Description
Book SynopsisRepresentation of the religious sector is a new phenomenon in modern Israeli literature, emerging from a diversification of Israeli culture that began in the 1970s. Barbara Landress here explores the intricacies of fiction about Orthodox women in contemporary contexts, offering a subtle interpretation of the conflicts in Orthodox women's lives as they weave their way through daughterhood, motherhood, politics, and personal dilemmas, negotiating between tradition and modernity. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, and feminist theory, this body of Israeli women’s writing is considered in comparative perspective with American feminist fiction of the 1960s and 1970s as well as with contemporary American Jewish women’s writing that engages Orthodoxy.
Trade Review“Landress’ pioneering work establishes the roadmap, and provides the key, for women’s literary treatments of orthodoxy in the two largest centers of contemporary Jewish life. This is a must-read, not only for those interested in the fraught relationship between feminism and orthodoxy, but also for those curious about the tensions between national, religious, and gender identities in America and Israel, and the provocative parallels between the two. An elegant and sensitively-drawn dialogue between Israeli Jewish and American Jewish literature, Her Glory All Within is a vital contribution to the study of comparative Jewish literatures.” -- Jill Aizenstein, Ph.D., author of Engaging America: Immigrant Jews in American Hebrew Literature
