They immigrate to America together.Ĭhava, the daughter of a rabbi, loses her parents in the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Gutke becomes a midwife and eventually meets Dovida, a woman who passes as a man. It is primarily the tale of two Jewish women, Gutke Gurvich and Chava Meyer.

The 416-page historical epic, which took her 10 years to research and write, moves from Russia in the 1860s to New York in the early 1900s. Though Jewish themes or characters have appeared in her prose and poetry in the past, this is her first major work that is every inch a Jewish tale. “If I had to do it all over again, I might have chosen Dykestein or Dykeberg,” she said with an easy laugh. Her given name doesn’t appear on the cover of “Beyond the Pale.” But it shows up in some press materials, “partly to show I’m Jewish,” she acknowledged. “I’m not sure if that’s just a family story,” said the 47-year-old New York native, who has a soft, round face and short, dark hair that is starting to turn gray. Theoretically, that line includes Reb Nachman of Bratslav, the renowned 18th-century Chassidic sage. She dropped it in 1976, after becoming intensely involved in feminist activism and completing her first novel, “Riverfinger Women.” Nachman, she explained, “was associated with a long line of rabbis that I no longer wanted to be…tied to at the time.”

Sipping tea at the kitchen table in her cozy Oakland home, Dykewomon didn’t get to talk right away about her recently published novel, “Beyond the Pale.” First, she had to answer a question she has been asked countless times: One might predict that the person behind the name would be a hardcore, radical lesbian activist.īut one wouldn’t expect to meet a Jew proud of her parents’ Zionist activism, a researcher obsessed with historical detail and an author whose latest book is a gracefully crafted tale about Russian Jews at the turn of the century.

Elana Dykewomon’s name leaves more to the imagination than one might think.

Beyond the pale by elana dykewomon