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Cynthia Ozick

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A sketch-style illustration of a girl opening a spiral-bound notebook with Yiddish writing on the cover and a face emerging from the book, saying “Shalom aleychem!”

Twenty-First Century Jewish Literature by Women in the US

Twenty-first-century Jewish women’s writing in the United States is wide-ranging in genre and topic. In this body of literature, we can find insightful and nuanced stories of contemporary American life as well as fiction that delves into lost or forgotten Jewish histories. From a female Spinoza to a female golem, a strong feminist ethic is pervasive in these writings.

"The Shawl" Front Cover by Cynthia Ozick
May 7, 2012

Who would Cynthia Ozick’s Edelshtein envy now?

Margie Newman

Reading Adam Kirsch’s excellent piece in Tablet on Isaac Bashevis Singer reminded me of my all-time favorite short story, Cynthia Ozick’s “Envy, or Yiddish in America,” wherein the hilariously bitter Edelshtein is obsessed with Yankel Ostrover (a Singer-like figure), consumed by the fact that Ostrover has obtained mainstream adulation through having his Yiddish writing translated into English.  

Topics: Fiction
https://jwa.org/blog/who-would-cynthia-ozick-s-edelshtein-envy-now
"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.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/19/1983/cynthia-ozick
Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick is a Jewish-American writer, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Her creative, authentic, and intelligent stories, including “The Shawl” (1989) and “The Puttermesser Papers” (1997), have made her one of the greatest fiction writers and literary critics alive.

Ruth Wisse Receives National Humanities Medal

Ruth R. Wisse

As a scholar and a literary and social critic, Ruth R. Wisse is a unique figure in American Jewish letters. She bridges the worlds of Yiddish and American culture, of literature and politics, and of Israel and the diaspora. In 2000, she won the National Jewish Book Award for The Modern Jewish Canon.
Cynthia Ozick

Poetry in the United States

The contributions of Jewish women poets to American literary history and political activism, as well as to the enrichment of Jewish culture and practice, are astounding. Many Jewish women poets write with a strong sense of social responsibility and a desire to create poetry that can shape reality, drawing on the Jewish teachings of  tikkun olam.

Literature Scholars in the United States

Jewish women have been among the key figures in literary scholarship in the United States in the postwar period. Those entering the profession in the 1950s faced more difficulties as women than they did as Jews. Today, Jewish women are found in all corners of the profession, from feminist and queer theory to administration, critical race studies, and beyond.

Susan Schneider

Lilith Magazine

Named after the biblical figure who represents the quintessential female rebel, Lilith magazine seeks to create a space where Jewish women can learn about and discuss feminism and women’s issues. The magazine’s content is not confined to a specific genre and is very broad, ranging from the efforts to begin ordaining women rabbis to women’s health issues.

Holocaust Literature

Literature by and about women and the Holocaust explores the impact of the Nazi genocide on women during and after the war, its impact on subsequent generations, and the reflections of women on the implications of the Holocaust. Encompassing a range of literary genres, including fiction, poetry, drama and memoir, women’s Holocaust writing explores the intersection of history, imagination, Jewishness and gender.

Gender Identity In Halakhic Discourse

Jewish law is based on an assumption of gender duality, and fundamental mishnaic texts indicate that this halakhic duality is not conceived symmetrically.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris, 1923

Fiction in the United States

Literature by American Jewish women reflects historical trends in American Jewish life and indicates the changing issues facing writers who worked to position themselves as Americans, Jews, and women.

Portrait of Marcia Falk sitting on a staircase

Marcia Falk

Marcia Falk is a poet, translator, and liturgist whose knowledge of the Bible and of Hebrew and English literature informs the feminist spiritual vision of her work. She is widely considered one of the foremothers of, and foremost contributors to, the Jewish feminist movement.

A portrait of anita Brookner, sitting in an armchair with her arms crossed, holding a cigarette

Anglo-Jewish Writers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Anglo-Jewish women writers have been active creators within the British literary arena since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of a number of Jewish female voices, although it was not until the 1990s that the works of Jewish women writers began to be recognized as part of the British literary canon. Anglo-Jewish women writers’ multifaceted perspectives are reflected in a literary production characterized by experimentation and fragmentation.

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