Joyce Antler

Joyce Antler is an author and editor, and was a professor at Brandeis University. She is Jewish and lives in the USA.

The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America (1997)

 * In other contexts, I have written about the notion of "feminism as life process," suggesting that women's attempts to mold their destiny and achieve autonomy may take various directions at successive stages of life." I now understand that for the dozens of women whose stories are chronicled in this book, Judaism, too, was a life process. At different points in the life cycle, Jewish women-whatever their inherited traditions have chosen to identify with particular Jewish values or institutions in which they discover meaning. (Introduction)


 * it was not until I connected with Judaism within the feminist movement until I became a Jewish feminist that I found a meaningful way to be a Jew.


 * Despite their numerically small representation in the American population, Jewish women have made major contributions to fiction, poetry, drama, film, and other popular arts. From the ghetto stories of Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska to the pioneering modernism of Gertrude Stein; from the romances of Edna Ferber and Fannie Hurst to the biting realism of Tillie Olsen and Grace Paley; from the intense spirituality of Cynthia Ozick to the more secular feminism of Anne Roiphe, Jewish women novelists have probed the changing meanings of the Jewish female experience in America. The poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, the plays of Wendy Wasserstein, the radio scripts of Fannie Brice and Gertrude Berg, and the songs and performances of Sophie Tucker demonstrate a similar linguistic and thematic inventiveness. Jewish women's contemporary accomplishments parallel their past achievements.


 * Because narrative and memory remain the central instruments of Jewish community and identity, I believe that Jewish women today, vitally engaged in the project of remembering, constitute the most dynamic resource for the survival and continuity of Jewish life in America. I am hopeful that the next generation will find new meanings in the stories contained in this book. I am counting on these young women to retell and rediscover for themselves the manifold aspects of American Jewish women's lives that require us to bear witness. In so doing, they will become part of the cultural chain that carries forward the varieties of Jewish experience and identity.


 * only with the development of a newly assertive Jewish feminism in all denominations of Judaism, as well as in secular culture and politics, has it been possible for many thousands of Jewish women throughout the country to join a proud Jewish identity with an equally vibrant female, and feminist, consciousness. This mutual enhancement has enabled the expression of a multiplicity of Jewish women's voices unparalleled during this century. (page 333)