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Annie Korzen did not know that
there were any Jews living in Australia. Nonetheless, the New Yorker,
who has performed her one-woman show Yenta Unplugged across the United
States, would have had no problem communicating her message in Australia
had her profound misconception been a reality.
The concept of the yenta is
universal, she told the Australian Jewish News. "It's what it is to
be a woman, a wife, a mother and a daughter."
Her goal is to redefine the
term "so that a yenta is not seen to be the abrasive, gossipy, advice-giving
woman, but a woman who speaks her mind, who is earthy, caring, opinionated."
Ms. Korzen was in Sydney to
spearhead the Jewish Communal Appeal Women's Campaign, performing at two
functions this week. Yenta Unplugged is about "celebrating the modern
Jewish woman through comedy," she says. "It challenges the stereotypes
of Jewish women which haven't kept up with reality - the image of the
Jewish woman as 'not the pretty one,' the doting mother, the nagging wife.
In the United States, the myth of the abrasive Jewish woman is perpetuated
by Jewish men who want to distance themselves from their background. Then
they marry gentiles and make them convert. Every Miller wants a Monroe."
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