To Reveal Our Hearts: Jewish Women Writers in Tsarist Russia (review)

Carole Balin’s fascinating study reminds us that not all Jewish women in nineteenth century Russia were traditional shtetl housewives or secularized revolutionaries. Rather, her focus is on the Russian-speaking daughters of prosperous middle class urban Jews, many of whom were permitted to live in the Russian interior beyond the Pale of Settlement. These acculturated young women attended gymnasia, learned European languages, and earned university degrees, following educational and professional paths comparable to those of many contemporaneous middle class Jewish girls in Western Europe. In fact, Balin’s research suggests that secularly educated Jewish women in Tsarist Russia were already looking westward for cultural inspiration when the East European Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, reached its peak during the last third of the nineteenth century.

Searching through Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish journals directed at Jewish audiences, Balin discovered the names of 67 female authors, beginning in 1869; of these, 54 wrote in Russian, 17 in Hebrew, and six in Yiddish. Her book delineates the careers of five of these women who wrote for publication in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tsarist Russia. These unusually prolific writers, two of whom wrote in Hebrew and three in Russian, left behind significant personal documents, including diaries, memoirs, and correspondence, in addition to their published work. Although several of these authors wrote movingly about women’s lives, they did not see themselves as feminists or as part of a movement of female writing. Rather, Balin describes how each of these authors built independent careers, in part by seeking out the company and mentorship of well-known literary men who would be crucial to their professional development and advancement.

Balin’s first chapter is devoted to Miriam Markel-Mosessohn (1839–1920), an excellent Hebraist who became a protegée of Yehudah Leib Gordon, the foremost Hebrew poet of nineteenth-century Russia. Markel-Mosessohn learned Hebrew mainly from private tutors and was well read in the secular publications of contemporaneous Hebrew authors and poets. Beginning as a translator of European literature into Hebrew, Markel-Mosessohn became a foreign correspondent for Hebrew journals after she settled in Vienna in 1881. Balin, who describes Markel-Mosessohn as straddling “two gender worlds, belonging to neither” (p. 50), cites her ambivalence about her craft: despite a mastery of Hebrew, and strong encouragement from maskilim who wanted to see women producing literature, Markel-Mosessohn apparently believed it was inappropriate for a woman to trespass on male territory by writing original works in Hebrew.

Hava Shapiro, the subject of Balin’s second chapter, was born in Warsaw in 1878 and died in Theresienstadt in 1943; she was the most prolific nineteenth-century female writer in Hebrew who remained in the Diaspora. When she was 20 and already a wife and mother, Shapiro met Reuven Brainin, a married Hebrew and Yiddish author, who became her mentor and lover for the next 25 years. Brainin, who had encouraged Shapiro to leave her husband and son to attend university abroad, ultimately broke off the liaison and emigrated to America with his wife. Fluent in many languages, Shapiro wrote only in Hebrew, publishing collections of fictional sketches and journalism. She remains little known, perhaps because she chose to isolate herself from major centers of Hebraic literary activity and creativity. Balin writes that Shapiro’s “work raises questions about the role gender played in the resuscitated Hebrew language and its attendant culture” (p. 55) during the early decades of the twentieth century. She believes that Shapiro’s complicated life demonstrates that nascent modern Hebrew was not prepared to welcome “an infusion of female Hebraists whose writings grew out of their experiences as women” (p. 56) .

Balin’s third subject, Rashel’ Mironovna Khin (1861–1928) established herself as a realist Russian-language writer appealing to both Jewish and Russian readerships. Khin was also known for her translations and for her plays, several of which were performed in Moscow theaters. A close friend of...