Gender, Place, and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience: Re-Placing Ourselves (review)

Abstract

JUDITH TYDOR BAUMEL and TOVA COHEN, eds. Gender, Place, and Memory in Modern Jewish Experience: Re-Placing Ourselves. Parkes-Wiener Series on Jewish Studies. London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell Publishers, 2003. Pp. xxii + 297.Gender, Place, and Memory M Modern Jewuih Experience: Re-Placing OurJelveJ is an unusual collection that brings together a *wide range of scholars from Israel, Kurope, and United States with a focus on historical memory from a variety of perspectives - sociological, historical, literary, artistic, and architectural. Like many anthologies especially on gender, this volume also grows out of a conference, in this case, an interdisciplinary gathering at Bar-Ilan University m January 2001. As editors tell us in their introduction, it was conference and its focus on interplay between gender, place, and memory that inspired this publication. Different memories of different places and different gendered experiences provide backdrop to understand variation of .Jewish life and identity. These places and experiences shade Jewish memories in a myriad of shades, forming rainbow of colors of *which modern Jewish life is composed (p. xix). This alluring statement frames our understanding of conference and its mandate, although it is unfortunate that editors never make clear specific relationship between these goals and volume before us. Regretfully, they never flesh out how differences of place, memory, and gender come together and are in conversation -within modern Jewish life. other -words, -we never learn about conversations, discussion -within and between sessions and papers that took place at Bar-Ilan and might have helped readers -were not there understand how these fascinating essays are in conversation -with each other. Instead, editors have chosen more or less to allow essays and three sections of volume to speak for themselves. this, they begin their introduction by describing complexities of modern identity in general and modern Jewish identity formation in particular. As they explain, for Jews not only are there issues of -who -we are, -where we come from and how -we remember our past but also questions about (p. xix). As they explain, In certain cases, being Jewish is still a pivotal part of a person's self-definition. For others, it is but one of a number of factors which personal whole is now composed (p. xix). They conclude this discussion by explaining that for still other modern Jews, Jewishness is but a nostalgic recollection with little bearing on one's future. Unfortunately, they never return to any of these issues to help explain their choice of essays and their ordering.In many ways these brief statements are all that readers get from editors about logic of volume, especially ways that three sections work together to get at these larger thematic issues. Instead we are told following: Given importance of place and history in this collection, articles in this book are divided according to three geographical/historical coordinates. The first Kurope prior to and during Second World War, second is United States, and third is, Zionist movement, Yishuv and State of Israel (pp. xix- xx). There is in editors' own words little clarity about relationships among and between these categories or why it is that United States is presented so vaguely with no clear reference to specific geographical locations or for that matter historical moments covered. part this is 'what is most frustrating about this collection. The editors have brought together a terrific range of essays by distinguished scholars but offer readers no clear indication about how a reader might draw links between these various sections. The fact that sections culminate with the State of Israel itself suggests a kind of teleological reading, especially given that final essay returns to most of terms of book's title, Time, Place, Gender and JViemory: From Perspective of an Israeli Psychologist. …