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Irena Klepfisz
114 quotes
“di bavegung, "the movement," has pushed, encouraged, and given me space, like it has to many women who lacked confidence in their skills and in the value of their perspectives. Above all, it challenged me to present publicly what I discuss privately, to raise issues that I care about and that are central to my experience as a feminist and lesbian, as a Jew sorting out my identity and my relationship to Jewish history, as an American Jew defining my relationship to events in the Middle East.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At thirteen I tried silence. At sixteen I tried anonymity. I have since learned these are not the only options.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Repeatedly, I find that I am preoccupied not with countering anti-Semitism, but with trying to prove that anti-Semitism exists, that it is serious, and that, as lesbian/feminists, we should be paying attention to it both inside and outside of the movement.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want the issue of anti-Semitism to be incorporated into our overall struggle because there are lesbian/feminists among us who are threatened in this country not only as lesbians, but also as Jews. If that incorporation simply takes the form of adding us on to the already existing list of problems, then it will be mere tokenism and lip service. But if it includes self-examination, analysis of the Jew in America, and dialogue between Jews and non-Jews, then I think this movement will have made a real attempt to deal with the issue.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the Jews finally staged the uprising in April 1943, the Polish underground refused them almost every form of assistance. Even though they were facing the same enemy, even though their country was occupied, the Poles could not overcome their anti-Semitism and join the Jews in the struggle for the freedom of both groups, and instead chose to stage a separate Polish uprising more than a year later.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think it is time for all of us in this movement, Jews and non-Jews alike, to examine our silence on this subject, to examine its source. And Jews especially need to consider their feelings about their Jewishness, for any self-consciousness, any desire to draw attention away from one's Jewishness is an internalization of anti-Semitism. And if we want others to deal with this issue, then we ourselves must start to develop a sense of pride and a sense that our survival as Jews is important.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a child, my first conscious feeling about being Jewish was that it was dangerous, something to be hidden.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I grew older, I learned the full breadth of Yiddish literature; but this early introduction with its inherent political vision became as powerful an influence in my life as did the war.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Experience has obviously taught me that Jews are not the only ones in danger and that what is "undesirable" in me is not limited to my Jewishness.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a writer I still cherish poetry that tells a story, especially the dramatic monologue. I still value most a poetry that deals with people, especially those alienated and out of the mainstream-the overworked and dreamless, Third World, women, gay-a subdued, earnest poetry that expresses their feelings, their struggles, the conditions of their lives.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've been thinking a lot about it lately, about the corruption here in America, how everything becomes big business, how everything becomes diseased. Everything.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the confusion. Being Jewish. Being a lesbian. Being an American. It all converges. It is like feelings about one's parents. Love and embarrassment. The painful realization that they are not perfect.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When it comes to the bottom line, the Moral Majority is Christian. So is the Ku Klux Klan. So is the Nazi Party. And I am completely stymied that large segments of the Jewish population have not absorbed these simple basic facts.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is perhaps the most painful aspect for me of being Jewish, for I identify strongly as a Jew, am proud to be a Jew. And yet I sometimes feel so torn-so torn from the Jewish community, from the Jews I grew up with, who nurtured me, helped me. And yet I don't understand what America has done to them and how it has seduced them. The conservatism is there and really hard to accept. But it is there, definitely there with the mainstreaming.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“what the Jewish lesbian encounters are the typical conservative stances. Closed doors. Silence. Disgust.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those of the Left, Jew and non-Jew alike, seem to believe what the Right has always maintained-that Jews run the world and are, therefore, most responsible for its ills. The casualness, the indifference with which the Left accepts this anti-Semitic stance enrages me. It is usually subtle, often taking the form of anti-Semitism by omission. Its form is to show or speak about Jews only as oppressors, never as anything else. That is anti-Semitic.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I write as much out of a Jewish consciousness as I do out of a lesbian/feminist consciousness. They are both always there, no matter what topic I might be working on. They are embedded in my writing, embedded and enmeshed to the point that they are not necessarily distinguishable as discrete elements. They merge and blend and blur, for in many ways they are the same.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A child, of course, assumes that her world is the whole world.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though the students in my public school were probably ninety-five percent Jewish, not once between the second and eighth grades do I remember a single teacher-Jew or gentile-discuss a Jewish topic or issue, holiday, leader. All things Jewish belonged outside the walls of P.S. 95. And with the parents' consent.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never thought that as a secular Jew who defined herself through Yiddish culture, my sense of self was inextricably bound up in its existence, that when it was in jeopardy, my own identity was in jeopardy. I never realized that it was the mirror that made me visible to myself as a Jew.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The use of Yiddish was an expression not only of love of a language, but of pride in ourselves as a people; it was an acknowledgement of a historical and cultural yerushe, heritage, a link to generations of Jews who came before and to the political activists of Eastern Europe. Above all it was the symbol of resistance to assimilation, an insistence on remaining who we were.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“in July, 1983-thirty-seven years after having left-I returned to Poland with my mother on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the varshever geto oyfshtand, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Though I had been raised in almost a khurbn kultur, a Holocaust culture, I was totally unprepared for the experience. In Poland I saw the shadows of Jewish-Polish culture and was able to infer from them the magnitude of what had taken place. It was like stepping into a negative rather than a photograph. I was overcome by the sudden realization of the scale of the loss.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In looking back, I wonder why something so basic as di yidishe kultur, so intimately connected to my life, has been so difficult to maintain, to be actively loyal to. Why have I experienced so many setbacks?...The problem stems from American society, which does not tolerate cultures outside the mainstream and does everything, materially and psychologically, to weaken them. Whether to Spanish-speaking or Chinese-speaking or Yiddish-speaking children, the message is monotonously the same: Change your name. Americanize. Forget the past. Forget your people.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“history has frequently forced Jews to cope with fragments and, as a result, we have learned how to create new contexts, new structures, new wholes-this process, as in the case of Yiddish itself, sometimes taking centuries. It is, I think, part of our resilience, part of our great capacity to transform when we have the will.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want my Yiddish involvement to be rooted in my life, in the present, want it to be infused with my contemporary politics and concerns, with the special quality of Jewish American experience. Di yidishe svive in the American environment. One world, not two. That's what will keep Yiddish alive for me.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“there needs to be greater communication between Jewish progressives and the Jewish mainstream, there needs to be an exchange, bartering if you will. If such exchanges do not take place we will still be progressives, but not Jewish progressives...There needs to be among us a greater sense of an exchange between equals rather than between givers and receivers. If this sense of mutual respect does not exist, then we progressives will surely be forever seen as outsiders.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a feminist and lesbian, as a Yiddishist and a cultural Jew, I often feel alienated from Jewish progressives who do not share my cultural concerns, who do not worry about Jewish cultural survival... I have found, in fact, that my concerns about Jewish identity and culture often form the bridge to the mainstream Jewish community and enable me to get progressive issues such as women's and gay and lesbian rights a more sympathetic ear.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We Jews are living in a strange historical period in which our sense of history is often quite warped. For many American Jews, the Holocaust and Israel have reduced Jewish history to the years 1939-1945, or 1948 to the present. This extremely limited view of Jewish history naturally narrows the concept of Jewish identity and that narrowness is one which we as progressives ought to be countering.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us not take the attitude that because of our politics we must remain pure and not mix with the Jewish rabble-the mainstream. Let us be as willing to meet with Jews in small community centers in our neighborhoods as we are to meet with Palestinians. The work to be done at these centers and synagogues is as critical as the work needed to resolve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like most activists and artists, I have difficulty establishing priorities. The tension between being active in the world and needing solitude is one all of us struggle with. I find myself discussing this tension with other Jews, particularly in regard to our activism on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Not an abstract discussion.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Jewish artist in me feels displaced. I want to have time to write, to create literature which expands our notion of our Jewishness, which might in turn give us rest and inspire us to keep on with our peace work. But I don't make time for it. I remain focused on Israel and the Occupied Territories, where the situation is worsening.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For too long our preoccupation with Israel (either in the form of Zionism or fundraising for Israel as the primary content of our Jewish identity or in the form of political opposition to Israeli government actions) has prevented us from seeing and dealing with Jewish identity, and Jewish life in the U.S.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I truly believe that as U.S. Jews we must question the nature of our Jewish identity-specifically secular identity, since the majority of Jews are not observant-must start paying attention to what is happening to us now as a people in this country. This is not a diversion away from the Palestinian cause. Our neglect of identity issues has a direct bearing on our feelings and responses to Israeli government policies, and by addressing the former, we, in fact, clear our way through the tangled and confusing attitudes which have distorted our perception of the latter.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The multitude of Jewish options that existed before World War II are ones which most nonobservant U.S. Ashkenazi Jews are hardly familiar with, much less recognize...Before World War II many Yiddish-speaking European Jews were already rejecting observance and secularism. Eager to assimilate, they deliberately abandoned their Jewish language and culture. The well-known letters (Bintl Brif) of Der forverts (The Jewish Daily Forward), the thirties English stories of Anzia Yezierska, and the more modern forties and fifties Yiddish stories of Kadia Malodowsky describe this assimilation minutely.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though U.S. Jews were quick to protest the Knesset's attempt to define "who is a Jew," it is a definition we are obsessed with.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Defining and setting Jewish boundaries, prioritizing Jewish concerns and Jewish needs (especially less concrete ones like identity building) are particularly difficult for those of us who have learned to value and respect other cultures and peoples.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Emphasizing the seemingly more pious stories of Sholem Aleykhem and Peretz, stressing Jewish passivity over action, obedience to tradition over rebellion (and therefore upholding observance), many supporters of Yiddish and Yiddish culture have wrenched yidishkayt out of the active, political and radical context in which it flourished and thereby neutralized and depoliticized it.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For many, Zionism was inherited at birth and they now think of it as synonymous with Jewishness. The threat of being labelled a traitor for questioning Israeli policies, and the allegation of self-hatred and anti-Semitism have inhibited an in-depth study of Zionism, its diverse political tenets, its history in relation to other Jews and to non-Jews and its role in defining Jewish identity in the States.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as many contemporary Yiddishists romanticize and depoliticize the past, so do most contemporary Zionists romanticize and depoliticize the Israeli present. Such nostalgia is rightfully condemned by those who want Jews to engage in the political present. But these critics erroneously conclude that any focus on their Jewish identity will inherently foster Jewish escapist tendencies.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only by placing the Holocaust in a larger framework, by insisting on moving toward a Jewish future that is informed, but not defined, by the Holocaust, can we develop a productive way of relating to each other and the rest of the world. Such an approach guarantees memory, without sacrificing the present or future.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“those of us who had rich Jewish backgrounds and are not assimilated, but who have been transformed by feminism, gay politics, and the politics of the Left, must stop longing for an irretrievable past, must give up expectations which cannot be met...We are experimenting, and in the process we're forging traditions for the future.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as we must not allow our strong commitment to developing Jewish secularism to detract from the struggle in the Middle East, that conflict cannot be used to allow assimilation to take over our lives.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My vision of di froyen fun undzer mishpokhe includes Sephardim who speak Arabic and Ladino, proud lesbians, sabras, rabbis, single mothers, witches, elected government officials, and so many more. Some of them appear before me as individuals, others as shadows longing for daylight to disclose their identity.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The way things have played themselves out makes me feel grateful to the lesbian/feminist movement because it really did help me get out there. I'm not sure whether I would have ever really been picked by a university press or by other presses to be published. The one thing about the lesbian/feminist movement is that we had a lot of room to do whatever we wanted to do, and so I'm very grateful because the movement really gave me the impetus”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's a whole tradition of immigrants, Jewish and non-Jewish, looking at America in a certain way-as a hope and a promise fulfilled. I don't look at it that way. I view it as a place where a lot of people have been ripped off. They don't have full liberties; they don't have economic opportunities.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think poets are our most important defenses against linguistic corruption. They are the reinventors of language, the defenders of language, who insist that how you express yourself, how you convey your experience, actually matters in the world.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(If you could do it again, what would you do differently?) IK: As a student, I was a purist (or so I thought). I was only focused on literature and poetry. When I was young, I resented being forced to read history. Now, I wish I had studied it more. I'm trying to catch up. In my younger years, I had a keen kind of intuitive personal sense of history, but I really didn't focus on it in a more disciplined way, and I think that that would have been a real enrichment to me, intellectually.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was born in Warsaw during the war. And I was -- survived partly because I was hidden in a place in a Catholic orphanage. And my parents arranged for that. My father was killed in the uprising. He was one of the people involved in the uprising -- in organizing it.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It wasn't an age in which people explained a lot of things to kids. Really. I mean, we're so careful now about, is this gonna traumatize the child and all of this. Nobody even thought about it.”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think my introduction to loving poetry and literature came from Yiddish”
Irena Klepfisz (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source