As long as we cherish the creativity of ordinary women and value what women themselves have valued, we center exactly on the passionately egalitarian… - Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Particularly for those of us who are not religiously observant, much confusion attends our grasping - through anti-Semitism and often prodded by anti-Semitism - for something beyond common danger. We need to figure out how to undo assimilation without being nostalgic or xenophobic: how to reach in and out at the same time.

I name this ideology and practice Diasporism as a deliberate counter to Zionism. Zionism/Jewish nationalism is one choice Jews make, but not

It's simple. If I teach everyone to talk, future generations will not find a woman's Brooklyn Jewish accent unpoetic or comic. But if British aristocrats-or even William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg-prime our poetic sensibilities, my voice will never sound classic.