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Rachel Feldhay Brenner (1946 – February 4, 2021) was a Polish-born college professor, writer, and scholar of Jewish literature. She was president of the Association for Israel Studies from 2007 to 2009.
Rachel Feldhay Brenner | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 Zabrze, Poland |
| Died | February 4, 2021 (aged 74–75) Madison, Wisconsin |
| Occupation(s) | College professor, writer, scholar |
Rachel Feldhay was born in Zabrze, Poland, the daughter of Michael Feldhay and Helena Feldhay.[1] She moved to Israel with her family in 1956.[2] She earned a bachelor's degree at Hebrew University, a master's degree at Tel Aviv University, and a PhD at York University.[3][4]
Brenner joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin in 1992, in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies. She chaired the department from 2004 to 2007. She was a senior fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities,[4] a fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,[5] and president of the Association for Israel Studies from 2007 to 2009.[6] She served on the board of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA).[3] "It is my belief," she explained of her work, "that literature affects human consciousness and effects change in social practices, yet its impact is imperceptible, often delayed, and hard to measure."[7]
Brenner published seven books, and more than 80 articles in academic journals[2] including Modern Judaism,[8] Comparative Literature Studies,[9] Studies in American Jewish Literature,[10] Israel Studies,[11] Slavic Review,[12] AJS Review,[13] Jewish Studies Quarterly,[14] Discourse,[15] Studies in Religion,[16] Holocaust and Genocide Studies,[17] and Critical Inquiry.[18] In 1992 she won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for literary criticism.[3]
Books
- Assimilation and Assertion: The Response to the Holocaust in Mordecai Richler’s Writing (1989)[19]
- A.M. Klein, The Father of Canadian Jewish Literature: Essays in the Poetics of Humanistic Passion (1990)[20]
- Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust: Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum (1997)[21]
- Inextricably Bonded—Israel Jewish and Arab Writers Re-Visioning Culture (2003)[22]
- The Freedom to Write: The Woman-Artist and the World in Ruth Almog’s Fiction (2008, in Hebrew)[23]
- The Ethics of Witnessing: The Holocaust in Polish Writers’ Diaries from Warsaw, 1939-1945 (2014)[24]
- Polish Literature and the Holocaust: Eyewitness Testimonies, 1942–1947 (2019)[25]
Selected articles
- "A. M. Klein's 'The Hitleriad': Against the Silence of the Apocalypse" (1990)[10]
- "Edith Stein: A reading of her feminist thought" (1994)[16]
- "Between Identity and Anonymity: Art and History in Aharon Megged's Foiglman" (1995)[13]
- "Back to the Future: Evolution of the A/Teleological in Recent Israeli Fiction" (1996)[15]
- "Writing Herself against History: Anne Frank's Self-Portrait as a Young Artist" (1996)[8]
- "Mother's Curse or Cursed Mother: Forgotten Stories in Forbidden Languages in Meir Shalev's Esau" (1997)[14]
- "'Hidden Transcripts' Made Public: Israeli Arab Fiction and Its Reception" (1999)[18]
- "The Search for Identity in Israeli Arab Fiction: Atallah Mansour, Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas" (2001)[11]
- "Voices from Destruction: Two Eyewitness Testimonies from the Stanisławów Ghetto" (2008)[17]
- "Ideology and Its Ethics: Maria Dąbrowska’s Jewish (and Polish) Problem" (2011)[12]
Brenner died from cancer in 2021, aged 74 years, in Madison, Wisconsin.[3][26][27] The Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award in Polish-Jewish Studies was founded in 2021, in her memory, by the PIASA.[28]
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