (also men). But this common assumption is wrong. There is a small but significant

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1