A review by howard
Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism by Ellen Friedrichs, Billie Michele Mandel, Ophira Edut, Sarah Coleman, Danya Ruttenberg, Hanne Blank, Susannah Heschel, Dalia Sofer, Dina Hornreich, Eve Rosenbaum, Tobin Belzer, Yiskah Rosenfeld, Emily Wages, Sharon Wachsler, A.C. Hall, Ryiah Lilith, Ursula Katan, Haviva Ner-David, Loolwa Khazzoom, Karen “Chai” Levy, Jennifer Bleyer

4.0

I first heard of this collection in college where I read one (or two?) essays from it during a sex, gender, and Jewish identity seminar. I bought the book shortly after that class and only 3 years later am I getting to it. I found many of these essays extremely valuable and insightful, despite being published over 20 years ago. I was honestly not expecting the level of diversity of subject that I found in here, including essays from queer, disabled, and many non Ashkenazi Jews, as well as essays about sexual liberation and one about the specific issues faced by transgender Jews. While the feminism in this collection is very clearly of the third wave and is not as inclusive as I might expect from writers today, a lot of it was on the right track and I believe if I looked up the authors today many of them will have expanded their views of feminism and inclusion with the changing times and societal expectations. This includes some of the language use choices in the various essays. That being said, this was still extremely progressive in terms of inclusion and I have no qualms recommending this collection or many of the essays from it.

Favorite essays (in order of appearance) by Dina Hornreich, Sharon Wachsler, Danya Ruttenberg, Karen (Chai) Levy, Yidkah (Jessica) Rosenfeld, Ursula Katan, Emily Wages, Loolwa Khazzoom, Tobin Belzer, and Hanne Blank

HOWEVER, I want to have some words with whichever editor decided that none of the essays were allowed to use the Oxford comma. I find this stylistic choice very disruptive and I believe this collection would be improved by the addition of Oxford commas where necessary.