Writing

Historian Deborah Lipstadt is Vindicated in Libel Suit Brought by Holocaust Denier

April 11, 2000

When Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt published Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory in 1994, she

"American Jewess" Front Cover, November, 1896

"The American Jewess" begins publication

April 1, 1895

Published between April 1895 and August 1899, The American Jewess was the first English-language publication directed to American Jew

Rachel Adler receives National Jewish Book Award

March 11, 1999

Rachel Adler was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought on March 11, 1999.

"New York Times" Reviews "Our Bodies, Ourselves"

March 13, 1973

In 1969, a group of women began meeting in the Boston area to discuss women's health issues.

"The Collected Stories" by Grace Paley, 1998

Writer Grace Paley arrested at Vietnam protest

March 19, 1970

On March 19, 1970, writer and activist Grace Paley was arrested with 181 other individuals for protesting the Vietnam draft in an act of mass civil d

E.M. Broner's "The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality Through Community and Ceremony"

E.M. Broner publishes "The Telling"

March 1, 1993

Publication of E.M. Broner's "The Telling: The Story of a Group of Jewish Women Who Journey to Spirituality Through Community and Ceremony."

"Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Person Within" Front Cover by Hilde Bruch, 1973

Hilde Bruch publishes "The Importance of Overweight"

March 4, 1957

When The Importance of Overweight was published on March 4, 1957, Hilde Bruch was already a leading childhood obesity researcher.

Lynn Gottlieb publishes "She Who Dwells Within"

March 3, 1995

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb's She Who Dwells Within, which she describes as "a practical guide to nonsexist Judaism," was published on March 3, 1995.

Hannah Arendt at the University of Maryland, 1965

Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" appears in "The New Yorker"

February 16, 1963

When Hannah Arendt published her first article about Adolf Eichmann's war crimes trial in The New Yorker in its February 16, 1963 issue, s

Publication of "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan

February 17, 1963

The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, on February 17, 1963, is often cited as the founding moment of second-wave femin

"The Vagina Monologues" Performed at Tufts University, 2006

V's "The Vagina Monologues" performed at Madison Square Garden

February 10, 2001

The February 10, 2001, performance of V's The Vagina Monologues was cheered by 18,000 men and women at New York City's Madison Square Garden.

Early music harpsichordist Wanda Landowska plays Bach at New York City's Town Hall

February 21, 1942

Born in Warsaw in 1879, Wanda Landowska studied piano at the Warsaw Conservatory, from which she graduated at age 14. In 1900, she moved to Paris, where she taught piano and performed.

Muriel Rukeyser Publishes Second Book of Poems

January 31, 1938

When Muriel Rukeyser published U.S.

"The Shawl" Front Cover by Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick receives first Strauss Award

January 19, 1983

On January 19, 1983, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters announced that its first Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Awards would go to Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver. Carrying a stipend of $35,000 per year for five years, the awards were among the largest available to American writers.

Author Judy Blume Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

January 22, 1996

When the top awards in children's publishing were announced on January 22, 1996, the Margaret A.

Publication of Bel Kaufman's "Up the Down Staircase"

January 27, 1965

When Bel Kaufman published Up the Down Staircase on January 27, 1965, she was already a published writer, whose short stories had appeared i

Opening of Joan Rivers' first Broadway play

January 2, 1972

Joan Rivers's first Broadway play, Fun City, opened on January 2, 1972.

Ruth Seid wins prize for novel "Wasteland"

January 2, 1946

Ruth Seid, writing under the ethnically neutral and gender-ambiguous pen name Jo Sinclair, won the $10,000 Harper Prize for new writers on January 2,

April 15, 2009

Remembering Miriam Goodman - Her Church, The Chicken; Her Guests, Her Minyan

Jordan Namerow

Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, I've been reading some new poems and revisiting old favorites by women like Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, and Maxine Kumin.

Topics: Poetry

Yiddish: Women's Poetry

Women’s poetry in Yiddish first made its presence felt within the wider context of modern Yiddish culture in the late 1910s. Exploring topics from gender in Judaism to queer sexuality and eroticism, women’s Yiddish poetry cemented itself as its own literary corpus with priceless value and contribution to Yiddish literary culture.

Yiddish Theater in the United States

Women have always been important as both Yiddish theater audiences and actors. For a decade and more, most American Yiddish actors were immigrants, as were their audiences. Often families played in the same company, such as the famous Adler family. Now, as Yiddish theater has become attenuated, the loyalties and memories of women are important for its survival.

Yiddish Literature in the United States

Writers of a broad range of texts—passionate and erotic lyrical verse, social realist fiction, affecting descriptions of immigrant life, nostalgic paeans to their Eastern European homes, dirges to those murdered in the Holocaust—Yiddish women writers were modernists and traditionalists, romantics and realists, prose writers and poets. They represent no single school or line of development, but rather the range of women’s voices contained in Yiddish literature.

Anzia Yezierska

Essayist, novelist, writer, and literary critic Anzia Yezierska turned the frustrations and indignities she suffered in New York’s tenements into novels and short stories that depicted the strenuous working lives of Jewish immigrants. Her novels, short stories, and autobiographical writing vividly depict both the literal hunger of poverty and the metaphoric hunger for security, education, companionship, home, and meaning that Jewish immigrants sought in America at the turn of the century.

Yemen and the Yishuv

Yemenite women proved to be stable and resourceful, both in Yemen where tradition reigned, and also after immigration to Erez Israel and New York, facing changes and challenges in turbulent times. They adapted to changing economic, social, and communal conditions, acculturated in language skills and organizational life, and were instrumental in bringing up their daughters and sons to successfully integrate into the new worlds.

Jean Starr Untermeyer

Poet Jean Starr Untermeyer’s work was first influenced by her connections with writers Sara Teasdale, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost. Through her many volumes of published poetry and translations, Untermeyer explored her own personal tragedies and defended women’s right to use personal experience in their art.