February 12: Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser, whose 1944 poem, “To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century,” became part of the Reform and Reconstructionist liturgy, died in New York on this date in 1980 at age 66, after a lifetime of writing, teaching and political activism. As a journalist, she wrote about the Scottsboro Case in Alabama, the Spanish Civil War, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics; as an activist, she led the PEN American Center into activism against the war in Vietnam. “Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry is unequalled in the 20th-century United States in its range of reference, its generosity of vision, and its energy,” says Adrienne Rich. “She pushes us, readers, writers, and participants in the life of our time, to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics.”

In 2014, we commemorated the centennial of Rukeyser’s birth by publishing a poem by Helen Engelhardt, “Muriel: In Memoriam.” Below is Rukeyser’s celebrated 1944 poem “To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century.”

“To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.
The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.”
—Muriel Rukeyser