Hava Shapiro’s Letters to Reuven Brainin

Over the course of her Hebrew writing career, which included some of the first feminist Hebrew fiction and criticism, Hava Shapiro (1878–1943) wrote close to 200 Hebrew letters to the famed writer and editor Reuven Brainin, with whom she had 20-year affair. This paper considers the literary, theoretical and historical issues that arise from this material and argues that one best reads these letters in terms of the tradition of Western epistolary narrative, in general, and Haskalah letters, in particular. As such, these letters add an additional chapter to the history of Hebrew prose writing by women.