Thoughts on Yiddish and Bridges

So, about Bridges . . . Some disconnected remarks: It was an intimidating magazine for me, at the beginning at least. (Appropriately enough, I became a subscriber in an indirect way; Genesis 2 went out of business, subscribers to that magazine were invited to become subscribers to a number of other magazines, the first part of the new subscription being paid for by the money already contributed to the old subscription. I chose Bridges.) Intimidating in its radical feminism, for one thing—“for Jewish feminists and their friends” was the slogan, and would these feminists in fact regard me as a friend? Then there was the connection with Adrienne Rich, whose essays consistently made me uneasy with myself, made me feel bland and insufficiently radical. But of course the radical feminism and Rich were also the draw, I’ve always been drawn to what I found intimidating—a non-comic version of the Groucho Marx comment, “any club that would have me as a member I wouldn’t want to join.” And in this particular case I thought that what was intimidating was also what was rigorous and challenging. thoughts on Yiddish and Bridges