"I Hear from People Who Read Torah... " : Reported Speech, Genres and Gender Relations in Personal Narrative

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ways a Jewish woman uses different genres in telling her life story. Setting the narrative within its cultural and social contexts enables an examination of narrative as a life story, as well as a mode of creating and expressing changes in women's roles. In her story, the narrator chooses to present herself as a disciple of a religious male leader (a rabbi), a position which allows her to use traditionally male genres of narration. Treating the interactions between reported and authored speech, and the multiplicity of dialogues the narrative maintains, provides an understanding of the methods for implicitly challenging gender construction by contesting genre distribution. {Personal narrative, Genre, Gender, Israeli women, Change)