קוצו של יוד (The Point on Top of the Yodh)

קוצו של יוד is a landmark Hebrew poem that dismantled the walls of religious hypocrisy when it premiered in 1876. Gordon tells the story of an agunah, a woman legally chained to a husband who has abandoned her, when a conniving rabbi invalidates her carefully obtained get (divorce document) over a single missing letter in her ex-husband's name: a yodh, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. What follows is a sharp, satirical assault on rabbinic authority and the ways petty religious power traps women in legal purgatory. The poem crackles with moral outrage delivered through elegant verse, making it not just a protest but a literary event. It helped launch modern Hebrew literature as a vehicle for social critique, and its anger still resonates: the question of who controls women's bodies and futures through law and letter.