Poetry
קוצו של יוד
Not translated into English
Yehuda Leib Gordon · 1876
Synopsis
The poem opens on the condition imposed on the Jewish woman, in the texts as in life: uneducated, married off by her father, bound to the shop and to childbirth. Then comes the story of Bat-Shoua, beautiful and perfect, whom her father marries to Hillel, a yeshiva student with neither talent nor trade. With no livelihood, the husband goes overseas and disappears; Bat-Shoua opens a grocery to feed her two children. Fabi arrives, an educated Jew: they fall in love, find the husband and obtain from him, for a sum that Fabi pays, the bill of divorce. It remains to have it validated by the rabbi.
Context
Gordon dedicated the poem to Miriam Markel-Mosessohn, a writer and translator. It appeared in three instalments in Ha-Shahar, the journal of Peretz Smolenskin, before entering his complete poetic works. The rabbi who judges the act, Vafsi ha-Kouzari, bears a name that is an anagram of that of Yosef Zekharia Stern, rabbi of Chavli, where Gordon had taught, which added to the anger of the religious camp. From the time of publication, the quarrel concerned less the inequality denounced than the plausibility of the case: religious critics maintained that no court would have annulled such an act.
Who it is for
A long satirical poem in ten-line stanzas, with no French edition. Better to know that a woman whose husband has disappeared cannot remarry without a bill of divorce that he has given her.
Prizes and reception
Greeted by a torrent of controversy and praise, it remains the poem most attached to Gordon's name, and its title was taken up by defenders of women's rights.