Forty Years Judith Levine Summary

Experimental Essay-2, (unfinished)

A feminist beacon

While reviewing a woman, an extraordinarily brilliant and uncompromising thinker, a leftist feminist considered it as the order of the big doctor and an often underestimated and aloof “irrepressible crank”-as she puts her in describing herself; Judith Levine’s choice in her “Boston Review” forty years celebrating article was more than obvious. As a radical cultural critic who never really sounded dogmatic and a journalist Allen Willies was one of the great public intellectuals of her generation. It didn’t take a long for her fondling left-leaning parents to realize that they brought a genius into this world of division, oppression, sectarian divide and domination which would clearly capture the thoughts of this special child. She was already a thinker at the age of
Allen never failed in fascinating her readers and followers through her anthologies, which more than often were tapestries than mere shedding of light on issues central to realpolitik, embellished with a brilliant display of language sense and riveting insights. Two phrases combined, though a having a semblance of mismatch, can adequately contain her intellectual gamut- “optimism as spiritually necessary” and “intellectually suspect”. In her attempt to rescue her equally talented twin brother who was about to join an orthodox Jewish sect telling her “I’ve had my lack of faith shaken”, she took a trip Jerusalem, chronicled her magnum Opus “Next year in Jerusalem” demonstrates her lack of faith was more influenced by optimism, emancipation of oppression, embracing freedom rather than by her New York life of drugs, sex and existential doubt. Her portrayal of god as an infinite source of energy, an immutable reality and producers of miracles in which she believed in- obviously not that usual of a modern day secular thinker, never really proved her being a believer for she championed optimism and