Jewcy: Jewish Queer Lesbian Feminisms for the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Marla Brettschneider
SUNY Press, 2024, 173 pages
Hardcover $99; Paperback $31.95

Reviewed by Emily L. Quint Freeman
©May 2024

I always try to read books with an open heart so I can gain new insights, as well as admire the writer’s craft. Just this year, a non-fiction collection of scholarly essays, personal stories, and poetry was released, edited by Marla Brettschneider. This book explores the diverse backgrounds and experiences of being a Jew, queer, and, for some, having a non-traditional gender identity. As a Jewish lesbian, I was particularly interested in this book.

People respond to a book differently based on their background and point of view. So, here is a two-paragraph capsule of me, the reviewer:
My grandparents and great-great grandparents were immigrants on crowded, smelly steamers to New York during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from central and eastern European countries (known as “Ashkenazi” Jews). If they had not emigrated to America, it is highly likely that I never would have been born, as during the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews – and roughly 200,000 queers.

I am a Reform Jew, which is one of the branches of Judaism that has adapted traditional Jewish laws and practices to respond to the social/cultural conditions of the modern world. As a lesbian, I would call myself an intellectual butch, attracted over a lifetime only to women. I guess in today’s lingo, I am some shade of non-binary. I had plenty of challenging times when my birth family pulled the financial rug after I would not abandon my “choice” of a lover. Thankfully, within Judaism, I did not have to leave a fundamental part of my identity behind.

The most accessible parts of this book for the non-Jewish reader (and many Jews) would be the personal essays and poetry. I particularly liked a story called “ID Please” by Vinny Calvo Prell about her personal angst about claiming her complex family heritage. Her mother hailed from the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and her father was Ashkenazi Jewish. She grew up with a deep connection with the Jewish community and came out as queer. Only as an adult did she begin to explore her mother’s indigenous heritage. As she became more open with her Jewish friends about her Pacific Islander roots, she started to feel uneasy, even unwelcome. Prell must have been raised in either the Orthodox or Conservative branches of Judaism, which follow Jewish law, deeming people to be Jewish only if their mother was Jewish or if they underwent a conversion. She would have been fully welcome in my synagogue as a Reform Jew. The pain of trying to embrace various aspects of herself was well described, and the story was worth several reads.

Another personal story called “Life on the Borderlands” by A.S. Hakkari discusses her heritage as a trans woman and Mizrahi Jew – meaning her ancestors either lived in the land of Israel or Muslim North Africa/Middle East. Her essay explores the marginalization of her gender and religious identity in a very moving way. Hakkari vividly described how trans women are a target for abuses of many sorts.

Hakkari’s story informs the reader that Jews are not monolithic but have diverse cultures and practices. This fact is due to the “Diaspora,” that is, the expulsion and/or dispersal of Jews by conquerors of the ancient Jewish states of Israel and Judea. An interesting fact to note – forty percent of Israelis are Mizrahi Jews, who were expelled from Muslim Africa or the Middle East after the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. They form a vibrant part of the multi-cultural framework of Israel.

The book contains a memoir segment from a Black Jewish lesbian, Carol Conaway. I wanted to read more of her memoir so I could better understand her experience and path to Judaism. The segment centers on her attraction to urbane white women, particularly “The One,” who would later become her life partner.

The essays in this book tackle ancient Jewish religious texts, seeking to explore different interpretations of what is acceptable. The traditional answer was only cisgender, heterosexual sex. However, “Deconstructing the Binary, or Not” by Sarra Lev provides a learned analysis of early rabbinic literature to postulate an openness for an intersex personal life.

Another entitled “Remembering Sinai” by Sabrina Sojourner is a reconsideration of the book of Exodus, which analyzes ancient Hebrew and the traditional patriarchal image of G-d. The essay “Postmodern Concepts of Sex, Gender and Sexuality in the Framework of the Jewish Lesbian” by Rona B. Matlow seeks to deconstruct the assumption that only cisgender males and cisgender females are acceptable in Judaism. She does this by offering different interpretations of religious texts and commentaries.

These academic essays may prove daunting for non-Jews or Jews who are not familiar with fundamental Jewish texts or the Hebrew language. Another essay entitled “Leslie Feinberg’s Complex Jewish Lesbian Feminism” by the book’s editor did challenge me as the reader due to its language walls based upon leftist dichotomies. As a result, this essay did not accurately portray the complex story of Ashkenazi Jews in America and their acceptance or non-acceptance in non-Jewish society. This is especially important during the present time, given the trauma and pain of the whole Jewish community after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023, and the taking of innocent hostages.

The umbrella of self can be difficult to navigate. This book offers ideas and stories of Jewish lesbians seeking acceptance rather than marginalization. It points to a more inclusive world for writers with different family backgrounds and gender identities.

Emily L. Quint Freeman is the author of the memoir, Failure to Appear, Resistance, Identity and Loss (Blue Beacon Books) and numerous creative non-fiction articles appearing in digital magazines including Salon, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Syncopation Literary Review, Open Democracy, The Mindful Word, and Narratively.

My Withered Legs and Other Essays
Sandra Gail Lambert
University of Georgia Press, 2024, 152 pages
$23.95

Reviewed by Kali Herbst Minino and Gabe Tejada

My Withered Legs is Sandra Gail Lambert’s new memoir essay collection observing shifting relations between the different facets of her life–including writing, disability, aging, and autonomy.

Throughout, Lambert conceives of and interrogates power through a spectrum of in/dependence. Due to the societal and familial context of her upbringing—pre-Rehabilitation Act America in a military family—Lambert, particularly in her youth, equates power with a masculinist idea of strength.

Even in its mere recounting, the machismo attitude Lambert displays—one that values strength and abhors vulnerability—is off-putting, a testament to her evocative writing and presence on the page. Yet the moments when she feels most powerful because she exerts an inordinate amount of physical, mental, and emotional strength become especially poignant when contextualised within the dominant capitalist culture.

A careful reader will recognise that Lambert’s attitude in insisting to navigate, without help, a society that does not consider—and therefore was not built—for her needs is a symptom of living in a culture where (perceived) ability is currency. In a hyper-individualist America where humanity is reduced to a tokenistic autonomy, isolating independence is valued above community.

Lambert’s narrative triumphs in subtly challenging her own entrenched ideas of power. Illustrated by the shifting dynamics of her relationship with her mother and with her partner Pam, readers experience Lambert’s hard-won self-acceptance of being cared for. Her depiction of care work is nuanced, riddled with guilt and triumph, fear and freedom, and caring for is irrevocably intertwined with taking care of. Throughout this process we see how Lambert comes to understand that, just as “Disability was different from illness,” so too is vulnerability different from weakness.

Despite the specificity of Lambert’s perspective and experience, her writing is bound to resonate with readers of all kinds. Artfully covering topics of independence, the writing process, aging, and familial and romantic relationships, the collection of essays is about much more than the title suggests—her legs.

It is surprising that the collection is titled My Withered Legs. In the essay of the same name (though with the addition of “what is lost” in parenthesis), Lambert details a public obsession with her legs, with editors demanding to hear more details about them. Following this advice would erase the original point of her writing.

Choosing My Withered Legs as the collection’s title serves a dual purpose. It satiates the editor’s and the public’s obsession with her legs, which then drives the point of the titular essay home. I imagine an able-bodied reader—picking up the book because they are infatuated with the idea of reading about Lambert’s legs and struggles with disability—having a rude awakening when they realize they’ve played into the exact issue the author is critiquing.

The challenges Lambert faces in publishing her writing leave questions about what didn’t make it through the editorial filter, i.e. “My Withered Legs (what is lost),” and whether or not her wide appeal is something to be celebrated. In “Crip Humor,” Lambert explains that people using wheelchairs and their community would find the story funny. Explaining the joke makes the essay understandable to a large audience, but it became Lambert’s role to make that kind of understanding possible. If Lambert hadn’t had to cater to an able-bodied audience, how would the essay differ?

Readers can only speculate the answer to that question, and can only imagine exactly what was lost. In the meantime, Lambert’s collection is a perfect read for anyone pondering power—inside or outside the pages.

Kali Herbst Minino is a freelance journalist based in Seattle who works primarily for Seattle Gay News. They use a restaurant job to help fund their freelance journalism habit and love reading about labor movements, feminism, and media studies.

Gabe Tejada is a writer and reader based in Naarm/Melbourne whose work has been published in Archer Magazine and Kill Your Darlings, among others. Her greatest achievement thus far is her 800-day Duolingo streak.

The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization that Transformed America
Katherine Turk
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2023, 448 pages
$32.00

Reviewed by Henri Bensussen

A passionate feminist, a supporter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and a teacher of women’s history, Katherine Turk’s purpose in The Women of NOW is to clarify NOW’s founding and accomplishments. Accessible language and dramatic narrative were a plus for this reader. She’s done a lot of research, all of it cited in the last section of the book; readers may easily engage further if desired.

Scholars have taken two ways of writing about NOW, she states, either focusing on the motivations of its founding leadership or pieces of its overall history. Instead, Turk gives an overall picture of NOW’s structure by showing how the points of view of three of the early founders led to the organization’s weaknesses and strengths. Below are the early founders Turk discusses.

Aileen Hernandez (1926-2017), a feminist labor organizer, was aware of the effects of racism and sexism in our culture. She wanted NOW’s leadership to focus on problems specific to women of color and work with men to achieve feminist goals. Hernandez would become NOW’s second president. Her interests were always in the wider political concerns of the labor movement.

Patricia Hill Burnett (1920-2014), mother of four children, and married to a wealthy businessman who supported her feminism, hoped to diversify NOW’s politics and extend its appeal internationally. As a Republican, she supported her party’s support for the individual and wanted to broaden that to incorporate feminist principles.

Mary Jean Collins (1939- ), a generation younger than Hernandez and Burnett, brought a different outlook to NOW. Active in the Democratic party, she lived in Chicago and helped establish many chapters, especially in the Midwest. Collins served as a vice president of NOW in the early 1980s.

Betty Friedan, a labor journalist familiar with politics, became a celebrity upon publishing The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Pauli Murray, a Black organizer and attorney, represented Black women activists who felt Friedan’s influence and leadership could be used to support the civil rights of women of color. Together, they conceived of establishing a new organization to support their ideas. In June of 1966, Friedan and Murray decided to test their idea at the third annual gathering of State Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C., which many women activists would be attending.

Following the Commission’s last evening, Pauli and Friedan held a late-night party for some of the women attendees. Many more showed up after hearing about it. When their plan was explained to the group, an emotional discussion followed that lasted until two in the morning. Was one more women’s organization needed? It turned out that women did need it and wanted it. A sign-up sheet went around at the Commission’s last session later that morning. Dues were set at $5. Twenty-eight women signed up, becoming known as “the founders.” Not everyone had $5 for the dues, and financing NOW’s issues would become another problem as the organization grew.

NOW rapidly grew into hundreds of chapters and thousands of members. There was direction from the top, but chapters were also independent and could set their own agendas with little oversight from NOW’s board. Turk highlights this freedom and lack of organizational direction as a weakness. Another was a focus on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The elderly women who had marched for women’s right to vote supported the ERA and showed up at NOW’s first convention with demands for it, turning the members’ attention from civil rights to equal rights.

Murray’s hopes for more Black women members did not materialize, though they and/or their daughters went on to organize in different ways. The concept of intersectionality was not understood or acted on by NOW’s leadership of mostly white, middle-class women. For years there was barely a budget, no office staff, and little money. Read this fascinating book to learn about the controversies that NOW became known for, how they were settled, the history of the women who directed it, and how they did it. NOW is still a vibrant organization with 600 chapters and thousands of members. They are still fighting for the ERA and abortion rights, as they were back in the 1970s-80s.

Henri Bensussen (she/her) earned a B.A. in Biology at UC Santa Cruz. Her essays, poems, and short stories have been published in various journals and anthologies. Her mother tagged her as a bookworm and tomboy. She’s a lesbian feminist as defined in Lesbian Connection’s May/June 2024 issue.