Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes

In this stirring, thought-provoking collection, poet and essayist Klepfisz (coeditor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Woman's Anthology ; also see review below) examines issues ``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.'' A child of the Holocaust, Klepfisz raises disturbing questions about the trivialization of the Holocaust in the media, the erosion of secular Jewish culture and the resurgence of anti-Semitism in America. She also criticizes the Jewish community for its bias against gays (``As a lesbian I would be left standing outside the tribe''). In her most powerful essay, Klepfisz tells of visiting her father's grave in the neglected Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, where anti-Semitism thrives despite the absence of Jewish life. In other pieces, the author reflects on the moral issues surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and celebrates her love of Yiddish and her ability to express herself in poetry that ``transforms solitary silence and an empty page into sheer pleasure,'' enabling her to ``break all the rules, invent her own forms.'' (Oct.)