Bøger af Helen Wolfers

"I awoke to the first day of my widowhood as though it were the first day of a terminal illness. In the reactions of those around me I sensed that I had been diminished as if by some chronic disease - a condition from which I thought I would never again be free."...Helen WolfersToday 80% of all married women can expect to outlive their husbands, many for as long as twenty years! If, as Shakespeare said, there are seven stages in the lives of men, for women of the modern Western world there is now an eighth - widowhood. Helen Wolfers' own lived experience of widowhood revealed a range of social "norms" that only widows experience. This led her to explore how widows have been treated throughout history and how society needs to adapt to the inevitable explosion in the number of widows that is coming our way.

The decision to publish this book was partly inspired by a letter from Sigmund Freud, in which he stated: "There were other considerations (apart from anti-Semitism), which made the attractiveness of Judaism and Jews, irresistible - many obscure forces of emotions, all the more powerful the less they were to be defined in words." Elsewhere Freud went on to say that although he was unable to define these 'obscure inner forces' he was sure that the day would come when they would be identified.'Growing Up Jewish' attempts to delineate and explain at least some of these obscure inner forces. The book begins, in Sydney, Australia with the authors earliest experiences relevant to the development of Jewish identity. It then proceeds to trace this development from her experiences in 3 other countries while working for the United Nations in the field of population control. After retiring in Jerusalem, Israel, the author focuses on the consequences for Jewish identity of the re-establishment of a Jewish national homeland. In conclusion, drawing on the experiences described in the book she proposes a theoretical explanation of this Jewishness which, defying all odds, has survived millennia of homelessness, centuries outside the ghetto walls, and now still persists even outside its own religion.