Originally published in Yiddish in 1954, Rakovsky's straightforward, frequently absorbing memoir recounts one ardent idealist's experiences in Eastern Europe. Noted Jewish feminist historian Hyman (Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History), of Yale, gives another life to this account of an unusual woman. Born into a rabbinical family, Rakovsky (1865–1955) early on cast aside religious practice but never lost a passionate sense of Jewish identity. While most Jewish women were illiterate, Rakovsky received both a Jewish and secular education. As a witness to several bloody pogroms, Rakovsky began to champion Zionism and would not allow her voice to be silenced by the males who dominated the Zionist and progressive movements of her day. In her zeal to give a voice and economic assistance to the poor Jewish women she encountered daily, she founded and devoted herself to the Jewish Women's Association in Poland, an organization with feminist, socialist and Zionist leanings. Having lost a beloved daughter and two grandchildren to illness, along with a sister to suicide, Rakovsky credits her work with getting her through difficult times. "If you are devoted, first to the interest and life of your own people, and at the same time to the problems of mankind in general, you feel different even about your own personal suffering," she writes. As Hyman notes in her introduction, Rakovsky did indeed live a revolutionary life, and she recounts it with the same passion with which she lived it. 2 b&w photos. (Nov.)
