A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and YiddishA Marriage Made in Heaven is a history of how Hebrew and Yiddish came to represent the masculine and feminine faces, respectively, of Ashkenazic Jewish culture. It is the first book-length exploration of the historical associations between Yiddish and Jewish women and Hebrew and Jewish men, tracing these associations back to the seventeenth century and the sexual segregation of reading audiences. Documenting the eventual rise of Yiddish "women's" literature, Seidman also examines this sexual-linguistic system as it shaped the work of two bilingual authors: Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, the "grandfather" of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and Dvora Baron, the first woman prose writer in modern Hebrew. She then analyzes the roles Yiddish "femininity" and Hebrew "masculinity" played in the Hebrew-Yiddish language wars, the divorce that ultimately ended the Hebrew-Yiddish "marriage." |
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A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish Naomi Seidman Limited preview - 2021 |
A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish Naomi Seidman Limited preview - 2023 |
A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish Naomi Seidman Limited preview - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
Abramovitsh agunah Ashkenazic audience Aviv Baron's story Bialik biblical bilingual writers brew Burial cartoon Chemda child culture daughter describes diaspora Dinah dish Dvora Baron Eastern European Eliezer Ben-Yehuda father Female Reader feminist fictional gender Gordon Govrin Harshav Haskalah Hebraist Hebrew and Yiddish Hebrew literary Hebrew revival Hebrew speech Hebrew version Hebrew writers Hebrew-Yiddish relations Holy Tongue husband Ibid Isaac Meir Dik Itamar Ben-Avi Itsik-Avraham Jewish women Katznelson-Shazar linguistic Loshn-koydesh male masculine Max Weinreich Mendele's metaphor midrash modern Hebrew modernist mother narrative narrator Palestine poet prayer Press Rabbi Reb Leyb Reb Shloyme religious sexual Shlonsky Shloyme's Shmuel Niger Sholem Aleichem shtetl sister social synagogue Talmud Tel Aviv texts textual tion tkhine Torah study traditional translation Tsenerene Vilna Weinreich wife woman women's section words Yankev Yiddish femininity Yiddish Language Yiddish literary Yiddish literature Yiddish version Yiddish women's Yiddish writers Yiddishists young Zev Jabotinsky Zionist