Leocadia and Raquel: Toledo

Abstract

While preparing and writing a collection in various and mixed genres drawing from the lives of women religious, two themes-or better perhaps "issues" - consistently and implacably pressed at and across the borders of my notebooks: the violent 2000-year argument of Church against Synagogue (both notably symbolized in female figures) and the textual muteness of post-biblical Jewish women. More silent/silenced it seems than their Christian counterparts. Whether saint or heretic and while most often author(iz)ed than authors in their own write, a trail of their ink runs across the pages of history, the nibs broadening with time as the inks release an increasing spectrum of hues. Some of my pieces then (e.g., on Julian of Norwich and Gertrude the Great), stage encounters between a Jewish woman, a Christian woman, and other bodies, voices, objects as appropriate. These meetings are impossible and immanent.