Merle Feld, 35th Annual ODU Literary Festival

Merle Feld is a writer of essays, plays and poems. Active in Jewish feminism from its early years, Feld did not perceive herself as a political person until 1989, when she spent a sabbatical in Israel with her family. During that year, she became involved in peace activism, facilitating an all-women Israeli-Palestinian dialogue group and demonstrating in an Israeli women’s weekly, silent protest of the Occupation. These experiences formed the basis of her play “Across the Jordan,” included in the first anthology of Jewish women playwrights, Making a Scene (1997), and a chapter of her memoir, A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey (2007). Her most recent book is Finding Words (2011)