Commonplace Book: Rokhl, 2019
Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, playwright, attorney, and Jewish world gadfly in New York City.
Category: Yiddish
Sholem Aleichem-isms
It should never happen to you! Master of the universe, what have I done to deserve all this? Some people have all the luck! I swear, I wouldn’t wish it on a dog! What happened?…
Keeping Their Language Alive
Joseph Leftwich, Great Yiddish Writers of the Twentieth Century The writer wakens you, the reader, he rouses you out of your indifference, he shows you the things you had not seen before, he makes your…
Endings/Continuings
The end of Yiddish, except as an academic pursuit or as a final nostalgia, is not at all Kafkaesque. Jewish history has many ironies and countless sorrows, as well as a panoply of cultural achievements…
Yiddish Writers
H. Leivick I have often felt that instead of writing my autobiography I would like to write the biography of my poems. I mean, tell the life story of some of my poems… Sholem Aleichem…
First Draft of a Translation
אָ מענטשהייט איך בין אײַער דאַנקבאַר זון יעדער מענטש מײַן טאַטע’ס עלטער איז מײַן טאַטע יעדער פרוי מײַן מאַמע’ס עלטער איז מײַן מאַמע אַלע די…
Things Come and Go
From Lionel Trilling‘s library to mine.
“What Will Become of Yiddish?”
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…
The Chasm between Them and Us
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…