JUDAISM SINCE GENDER: A REVIEW ESSAY

Abstract

�� In the short story “The Woman Who Lost Her Names” by contemporary American Jewish writer Nessa Rapoport, the heroine’s power of naming is taken from her.1 Her own name goes through a permutation — from Sarah to Sally — in order, her kindergarten teacher said, that she be better integrated into public school. The distant cousin from Jerusalem whom she eventually marries, a seventh-generation Halevi, takes on the pen name Peniel and calls Sarah by her middle name, Yosefah. Finally, after two sons, a daughter is born. Sarah , at last in the land of Israel, longs to name her daughter Ayelet Hashachar, the dawn star, but her husband argues that the child must be named Dina, after his late mother-in-law. “But Dina was raped!” Sarah/Sally/Yosefah protests. The story ends as she sits in the women’s balcony in the synagogue, waiting to hear what her husband will name their daughter.