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Reviewed by:
  • Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry, and: Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness
  • Andrew Vogel Ettin (bio)
Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry, by Anne Lapidus Lerner. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2007. 239 pp. $29.95.
Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness, by Maren Tova Linett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 229 pp. $90.00

Both Anne Lapidus Lerner and Maren Tova Linett have undertaken formidable tasks. Lerner’s task is, at first glance, the more daunting for no figure in Western culture, including Adam, seems as overdetermined as Eve. Yet Linett’s subject is also challenging: of the four words in her book’s title, the only one not subject to critical controversy is “and.” Each author has produced a significant contribution to her topic, and it is likely that any reader drawn to the subject will encounter in each book some unfamiliar texts in addition to stimulating interpretations.

Spanning religion and literature, Eternally Eve will appeal to a broad readership. Those well-educated in Jewish religious texts will be familiar with the biblical and at least some of the talmudic and midrashic passages that Lerner cites. Readers acquainted with Phyllis Trible’s and Daniel Boyarin’s works on re-visioning biblical and rabbinic intepretation will be prepared for Lerner’s questioning of time-worn assumptions.1 However, the rabbinic texts and modern analyses are likely to be new and probably illuminating to everyone else. Moreover, the unusual range of Hebrew, Yiddish, and English-language poems will surely contain something new for virtually everyone, for the selection includes not only works by such canonical figures as Dan Pagis, Kim Chernin, Linda Pastan, and Itzik Manger but also significant poems by less familiar writers such as Yocheved Bat-Miriam, Yaakov Fikhman, and Sandy Supowit. Though we get only one poem by each writer, the texts have been chosen for their contributions to the cultural meaning of Eve.

Admirably, in view of this disparate array, every poem is quoted in its entirety, and every non-English text from Jewish tradition is given both in its original language (Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish) and Lerner’s own reliable English translation. Just as important is the fact that while Lerner works closely with the language of the original in its historical context, she explains the denotations and connotations of crucial words, tenses, or syntax in ways that will clearly convey the point at issue even if the reader is unfamiliar with the original language. She analyzes texts closely and attentively, sensitive to linguistic nuances and poetic techniques.

Lerner’s unusual organization of her material makes for illuminating juxtapositions. Sandwiched between an introduction on Eve’s significance and a concluding retrospective summary, the three chapters are on “The Creation of Woman,” “Life in the Garden of Eden,” and “Eve Beyond the Garden.” Therefore, rather than the probably dreaded forced march [End Page 391] through history suggested by the subtitle, in which we might be led from the first chapter of Genesis up to the present day, this structure allows Lerner to include in each chapter material spanning the centuries. She also takes up such topics as the purpose of creation, the essential nature of adam (that is, the primal human being) and the figure known as Adam, Eve’s original nature and purpose, and of course, those modern poetic texts that give voice to the original woman who is almost without a voice in the Bible itself. The legendary figure of Lilith is only briefly mentioned.

The study convincingly analyzes the biblical texts about Eve to show that they are more richly ambiguous and interpretively open than they have conventionally been taken to be. Not surprisingly, the rabbinic-era material of the Talmud and Midrash usually reflects the narrower outlooks toward women expressed by an elite class of men in late antiquity, similar to what we find in Christian patristic writings. The selected modern poems offer various Eves—courageous, triumphant, defiant, poignant, tenacious, amusing, passionate—in keeping with contemporary understandings of women and in reaction against the weight of transmitted stereotypes.

The omission of material from the Jewish mystical tradition, notably...

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