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Friday March 21, 2003

Women's voices to ring out at JCC poetry celebration

ABBY COHN
Bulletin Staff

In her first published poem, Berkeley writer Elizabeth Rosner describes trudging through snowdrifts to shul with her father -- and her sense of exclusion once she got there.

Called "ghosts," that 1995 poem touches on growing up female in a modern Orthodox family and the bond Rosner later felt to generations of Jewish women when she lit Shabbat candles.

The poem reads:

I had learned how to recite the prayers

but never how to pray, not in my

own language and not

in my own voice

Come March 30, voices like Rosner's will be heard loud and clear during a celebration of Jewish women's poetry at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center. Aptly enough, the event is called "Kol Isha," meaning "a woman's voice."

"For me, the most significant discoveries I made about my voice came about through my poetry," said Rosner, whose 2001 novel "The Speed of Light," about the children of survivors, has drawn national attention.

The afternoon of poetry features readings by Bay Area poets Chana Bloch, Marcia Falk, Anita Barrows, Yiskah Rosenfeld and Rosner, along with an address by nationally known author and poet Grace Paley.

The event is meant to celebrate already recognized voices -- and to encourage those still emerging.

To that end, there will be a poetry reading by eight local teens, a writing workshop for mothers and daughters and an "open-mike" session.

"You don't have to come to this with a lot of experience reading poetry," said Ruth Phillips, director of the Jewish learning center at the JCC.

"It's to make it very accessible and to foster a deeper appreciation and understanding of Jewish poetry as part of the Jewish heritage."

A lover of poetry, Phillips hatched the idea for the celebration when she realized that the Bay Area contains a mother lode of talented Jewish women poets.

"What we wanted to do was give Jewish women of all ages a venue to explore the deeper meaning of their Jewish identity through poetry and to help people find their literary voice," said Phillips, who organized the event with Rosenfeld.

Naomi Newman, a founding member of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, will emcee the event along with singing and reciting poems by Irena Klepficz, a Jewish lesbian poet.

Local scholars will also give presentations, including a workshop by East Bay professors Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld on the feminist and anti-war focuses of Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch.

In another talk, Mills College Professor Cynthia Scheinberg will explore the history of Jewish women poets in 19th century England.

Aurora Simcovich, a 16-year-old student at Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco, will be one of the teens reading at the event.

Writing poetry, Simcovich said, "allows me to sort out my thoughts by myself. I can express myself in any way I want."

A poem she wrote as an eighth-grader at San Francisco Community School described her discovery of a swastika scribbled on the desk in a class where she was the only Jew. She later read the poem at a citywide poetry slam, and the piece went on to win a national award.

Simcovich said ideas about Judaism and such adolescent issues as body image frequently intersect in her verse.

"I found it a way to release my tensions," she said.

Other women poets said their verse often explores their conflicts with a religion whose commentary and prayer are largely the work of men.

"Women have always been speaking and writing," said Rosenfeld of Oakland. "We don't find them in the most central texts; they're always on the margins."

In recent years, she said, that has been changing. Falk's 529-page prayerbook, entitled "The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival," has rewritten traditional liturgy in poetic form, free of references to God as male, a king or master.

"We've started to infuse Jewish life with women's words as well as men's voices," Rosenfeld said.

In her own case, the Kansas-reared Rosenfeld found in her writing that, "I could embrace Judaism in one poem and rebel and argue in another poem.

"A lot of my poems grapple with what it is to be Jewish," she said. "I write poems that question, and poems that argue with God and tradition, and poems that celebrate tradition."

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