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…

“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…

After Kishinev

I’ve shared this story with hundreds of friends and students over the years. After a pogrom in Russia in 1903, the author was invited to contribute to a literary collection to be circulated to aid…

Melting a Heart of Ice

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…