Déjà Vu: Shirley Kaufman’s Poetry on Biblical Women

Anat Koplowitz-Breier

doi:10.3390/rel10090493

Abstract

This article explores Shirley Kaufman’s reading of the Bible as an elaboration on/of its feminine characters via three devices: (a) Dramatic monologues, in which the woman speaks for herself (“Rebecca” and “Leah”); (b) description of specific scenes that gives us a glimpse into the character’s point of view (“His Wife”, “Michal”, “Abishag”, “The Wife of Moses”, “Yael”, and “Job’s Wife”); and (c) interweaving of the biblical context into contemporary reality (“Déjà Vu” and “The Death of Rachel”). Fleshing these figures out, Kaufman portrays the biblical women through contemporary lenses as a way of “coming to terms with the past” and the historical exclusion of “women’s bodies” from Jewish tradition, thereby giving them a voice and “afterlife”. Her treatment of the biblical texts can thus be viewed as belonging to the new midrashic-poetry tradition by Jewish-American women that has emerged as part of the Jewish feminist wave. Herein, Kaufman follows Adrienne Rich and Alicia Ostriker’s “re-visioning” of the Bible and in particularly its women, empowering them by making use of her/their own words.

Highlights

In her article “Roots in the Air,” American-Israeli poet Shirley Kaufman (1923–2016) observes: I think in a sense all art is a coming to terms with the past
What do we do with history and mythic memory? With our western literary heritage? With our eastern literary heritage? . . . How do we respond to the post-modern rupture of “certainties”? What do we do with the Bible as literature? (Kaufman 1998, pp. 162–63)
Kaufman was familiar with Hebrew biblical poetry by women poets, the fact that she wrote in English and published her books in the United States means she is more closely associated with the Jewish-American than the Hebrew-Israeli writing tradition (Koplowitz-Breier 2019)

Summary

Introduction

In her article “Roots in the Air,” American-Israeli poet Shirley Kaufman (1923–2016) observes:. Kaufman was familiar with Hebrew biblical poetry by women poets (several such poems appearing in the bilingual anthology adduced above), the fact that she wrote in English and published her books in the United States means she is more closely associated with the Jewish-American than the Hebrew-Israeli writing tradition (Koplowitz-Breier 2019). Her reading of biblical texts should be viewed as belonging to the midrashic-poetry tradition established by Jewish-American women as part of the Jewish feminist wave: “The last thirty years have seen a bold, rapidly accelerating renaissance of the form, as North American short story writers, poets, playwrights and novelists have returned to the biblical text to struggle with contemporary issues in Judaism” Wife”, “Michal”, “Abishag”, “The Wife of Moses”, “Yael”, and “Job’s Wife”); and (c) the interweaving of the biblical context into contemporary reality (“Déjà Vu” and “The Death of Rachel”)

Dramatic Monologues

Description of Specific Scenes

Interweaving the Biblical Context into Contemporary Reality