Yona Wallach
A black and white photo of Yona Wallach, a woman with long black hair looking slightly away from the camera.
“And despite her wild life, and as her image recedes, she comes across to me as a nun: 'I sit at home. Quiet, resting and writing. And I follow processes of the soul as I myself am the laboratory and the laboratory assistant.'”
- Halit Yeshurun
Yona Wallach was born in Israel, and she had a significant impact on both the country's artistic and political climate, partly due to never leaving the country. She used her poetry to challenge the borders of gender and sexuality, often touching on more taboo content.
First, in any discussion about Yona Wallach in English, one must acknowledge the limitations. Though most of Wallach’s poems have been translated, their content often relies on the poem being read in Hebrew. Throughout her career, Wallach often criticized and took advantage of the gendering of words and second meanings in her work, so parts are lost when translated to English.
Wallach was born into a very political family, and she grew up in Kiryat Ono, a city that her father was instrumental in founding. After her father died in 1948 in the Arab-Israeli war, Wallach was still quite young and was raised by her mother. Wallach was exceedingly smart and was sent to a private school, but was also exceedingly rebellious, enough to be kicked out of said school. After that, she left academia, never finishing high school, and instead chose to pursue poetry in Tel Aviv.
Even from a young age, her poetry was good enough to garner significant recognition, and she was quick to make contacts in the art scene in Tel Aviv. She is now seen as an integral member of Tel Aviv poet’s circle, and even her early work is seen as a large influence in the artistic movement that was just beginning at the time. She wrote explicitly about sexuality and gender, and she pushed against the boundaries of both.
In fact, there are many poems where both gender and sexuality are discussed, and one of the clearest examples of this is the poem “Hebrew.” As a prominent feminist, Wallach studied how femininity was viewed in the Hebrew language and the culture of Israel, and she discusses it in this poem, writing:
“Hebrew is a sex maniac
Hebrew discriminates for and against
is forgiving, gives privileges
with a big gripe from the exile
in plural, men have the right of way
it’s a thin line it’s a big secret
in the singular chances are equal
who says it’s a lost case.”
In the same poem, she discusses sexuality, writing about experiences (whether her own or not) in curiosity about women. And by making it the writer who is describing the experiences, she both makes the bold move to discuss female sexuality without surrounding it with metaphors and flowery language. Still, she also discusses her well-publicized attraction to women as well as men and making her desire for women explicit:
“Hebrew peeks through the keyhole
as I did at you and your mother
when you washed in the shed
your mother had a big ass
but I never stopped thinking
the days passed like showers
you remained a thin girl, soaping herself
afterwards you women plugged all the holes
plugged all the gaps.”
In Wallach’s work, voyeurism is a constant theme and is used in many other instances outside of this one to strengthen other points. While it is easy to criticize this portion for the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes, one must recognize that it is a bisexual woman saying it. So it more likely comes from a place where she is trying to display similarity between types of attraction that receive different reactions, as jokes are often made about heterosexual men looking into women’s locker rooms and bedrooms, but when a woman is attracted to other women all signs of attraction are seen as predatory. Then by the woman writing about doing something that men joke about doing, she equates her attraction to women to heterosexual men’s attraction to women.
Considering that Wallach’s work focused much on the reactions of the reader(s), it can be said that the reaction to the same behaviour from a man would have been less negative. This reaction is just as much a part of the poem as the words themselves.
This, of course, was a poem that caused a significant amount of controversy, but the one that caused the most in her life was a poem called “Tefillin.” This poem is about bondage using tefillin, a set of small leather boxes with straps containing verses of the Torah worn by Jewish men during weekday morning prayers. The poem is overtly sexual and includes violent imagery using an object that is sacred to many, and the reaction to it was large and not overly positive. From fellow writers to ministers in the government, the public made it very clear that they believed Wallach had gone too far, but Wallach never showed any regret for her work. In addition to the poem, there was a series of photographs done that were only released entirely after Wallach’s death, and it seemed that for some, this poem is an example of Wallach pushing too far.
To others, of course, it was just another example of Wallach’s brave and ground-breaking work, and she was praised by many. This poem was seen as just another way that Wallach had broken the rules of gender and sexuality, using an object that, for many, was associated with masculinity and devoid of sexuality and making it a tool for sex and femininity.
She lost support from many people who had previously sung her praises, but she also lost friends. One particular friend, Zelda, a fellow poet, was very vocal in her anger. She ended their friendship and refused to work with the magazine that had published Wallach’s poem again. Wallach’s popularity also dropped slightly. Before she had been a household name, which was rare for a poet in Israel at the time, but after that, her name was linked with much more negative connotations. It was only three years after the poem was published, in 1985, that Wallach died of breast cancer.
Though her reputation was a tainted one, Wallach is still considered one of the most well-known Israeli poets. Her work pushed boundaries, and she lived her life loudly, and she will be remembered for these things. There are, of course, many ways to interpret her work, as with any art, and many people will discuss her poems throughout the years, but one thing that can be said for certain is that Wallach’s poetry deeply affected her life and her life deeply affected her poetry. While she was described as more solitary, in reality, she embraced her fame fully. Being as open in interviews as she was in her work, it was, in fact, during an interview that she found out about her cancer. And in her work, though not all cases describe real experiences, she often writes about her own life and desires. So the separation between the author and work can become very blurred.
For example, as previously mentioned, she often portrays many things that bend gender roles. Still, she also mentions things that suggest she may not have completely identified as either male or female. Such as an interview in which this was said: “As a woman, you are out of the ordinary.” To which Wallach responded, "I am not at all certain. I believe that as a man, I am quite out of the ordinary. I believe I am an extraordinary man."
This quote can either be interpreted as her straying from the gender assigned to her at birth or that she was saying her talent was not out of the ordinary for a woman but is extraordinary for a man. Also, a constant theme in her poetry is the swapping of traditional gender roles, which, while it could be a feminist stance, could also be her mind or desires. There, of course, is no way to say either way conclusively.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material.]
Sela, M. (June 15, 2012) Thirty Years After Yona Wallach's 'Tefillin' Was Published, the Poem and Photo Remain as Provocative as Ever Retrieved March 10, 2017
Bernstein, C. (June 12, 2014) Yona Wallach (June 10, 1944 – September 29, 1985) Retrieved
March 10, 2017
http://jacket2.org/commentary/yona-wallach
Cohen, Z. YONA WALLACH 1944 – 1985. Retrieved March 11, 2017
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wallach-yona
Tsoffar, R. STAGING SEXUALITY, READING WALLACH’S POETRY. Retrieved March 11, 2017
http://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/wjudaism/article/viewFile/276/331
Investigation and Fantasies. (October 4, 2013) Yona Wallach as Last of the Hebrews Retrieved
March 11, 2017 https://investigationsandfantasies.com/2013/10/04/33/
Rattok, L. Israeli Women's Writing in Hebrew: 1948-2004. Retrieved March 11, 2017
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/israeli-womens-writing-in-hebrew-1948-2004
