SubjectsGender and Sexuality > Feminism and Women’s Studies, Religious Studies, Disability Studies In The Lives of Jessie Sampter, Sarah Imhoff tells the story of an individual full of contradictions. Jessie Sampter (1883–1938) was best known for her Course in Zionism (1915), an American primer for understanding support of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1919, Sampter packed a trousseau, declared herself “married to Palestine,” and immigrated there. Yet Sampter’s own life and body hardly matched typical Zionist ideals. Although she identified with Judaism, Sampter took up and experimented with spiritual practices from various religions. While Zionism celebrated the strong and healthy body, she spoke of herself as “crippled” from polio and plagued by sickness her whole life. While Zionism applauded reproductive women’s bodies, Sampter never married or bore children; in fact, she wrote of homoerotic longings and had same-sex relationships. By charting how Sampter’s life did not neatly line up with her own religious and political ideals, Imhoff highlights the complicated and at times conflicting connections between the body, queerness, disability, religion, and nationalism.
“Sarah Imhoff presents the remarkable story of Jessie Sampter, whose life breaks with all the conventional associations of a Zionist pioneer. Disabled due to polio, living with a woman in mandate-era Palestine, and a pacifist and internationalist with right-wing Zionist politics, Sampter violated expectations and flouted conventions. Using feminist theory and crip theory, Imhoff reconstructs Sampter’s life and the vital challenges she presented in her day and in our own.” — Susannah Heschel, Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College “In this outstanding book, Sarah Imhoff uses a luminous prose style, strong authorial voice, and the story of a woman well-known in her time but largely forgotten to weave together a collection of new and fruitful theoretical insights into subjects ranging from religious identity, the disabled body, and the nature of time to nationalism, queer desire, and historical memory. The Lives of Jessie Sampter makes distinct contributions to both religious studies and Jewish studies as well as to debates about what counts as (and why we do) historical work.” — Samira K. Mehta, author of Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States