Go Forth O Daughters: Reclaiming the Yiddish “Women’s Bible” in Art

I meet artist Danielle Alhassid in her studio; on her desk sits a light box with a copy stand and a camera. The light box is covered with paper scraps creating an image of a woman’s face. I recognise the text printed on the papers as different iterations of the Tsenerene. The Tsenerene (also transliterated as Ze’enah U-Re’enah among other variations) is known as the Yiddish “Women’s Bible.”

I am immediately transported to my childhood —my mother, in her white tichel (headcovering), settling in to read it on our plastic-covered couch on Friday night after lighting the Shabbes candles in our Chasidic home in Brooklyn. And now, here it is—on a work table in an art studio in Manhattan. What I once saw as a relic of the past, Danielle sees as a way forward.

I had left the world I grew up in—though “left” is a tricky word.  How can you leave something that is you? Being Chasidic is still a deep part of me. I am, in fact, Chasidish, even though my life no longer resembles the world I grew up in; my upbringing continues to find its way into my creative world.

I first got to know Danielle in 2023, during LABA, a fellowship for artists working with Jewish content in New York City. Danielle grew up in Israel in a secular, liberal household. She is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with stop-motion animation and installation. Her work is research-based, often centering on texts written by or for immigrant women.

The Tsenerene is at the center of Danielle’s project, Go Forth O Daughters, which is currently on view at the Amsterdam Museum. The installation combines historical research, objects from the museum’s archives and a 5-chanel stop-motion animation. It reveals a new perspective on women’s roles in Jewish cultural life. 

The animation is accompanied by sound —a reading of passages from the text in both Yiddish and English that fills the space. And the sound–that’s my voice!

How surreal—to be reading the Tsenerene in Yiddish, in a contemporary museum in Amsterdam.  Below are excerpts from our conversation—one of many.

Melissa Weisz: I know I’ve asked you this before, but it amazes me—you’re using Yiddish in your work and a religious text like the Tsenerene. Why Yiddish? 

Danielle Alhassid: Yiddish really resonates with my experience of immigration and with my need to think of an alternative way to tell history than the one I grew up with in Israel. I think of Yiddish as a moving language, ever changing, it lives in between states and it is dis-attached from the mechanism of a nation-state and nation-language. It’s also one of the many languages spoken by my grandmother, who was so dear to me and was an immigrant who never belonged anywhere. When I think of Yiddish I think of diaspora, ghosts, poets, workers, I follow their traces in my imagination and artworks. I think of it as a language that makes space for the eternal immigrants, for “others”, for the anonymous readers of the Tsenerene, many many women who had access to printed literature for the first time . 

Melissa: What were you looking for in the Amsterdam Museum’s archives?

Danielle: The copy of the Tsenerene I worked with, from the museum’s archive, was from 1722. My research in the archive and the inspiring objects I meet there are a part of the process that is not on display. But in this case I was able to present, alongside my video piece, some special objects. I ended up presenting as part of my installation an engraving by Bernard Picart from 1725, and a Tsenerene book  from 1722. 

I wanted to find a physical representation of the Jewish women who read the Tsenerene— We know there were hundreds of thousands, because of all the different editions and reprints of the book! But we can find so few traces left by these women.

It was hard to find objects. Fabrics, like the parochet, the traditional way women expressed their presence in the synagogue, are hard to conserve, and weren’t stored in the museum’s archive. I thought of diaries or books but these women didn’t write, at least not anything that was published or preserved.

You start to ask: What does history or the archive remember, and what does it erase?  In the end, I used an engraving by Bernard Picart of men in synagogue, gathered around the Torah. The women’s section was cropped out of the frame by the composition of the image. 

So, in my installation, facing the etching that is hanging on the wall with the men gathered around the Torah, there’s a glass case with a copy of the Tsenerene, the bible for women from 1722. Viewers gather around this when they come to see the show. I wanted people to gather around the women’s text, just as the men gathered around theirs.

Melissa: Wow, I haven’t ever thought about that—what gets preserved.

Daniell: In my work, I focus on feminine figures, putting them back at the center. Misogyny and the dominance of men are very present now. Instead of framing that directly in my work, I’m more interested in the women affected. I am thinking of women’s rights to their bodies, freedom of movement. As an immigrant, and a Jewish immigrant, I think about these things through my body and my experiences. Finding these voices, these stories, gives me strength and reminds me I’m not alone… I have my community and my imagined community of literate women who love stories, since the 17th century. It’s part of something much larger—this ancestral connection.

Melissa: A community of artists—of people who actually tried to create change, who used their voice or their text…

Danielle: Exactly. The Tsenerene dares to frame female figures. We know so many women read it, and all those women connect. Through these texts, that’s what my work is about.

Melissa: Your contemporary art is in dialogue with this ancient 17th-century book– it’s incredible that a commissioned contemporary art piece can engage so deeply with something so old.

Danielle: Yes, I love that contrast. Amsterdam, until WWII, was almost 10% Jewish (like New York City today, by the way). It had a very unique history of Jewish culture and especially Jewish print. It also has a unique connection to NYC and its Jewish history. The figures I create, like the women in the Tsenerene, come together, but they’re always in motion, always shifting. I try to visualize this movement.

In this project, I made figures by creating a collage of texts taken from different copies of the Tsenerene I located in New York, in the City College of New York special collection library, the New York Public Library and more. These are the actual books they read, the stories they share. I also try to visualize their absent voice. There’s a vocal diagram in the installation too—visualizing the stories of the Tsenerene being told. I use stop-motion animation to bring these figures back to life.

Melissa: It comes back to languages and voices traveling—and shifting. It’s so alive. 

Danielle: And so current. The story of Tzelofchad, which you read about in the installation, is about inheritance, women owning land. There are 17 states where women can’t get abortions in the US. And in that story, God tells Moses: ”the daughters are right”. Justice and Reason are with them. It’s emotional. It takes the next step. It lets us question the system. Moses is maintaining the structure, and God is saying: Wait—they are right- you need to change My rules. In the Tsenerene that’s why Moses died—because the women were so righteous, so bold, that men were meant to start listening to them. It gives a powerful framing for womanhood. And it’s from the 17th century!!

In contemporary art, there’s this idea of “fabulation” — of imagining alternatives to the world we live in. I’m interested in finding those alternatives in our own history. They were always there. Connecting to them gives me hope.

All images courtesy of Danielle Alhassid/ Amsterdam Museum