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…
Category: Khurbn
Remembering Shammai
Shabes morning I fix a period for reading My three “rabbis” recently deceased— Harold Bloom, whose extended family on both sides perished in Europe Every boy but one in George Steiner’s lycée lived after the…
A Youth
The Daily Mailby Hedy Epstein In those first years of the Nazi regime, it was hard for me to grasp the import of politics writ large. However, I would soon come face to face…
Morning and Night
After finishing Hilberg’s trilogy this morning, have spent the evening with the poets: Eluard, Cardenal, Heifetz-Tussman, Glatshteyn, and Brecht.
The Imperative To Remember
Anyone who does not actively, constantly engage in remembering and in making others remember is an accomplice of the enemy. Conversely, whoever opposes the enemy must take the side of his victims and communicate…
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…
“Born Only Yesterday, and Already She Speaks Like a Perfect Mensch”
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,…
“If the Messiah Comes, He’ll Come to This Cafeteria in Miami”
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…
Minutes & Plans & Moons
I first came to the work of Charles Reznikoff in 2008 when I read his terse “poems” in Holocaust. He had read thousands of pages of war crimes trials transcripts to produce condensed, jarring, essential…
Sara Roy speaks to Germans
Your sense of guilt, if that is the correct word, should not derive from criticizing Israel. It should reside in remaining silent in the face of injustice as so many of your forebears did before,…