Chava Rosenfarb, Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays Edited by Goldie Morgentaler McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019 Scholar and professor Morgentaler has gathered an impressive collection of writings by her mother, Chava Rosenfarb. A…
Kadya Molodovsky, A Jewish Refugee in New York: Rivke Zilberg’s Journal Translated by Anita Norich The accomplished Yiddish writer Molodovsky wrote this novel in serialized form in 1940-41, knowing obviously what was happening at the…
Today I received the following in an email from Rabbi Lerner. I am a disloyal Jew. I am not loyal to a political party. Nor will I be loyal to dictators and mad kings. I…
George Searles, editor, Conversations with Philip Roth Literary Conversation Series University Press of Mississippi 1992 I settled in this morning with a collection of interviews with Philip Roth, from the bright beginning of his career…
12.14.17 Dear Dianne, I think this is the 4th time I’m reading Meshugah. It was originally serialized in the Yiddish Daily Forward. Because I’m reading it with you, and because Hedy is on our minds,…
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shadows on the Hudson Translated by Joseph Sherman Like Meshugah, this is another novel translated from the Yiddish and published after Singer’s death. In Shadows I was gripped by the various characters…
Late in life, I got around to reading Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman (translated by Hillel Halkin, who suggested it was “possibly the greatest of all Jewish novels”). It sounded funnily familiar…. Flogging a dead…
Sholem Asch Yankev Glatshteyn Vasily Grossman Malka Heifetz-Tussman Dovid Katz Irina Klepfisz Koheleth Kadia Molodovsky Leib Rochman Chava Rosenfarb
I understand why Yiddish writers still draw on the theme of the old homeland, of the shtetl, where the people forged the treasure of their language and their lifestyle. But I believe that, no matter…
Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father’s Court June 1998 After we had left Warsaw (during the First World War), we continued to hear news of him from time to time. One son died, a daughter…