Gershon's poetry

Gershon uses biblical midrash to reexamine the place of the

matriarchal figure after the Shoah. Both poems center on one

central female from the bible, although one is identified as a

Jew, while one is identified as furthering the lineage of

Christ. Both poems give these women the power of choice, which

they do not have in the typical biblical text. Both poems show

the power of man as motivation over the power of God. Although

there is an absence of the God figure in Ruth, it is present in

"Esther." Gershon enters, through her poetry, these separate

In the first stanza of "Ruth," we learn that Ruth descends from

a line of Christians, which immediately contrasts to the

speaker’s religion, in the form of Gershon. Although the speaker

and Ruth share different religions they have many things in

common. The first example of this is in the line "She preferred

exile to being alone," (Gershon, 4) whereby, even though the

exile of Gershon’s people was not voluntary, both Gershon and

Ruth share the experience of exile. The idea of being a

"stranger" is shared by both the speaker and Ruth. This is the

. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1442
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)