Author(s): Irina Rabinovich / Language(s): English
Issue: 1/2021
In addition to presenting personal contemplations on various topics,
Rebekah Hyneman's prose and poetry has broader political and social agendas, namely
bridging the gap between Jews and Gentiles. Hyneman felt that the Gentiles' lack of
knowledge of Jewish traditions leads to estrangement between Jews and non-Jews. Nineteenth-century
Jewish
female
writers,
a
religious
and
cultural
minority
within
a
minority
(women
writers in patriarchal society), have been misrepresented by their contemporaries.
Modern
critics
have
failed
as
well
to
relate
to
their
distinctive
contribution
as
Jews,
and
thus
are
held
responsible
for
minimizing
these
writers'
contribution
to
the
nineteenthcentury
general effort.
Rebekah Hyneman's “The Lost Diamond“ (1862) is a case in point of a Jewish female
writer
who
constructs
multiple
identities
in
her
factual
life,
prose
and
poetry,
none
of
which necessarily contradicts the other. Hyneman was at once a convert to Judaism
and an opponent of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles, a zealous American patriot,
but one of the earliest Zionists, advocating the Jewish people's return to Jerusalem. She
was a Jewish writer and poet, a “Mother in Israel,“ as I would like to call her, who concerned
herself
with
Jewish
traditions,
and
forced
conversion
to
Christianity,
and
a
writer
who
addressed
the
general
public,
especially
female
readership.
Though
far
from
being
a
feminist,
one
of
Hyneman's
major
efforts
was
dedicated
to
the
creation
of
a
female
“sweet
communion,“
a sort of spiritual union of all women, that is, both
Jewish and Gentiles.
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