"Your Favourite Jewish Girl, Apart From Your Mum": Introducing the Modern Jewess in Image and Text

Abstract

From Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, to Sarah Silverman on the cover of Heeb; from Amy Winehouse’s voice to Lena Dunham’s breasts, Jewish women are a ubiquitous presence in contemporary “high” and popular culture. In the 2015 documentary Amy, Winehouse even goes so far as to describe herself as “Your favourite Jewish girl, apart from your mum,” invoking the much loved, derided, satirized, and maligned figure of the Jewish mother.1 Nonetheless, artistic representations of the “Jewess” remain undertheorized, especially in comparison to her male counterparts.2 While pioneering feminist Jewish studies scholars (Paula E. Hyman, Deborah Dash Moore, Pamela S. Nadell, Riv-Ellen Prell, and others) have worked hard to salvage the often-forgotten histories of Jewish women,3 this special issue has a different objective. The Modern Jewess in Image and Text takes as its focus the construction of gender, race, and class through representations of Jewish women across different contexts, periods, and media.4 This project had its inception as a conference held at Georgetown University in February 2018, sponsored by the Center for Jewish Civilization. The editorial and managerial team at Shofar worked hard to see it to fruition. I am grateful for the support provided by Jacques Berlinerblau, Michelyne Chavez, Glenn Dynner, Alice Ying Nie, Ranen Omer-Sherman, Tara Saunders, Sebastian Williams, and the many anonymous peer reviewers. The timing of this publication is significant: the term “Jewess” appears to be making a comeback. Mark Oppenheimer asks in Tablet: “Is It Cool to Say ‘Jewess’?”5 My question is: Is the term