I researched the issues broached in this article while preparing my monograph Kol isze – głos kobiet w poezji jidysz (od XVI w. do 1939 r.) [Kol Ishe – the Voice of Women in Yiddish Poetry (from the 16th Century to 1939)], Pogranicze, Sejny 2018. An article on a similar subject, but in a different version, was published in Polish: Joanna Lisek: »Tu, na tym skrzyżowaniu historii ludzkości zaczyna się rola kobiety« – polska niepodległość a działalność żydowskich feministek i poetek jidysz [»Here, at this Crossroads of Human History, the Role of Women Begins« – Polish Independence and the Activity of Jewish Feminists and Yiddish Women Poets]. Teksty Drugie (2019), No 3, pp. 208–225.
»It is only here, at this crossroads of human history, that the role of women begins«1
In 1918, Puah Rakovsky,
2 a Jewish feminist, educator, and pioneer in the women’s Zionist movement who was also called the grandmother of Zionism,
3 wrote in her feminist manifesto entitled
(The Jewish Woman):
The fact that the woman is now entering the global arena to occupy a forefront position, and that the women’s movement is on the offensive is a reflection of the current atmosphere in which women will be able to breathe more freely. Because despotism, slavery, and war are increasingly perceived in the consciousness of humanity as barbaric remnants of the bygone past, because the power of sheer muscles is gradually losing its value and is slowly being replaced by the strength of the spirit and heart.4
This quotation reflects Rakovsky’s optimistic conviction that the male-dominated world, valuing power above all else, had been discredited as a result of the atrocities of the First World War. She was convinced that the Great War marked a clear turning point after which a world order based on military force and violence would recede into the past, and a new era would begin based on mutual respect and equality, as well as cognitive and emotional empathy due to the increased participation of women in public and political life.
The prominent Yiddish writer Rokhl Korn (1898–1982),5 shared a similar belief that humanity had found itself at a juncture in history after the First World War. During this time, the role of women would be re-evaluated, and the era of male Quixotism6 that had marked the course of events to date would end:
Did not shrapnel and world war gas pollute every isolated sublimity, and did they not remove the smoke screen from the great nothingness. Mankind remains poor and helpless in its abandonment. [...] It is only here, at this crossroads of human history that the role of women begins.7
Although the idea of sisterhood is generally associated with the second wave of feminism (i. e., the 1960s), Korn can be regarded as its proto-propagator, but in a cultural and social rather than a political sense.8 She viewed women as a given community bound together by common, often painful experiences resulting from exclusion and subordination. Evidence of her belief in the concept of sisterhood is present in her work, literary criticism, and biographical facts. She conceived of sisterhood as a broad, universal dimension in which national and denominational animosities disappeared, and believed that the tribulations of motherhood united women. In Korn’s philosophy, however, sisterhood took on a deeper meaning. If humans came to terms with the idea that there was nothing but emptiness after death, if their goal was no longer the afterlife, then they would no longer seek beauty and wonder in high-minded heavenly ideas. Instead, they would appreciate the moment of birth as the beginning of the only human existence available to them and would begin to value mortality and women as the origin of humankind.9
In her life and work, Korn deliberately rejected the hierarchical and stereotypical divisions that distinguished important matters from ordinary »women’s« matters which were considered peripheral, and therefore »mundane«. For Korn, it was women, excluded from the »eastern wall of life«,10 who comprised the sphere of great philosophical-religious and historical narratives and were the true weavers of everyday reality.
This raises the question as to whether the conviction that iron-fisted rule was a thing of the past (as in the case of Rakovsky), and whether the belief in the advent of the era of sisterhood (as in the case of Korn), were reflected in the creation of institutional structures for civic engagement of Jewish women throughout Polish lands? Jewish women played a significant role in the revolutionary changes taking place. Women, having secured the right to vote in some countries, such as Poland, became an important political group whose votes were sought after.
After World War I, wider perspectives on the development of the intra-Jewish women’s movement also began to emerge; the movement constituted a foundation for the increased literary output of women, as well as an important context for the creation of texts such as poetic feminist manifestos.11
In this article, I would like to focus on the poetic works of women written during the first years after Poland regained its independence, as reflections of the new opportunities and fears which were emerging for Jewish women. I do not claim to provide an exhaustive description of the situation of Jewish women at the start of Polish independence, as this would go far beyond the scope of this article. However, based on selected examples, I will trace the directions of the creative activity of Jewish women in Poland during this period.
1 Literary Activity
The 1920s in Poland turned out to be one of the most dynamic and productive periods in the development of Yiddish culture. In the aftermath of the First World War, the changes that took place included not only those which affected institutional aspects of Yiddish culture, but abo...
