In an interview of
Marge Piercy for the second issue of the journal, Kelly Tzvia
Washburn asks the writer about collectivity and community:
Thus, like
Judith Plaskow anticipates, contemporary midrash not only functions as a collective project, it becomes a mechanism for writers (particularly women, as Washburn asks about women specifically) to affect, maybe permanently, each other’s interpretations of religious texts. These effects indicate empowerment and connection. Similarly, when discussing
Sarah and Hagar, Linda Hirschborn notes, “we must tell each others’ stories” (24). In order for stories to be told, a community must be built. In her poem “Leah at the Altar,” Lori Lefkowitz demonstrates a similar inclination to women telling the story of other women while re-imagining a particular form of sisterhood.
A community forms just with Leah’s address of her sister and this community deepens when Leah acknowledges it is the sisters, not the sisters and their husband, who posses the altar, “our altar.” Later, the speaker asks:
The speaker’s use of the pronoun “you,” in addressing Rachel, almost brings the reader into this complicated network because it is the reader who seems to be addressed by the second-person by encountering the word “you.” Additionally, we wonder, in this community of sisters, where the ontological boundaries are; even Rachel cannot distinguish between herself, her sister, and a combination of the two. Lefkovitz’s poem creates a community by imagining Leah’s address to her sister; she deepens this community by engaging the reader in this address.