...culture? Muriel Rukeyser, in a poem entitled "To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century," has put it thus: To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.3 Rukeyser's...

...a just Israeli society. This work must be done on both continents. For Irena Klepfisz who pushed me To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. . . . —Muriel Rukeyser, "Letter to the Front, VII," 1944 So, Melanie, what's with all the Jewish?...

...about American Judaism in the past quarter century than I do from the names one usually contends with: To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. Accepting,...

...experience. Editing this volume has brought wonderful rewards. The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, "To be a Jew in the twentieth century / Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, / Wishing to be invisible, you choose / Death of the spirit."9 Visibility, we editors...

...Twentieth Century Shavuot and Kabbalat Torah, 2 June 1968 1 here is a poem by Muriel Rukeyser which begins: 'To be a Jew in the twentieth century is to be offered a gift' (from Letter to the Front, quoted in Service of the Heart, ULPS, 1967, p. 261). Kabbalat Torah (or...

...must confront a lesson (offered below in the context of prayer) that the modern Jew always lives with: To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. Accepting,...

...and see that startled face. 1939 From Letter to the Front 7. [TO BE A JEW IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY] To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. Accepting,...

...of Jewish lives in her own time, Muriel Rukeyser mourned the double bind posed by European history: To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. Accepting,...

...Sleep without a pillow or allow yourself a flat one only. This wards off extra chins. HELENA RUBINSTEIN To be a Jew in the twentieth century Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, Wishing to be invisible, you choose Death of the spirit, the stone insanity. MURIEl....

...the previous generation would ever have proclaimed, as Rukeyser did at the peak of the Nazi genocide, "To be a Jew in the twentieth century / Is to be offered a gift" ("Letter to the Front"), or written with such sympathetic intelligence as Berryman about The Diary...