At the turn of the 19th century, the
Luzzatto family of Trieste, Italy, fostered the talents of its children. Its
most famous member was Samuel David (1800-1865), a poet and philosopher, but his
beloved cousin, Rachel, was a talented literary figure as well. Rachel
(1790-1871) was 10 years older than Samuel (who seems to have been born in the
same house); the two remained close even after he left Trieste. Rachel was
educated at home by private tutors, one of whom was a rabbi, as well as by her
brother and uncle. The family had a large, impressive library which enabled its
members to expand their horizons without leaving home. Rachel studied Hebrew
classical works beginning with the Bible, Rashi and commentaries, and at age 14
began to study Talmud. Her cousin, later known by the acronym Shadal, bought her
a copy of the Zohar in 1817; if she was able to study this text, the level of
her Aramaic was obviously impressive.
This young woman apparently felt no
pressure to marry, keeping herself busy with composing poetry and sending both
poems and letters to her cousin, working in the family business on a potter’s
wheel and sewing her own clothes. Samuel refers to her rejection of every
prospective groom; she explained to him that she had found a suitable match but
that her parents were not cooperative. (See Howard Adelman, “Finding Women’s
Voices in Italian Jewish Literature,” in Women of the Word, ed. Judith R.
Baskin, 1994). In 1819, the 29-year-old Rachel wed Jacob Morpurgo, a man who did
not seem to appreciate her literary and intellectual talents. Married life thus
limited her creativity to the realm of motherhood as she gave birth to three
boys and a girl.
The poet reveals that the only time in which she could
carve a niche of time for herself was on Rosh Hodesh (or late at night) when
women traditionally limit their activities to light housework. Once a month, she
found time to express her thoughts, but was well aware that a serious poet could
not be so severely limited. Consequently, she became self-conscious about her
inability to expand her horizons and about the gap between herself and her male
peers whose lives allowed time for intellectual activities.
As the
Haskala movement spread, it reached this northeastern port city’s Jewish
community and influenced the Luzzattos. As a result, between 1847 and 1865,
Shadal published his cousin’s poems along with some of their earlier
correspondences in the maskilic journal Kokhavei Yitzhak. She received a great
deal of praise, yet had difficulty dealing with the attention. At the same time,
there were skeptics who doubted a woman could possibly possess such a level of
mastery of Hebrew and Aramaic.
Castiliani, who published a collection of
her poems in 1890 entitled Ugav Rachel (Rachel’s Organ), explained that visitors
began to appear in Trieste in order to ascertain that she actually existed, as
they were convinced that what had appeared in her name could not possibly be the
product of a woman’s pen! Some were obsessed with her accomplishments, viewing
them as a sexual aberration or as a divine miracle. One contemporary assumed
that a woman’s biological fertility prevents literary creativity; therefore the
poet must have reached menopause as there could be no other viable explanation
for her productivity.
Interestingly enough, when composing a blessing she
chose to include not only the names of the patriarchs but the matriarchs as
well. As did her male peers, she signed her name modestly, either as
Rachel the Worm (a humble being indeed) or by using a diminutive, little Rachel.
She wrote about love, feelings and yearning for Zion, topics with which she was
comfortable and which she felt would not reveal her educational deficits.
Morpurgo was a creative literary figure deserving unqualified recognition, for
essentially she was the first woman to engage in modern Hebrew
poetry.
The writer is a professor of Jewish history and dean at the
Schechter Institute as well as academic editor of the journal Nashim. She has
published books and articles on Sephardi and Oriental Jewry and on Jewish women.
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