A marriage made in heaven

by Naomi Seidman

A Marriage Made in Heaven is a history of how Hebrew and Yiddish came to represent the masculine and feminine faces, respectively, of Ashkenazic Jewish culture. It is the first book-length exploration of the historical associations between Yiddish and Jewish women and Hebrew and Jewish men, tracing these associations back to the seventeenth century and the sexual segregation of reading audiences. Documenting the eventual rise of Yiddish "women's" literature, Seidman also examines this sexual-linguistic system as it shaped the work of two bilingual authors: Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, the "grandfather" of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and Dvora Baron, the first woman prose writer in modern Hebrew. She then analyzes the roles Yiddish "femininity" and Hebrew "masculinity" played in the Hebrew-Yiddish language wars, the divorce that ultimately ended the Hebrew-Yiddish "marriage."