The Tip of the Yod

Judah Leib Gordon

1875

Hebrew woman, who knows your life?
You came in darkness and in darkness depart.
Your sorrows and joys, your hopes and desires
Were born within you and die in your heart.
Daughters of other nations
May know comfort and mirth
But the Jewish woman’s vocation,
Is endless servitude on earth.
You conceive, bear, nurse and wean in time,
You bake, cook…
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Creator Bio

Judah Leib Gordon

1831–1892

Judah (Yehudah) Leib Gordon, the most renowned Hebrew-language poet of the nineteenth century, was born and educated in Vilna. After working as a teacher, he moved to St. Petersburg in 1872 to serve as secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia. A proponent of Jewish modernization and enhanced status for women, he was denounced for radicalism and briefly imprisoned. Once exonerated, he became the editor of the Hebrew paper Ha-melits, continuing to critique Orthodoxy through his writing. Though his mother tongue was Yiddish, he advocated for Jewish acceptance of Hebrew and Russian as a means of Jewish cultural rebirth and emancipation.

Related Guide

Poetry, 1750–1880

Jewish poets throughout Europe and the Americas created in the languages of their native tongues. From folk-song lyrics to wedding riddles and synagogue hymns, poetry, even in translation, allows us access to voices and moments, particular and collective, that we would otherwise not hear. 

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