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148 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 Sabbath observance (traveling, writing, and engaging in business transactions), head covering by married women, and adherence to standards of kashrut. Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, radical Reform in Germany -unlike the United States-failed to establish its hegemony. Despite the changes that occurred in private conduct, the community and its institutions remained traditional. Gotzmann ably demonstrates the thesis that, while Reform soughtto distance itselffrom the Halakhah, it found itself incapable· of establishing a coherent normative system totally independent ofHalakhah. As a result, in Germany, the centrality ofHalakhah in Jewish communal life remained a constant. Two telling anecdotes reflect the validity of this conclusion and the prevalent reality. Kaufmann Kohler, then an aspiring Reform leader, writes ofhis disillusionment with the stagnating German Reform movement and of his dream to move to America because only there does creative Reform have a future: "A common solidarity ofliberal forces, of which I dreamt in my Berlin idealizing dream-life, has no existence in Germany in the religious province. There is no sympathy for anyone who, following the insistent urge ofhis heart, desires to break through the obstacles which surround a great and free Judaism and hinder its development ..." (see p. 390, note 77). Caesar Seligmann, one ofthe most prominent early twentieth-century Reform rabbis, describes the uninspiring ambience ofservices at his own induction as Reform rabbi in Frankfurt and bemoans the lack of respect accorded Reform clergy, especially in contrast to the commanding awe and reverence ("KewodhaRaw") enjoyed by the Orthodox rabbinate and states: "Damals pflegte ich, halb im Scherz halb im Ernst, zu sagen: 'Wenn ich noch einmal aufdie Welt komme, komme ich als orthodoxer Rabbiner aufdie Welt. '" ("Then I used to say, half in jest, half in earnest: 'If I come to earth again, I shall come to earth as an orthodox Rabbi"') (p. 392). Judith Bleich Judaic Studies Touro College Keepers ofthe Motherland: German Texts by Jewish Women Writers, by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1997. 402 pp. $55.00. Professor Dagmar C. G. Lorenz's expertise in "issues of marginality" in Germanlanguage literature and Central European culture ofthe nineteen and twentieth centuries has produced an impressive body ofpublications. In Keepers afthe Motherland Lorenz focuses on a particularly fascinating aspect of these issues, the lives and works of German-speaking Jewish women writers from the end ofthe eighteenth century to the present. Historical surveys more limited in scope precede this work, but like studies of Book Reviews 149 literary movements, genres, or individual authors theyobscure the complexities ofthe subject Lorenz thoroughly investigates here. The term Mother/and clearly identifies the ultimate source of all aspects of marginalization experienced by the Jewish women whose artistic medium is the German language. A blend ofthe masculine German concept of Vater/and (Fatherland) and the feminine Muttersprache (Mothertongue), itnegates the double marginalization imposed on them by the patriarchal, androcentric structures characteristic of both Jewish and Gentile culture. Lorenz demonstrates convincingly how in the wake of emancipation and ~ssimilationthese women struggle to forge these two concepts so vitally important to the perception ofselfinto an entirely new understanding ofhomeland in which both they and the people who inhabit their literary works can live. As Lorenz's study makes clear, the loss of the Ashkenazic sphere exacts a steep price. No matter how much it remains a part of their consciousness, no matter how hard they try to recreate it, the purely external sources ofconflict discernible in the writings ofsuch pre-emancipation writers as Glikl Hamil are compounded by internal anguish and dislocation among the women ofsucceeding generations, forcing them to constantly redefine and relocate their physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural, artistic, and political homeland. This new homeland is the Mother/and, and Lorenz's discussion of its elusive nature, inseparably intertwining Jewishness and female identity, forms the book's fascinating center. "It may be set in the past or transposed into utopia, or it may denote the whole of Ashkenaz, the territory and culture of European Jewry and the Yiddish language, or merely the Jewish nuclear family," the author observes. What it does not include are eroticism and sexuality, the symbols of freedom...

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