Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media

This article is the result of research on the literary legacy of Bronia (Breyndl) Baum (1896–1947). An orthodox woman-writer, activist, and publicist, Baum was born into a Hasidic family in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, where she lived until 1918. She then moved to Piotrkow Trybunalski, later to Lodz, and then, in 1925, she emigrated to Eretz Isroel. Baum’s poems and articles in Yiddish appeared in Der Yud, Dos Yidishe Togblat, Beys Jakov, and in Hebrew in Bat Israel and Baderekh. Baum was active in supporting religious feminism, education for girls, and charitable works. The research presented in this article strives to demonstrate the manner in which Baum’s poetry can be treated as an egodocument when interpreted within the context of her diary. The psychological portrait of the author and her reading of historical events found in the pages of her diary take on a fuller and much more complicated character when they are supplemented by her poetic writings. The poems that deal with pogroms, eroticism, and spiritual reflections provide an important dimension to research on the historical mentality and identity of a generation of young orthodox Jewish women coming of age during the First World War.