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My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman

Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland

Puah Rakovsky author Barbara Harshav translator Paula Hyman editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:8th Oct '03

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman cover

Finalist, 2001-02 National Jewish Book Award

The compelling memoir of a Polish-Jewish woman who was an educator, Zionist activist, and feminist leader

". . . vital to understanding this period of East European Jewish history. As Hyman promises, the memoir . . . read[s] like a novel." —Russian Review

In this striking autobiography Puah Rakovsky (1865-1955) tells of her experiences as a Jewish woman in late 19th- and early 20th-century Poland who broke with her traditional upbringing to become a professional educator, Zionist activist, and feminist leader. Her passionate account offers unprecedented entrée into the life experience of East European Jewry in a period of massive social change. Published in the original Yiddish in 1954, the work appears here in English for the first time, annotated and with a historical introduction by Paula E. Hyman. Born into a rabbinic family in 1865 in Bialystok, then within the Russian Empire, Rakovsky witnessed the flourishing of a variety of radical political movements, the birth of Zionism, and the devastation of World War I. No mere bystander, she was an activist who assumed leadership roles in the public arenas of education and politics: she founded a pioneering Jewish girls' school in Warsaw and a national Jewish women's organization in 1920s Poland. In her memoir Rakovsky reflects on the position of Jewish women in her time and gives her personal and political perspective on central events of modern Jewish history from her childhood until her emigration to the Land of Israel in 1935.

"Hers is a venturesome, courageous story, with Zionist history woven into its very fiber and nerves." Hadassah Magazine "Rakovsky's descriptions of Jewish women's political and educational options alongside the details of individual women's lives are vital to understanding this period of East European Jewish history. As Hyman promises, the memoir does read like a novel." Russian Review

ISBN: 9780253215642

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 327g

224 pages