Baron, Dvora 1887–1956

(Devorah Baron)

PERSONAL: Born 1887, in Ouzda, Russia; died 1956, in Israel; married Yosef Aharonovitch (a journalist); children: Tsipora (daughter). Religion: Jewish.

CAREER: Writer. Young Worker, literary editor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Bialik prize; Brenner prize.

WRITINGS:

Sipurim (title means "Stories"), Davar (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1926.

(Translator) Gustave Flaubert, Madam Bovari, [Tel Aviv, Israel], 1932.

Ketanot (stories; title means "Small Things"), Omanut (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1933.

Mah She-Hayah (stories; title means "What Has Been"), Davar (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1939.

Le-'et 'Atah (stories; title means "For the Time Being"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1942.

Stories (in English), World Zionist Organization (Jerusalem, Israel), 1942.

Mi-Sham (stories; title means "From over There"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1945.

Ha-Lavan (stories; title means "The Brickmaker"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1946.

Shavirim (stories; title means "Sunbeams"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1948.

Parashiyot: Sipurim Mekubatsim (stories; title means "Chapters"), Mosad Bi'alik (Jerusalem, Israel), 1950.

Hulyot: Sipurim (title means "Links: Stories"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1952.

Me-Emesh: Sipurim (title means "From Yesterday: Stories"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1954.

Agav-Urha: Asupah Me-'Izvonah (stories; title means "By the Way"), Sifriyat Po'alim (Merhavyah, Israel), 1960.

The Thorny Path, edited by Itzhak Hanoch, translation by Joseph Schacter (stories; includes "A Day in Rami's Life," "What Has Been," and "Wickedness,"), Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature (Jerusalem, Israel), 1969.

Yalkut Sipurim (title means "Collected Stories"), Hotsa 'at Yahedov (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1969.

Ha-Golim (novel; title means "Exile), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1970.

Sheloshah Sipurim (title means "Three Stories"), Ha-Mahlakah Le-Hinukh Ule-Tarbut La-Golah (Jerusalem, Israel), 1974.

Ha-Mahatsit Ha-Rishonah: Devorah Baron-Hayehay vi-Yetsiratah, 648-683 (title means "The First Half: Early Stories"), Mosad Bi'alik (Jerusalem, Israel), 1988.

Keritut: Ve-Sipurim Aherim (title means "Divorcing and Other Stories"), 'Am 'Oved (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1997.

Parashiyot: Sipurim Mekubatsim, introductory essay by Asher Barash, Mosad Bi'alik (Jerusalem, Israel), 2000.

"The First Day" and Other Stories, edited by Chana Kronfeld and Naomi Seidman, translation by Naomi Seidman, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2001.

Fradel/Shifra (two stories), Babel (Tel Aviv, Israel), 2001.

Work represented in numerous anthologies, including Stories from Women Writers of Israel, Star Publications (New Delhi, India), 1995. Translator of works by Jack London, Anton Chekhov, and others into Hebrew.

Individual stories have been published in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Yiddish.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered the first modern Hebrew woman writer, Dvora Baron was noted for a fluid writing style that gives her characters subtle emotional depths, thus leading readers to care about them even though her stories are sometimes considered simplistic in nature. According to Sarah Coleman, writing for the Web site Feminista!, Baron's approximately eighty short stories can be divided into two groups. The first are "unrestrained and passionate, dealing with wild emotions." Coleman classifies the second, later group of stories as "more measured and polished, less wild." In fact, Baron would come to refer to her earlier writings as her "rags."

Baron's stories focus primarily on life in an eastern European shtetl, a small town inhabited predominantly by a Jewish population, much like the town in Russia where she spent her early years. Her topics include divorce ("Fradl"), incest ("Grandma Heny"), domestic violence ("A Quarreling Couple"), and the fate of the disenfranchised. More often than not, her writings focus on women in a traditional, male-dominated society defined by numerous restrictions on the female sex. Her stories are realistic in nature and reflect the influence of Baron's profound knowledge of biblical and rabbinical literature.

Baron's own life is as interesting and disturbing as that of any of her fictional characters. Born near Minsk, Russia, and the daughter of a rabbi, she received a good education in days when most women received little formal schooling. As a result, she developed an early interest in writing and literature, and by the time she was a teenager, her stories were being published in a local newspaper. Baron moved to Minsk when she was fifteen and supported herself by tutoring and writing as she continued her education with the intent of becoming a teacher. Baron immigrated to Palestine in 1910 during the first Russian Revolution, during which her hometown was destroyed.

After moving to Palestine, Baron met Yosef Aharonovitch, editor of the Young Worker, and began to edit the influential Zionist newspaper's literary section. She and Aharonovitch married and soon had a daughter. Members of the literary intelligentsia, the Jewish couple was forced into exile in 1915 and went to live in Alexandria, Egypt. They eventually returned to Tel Aviv, and Baron continued to write, but her life was to take a drastic turn in the 1930s. It was then, after the deaths of her beloved brother and her husband, that she became a recluse, confining herself to her bedroom for the remainder of her life. A rigid vegetarian obsessed with hygiene, Baron would not allow her daughter, Tsipora, to go to school. Tsipora ended up taking care of her mother until Baron died in 1956.

Baron was criticized in her own time for writing too much about the shtetl life of her past even though she was part of a modern ideological Zionist movement. Nevertheless, her stories are often remarkably modern in their point of view. For example, she writes from the perspectives of a one-day-old girl in "The First Day" and of a female Jewish dog in "Liska." As Coleman stated in Feminista!, Baron's stories are also important because they "offer a unique perspective into a world that has mostly been chronicled by men, seen through the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Lieblich, Amia, Conversations with Dvora: An Experimental Biography of the First Modern Hebrew Woman Writer, edited by Chana Kronfeld and Naomi Seidman, translation by Seidman, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1997.

ONLINE

Feminista!, http://www.feminista.com/ (August 31, 2005), Sarah Coleman, "One Feminist Icon, Char-Broiled: A Rediscovered Writer Engenders Thoughts on Feminism and Art."