Summary
of Dinah Berland's Presentation
by Ellen Cole
Speaker Dinah Berland, a poet and a
book editor for the
J. Paul Getty
Museum, spoke about her discovery and her journey before publishing her
new book, Hours of Devotion:
Fanny Neuda’s Book of Prayers for Jewish
Women. Neuda’s book, written in 1855, is the first
Jewish prayer book
for all occasions written by a woman. Neuda wrote in German, the
language of her homeland of Moravia, then Austria, now part of the
Czech Republic.
The mid-19th
century was the Age of Enlightenment and the start of the
Jewish Reform Movement. This environment spurred the 35 year old,
well-educated daughter and widow of a rabbi, Fanny Neuda, to write for
other women in need
of solace and support from supplications to God. Neuda’s popular book
was reprinted 28 times and translated into English. Berland
discovered
an 1866 English version during a time of despair in her personal life
and the book had a profound change on her and her family. This
spurred
the poet to rewrite the 19th century English translation for a modern
21st century audience.
A reference librarian at the Getty,
Valerie
Greathouse, in attendance, identified Neuda for Berland and located
centuries of book reprints in several languages, housed in libraries
around the world. Berland had a German translator double check the
content of translations from the original German and used 88 of the
over 100 original prayers and poems. Berland read several moving
prayers. She then shared her visits and conversations with family
and
friends across the US and in Europe who had connections to Moravia and
Neuda’s book, especially Holocaust survivors who took their mothers'
copies of the book with them into the camps. The prayers are
compassionate and vibrant and reach out to women of all faiths.
After
her warm talk, Berland entertained questions and signed copies which
program attendees purchased at the end of the talk.