by Yona Zeldis McDonough

Retrieving Gertrud Kolmar

60 years later, her lusty, doomed heroines come to life

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Gertrud Kolmar is hardly a household name, even in the households of the most exalted literary circles. Born in Berlin in 1894, she was a kind of latter-day Emily Dickinson, who led a quiet, reclusive life caring for her aging parents and writing astonishing poetry until the rise of Hitler and her deportation—probably to Auschwitz—abruptly ended her days.

Spring 1998

Shlomo Carlebach’s shadow side. Women reclaim Purim: You will never see a hamantasch the same way again. Two pre-war novels in Germany by Gertrud Kolmar reflect her life.

The Womantasch Triangle

by Susan Schnur

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s Shadow Side

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Why Jewish Girls Starve Themselves

by Aliyah Baruchin

Winter 2019-2020

DNA secrets, hidden identities • Breast cancer and Jewish women • Tillie Olsen: feminist foremother • At her ritual haircut, she knew she was a girl • The first lady of lox

Fall 2019

#MeToo stories • Jewish women and breast cancer: crisis, intimacy, recovery • Jennifer Weiner on “chick lit’s” power • Suddenly, period positivity • A feminist Jew’s tough search for holiness in community.

Summer 2019

Jewish women and addiction. 1960s & 70s feminism roars back, trendy again. Transforming Jewish life in small-town Maine. Choosing to be Jewish–thus feeling perpetually “the stranger.” Food writing by women that changes the entire culture. She redefines the meaning of Jewish art.

Spring 2019

“Unfaithful,” the theme of 3 prize-winning short stories • Israel’s little-known School for Peace and the woman who created it • The new questions those male policy-makers didn’t know to ask

Retrieving Gertrud Kolmar

60 years later, her lusty, doomed heroines come to life

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