"The Rebbetzin’s Sense of Justice" - A Short Story by Lilly Barger -1955? - translated from the Yiddish by Ronnee Jaeger - 2020

"The Rebbetzin’s Sense of Justice" - A Short Story by Lilly Barger -1955? - translated from the Yiddish by Ronnee Jaeger - 2020 - included with 18 Jewish Stories translated from 18 Languages-edited and introduced by Nora Gold with a forward by Josh Lambert

Lily Berger 

Born December 30, 1916 in Bialistok, Poland 

Died November 30, 1996 - Paris

The story is set in a small shetl, we do not really learn precisely where or when it is set.  Like many a Yiddish story, it centers on a married couple:

"He was small, skinny, timid, eyes always downcast. She the opposite, big , fullbodied, a Jewish Cossack who tolerated no injustice. A big talker! These were my teachers, Reb Fishel and his wife Khaye.....Behind his back they called him “Fisheleh hunchback,” although he was not a hunchback, merely bent over. And her they called Big Khaye. We, the seven-year-old pupils, called Big Khaye “Rebbetzin.” How two such opposites were brought together, only God in heaven knows. In our shtetl there was a story told that when Fisheleh saw his be- trothed for the first time, under the bridal canopy, he almost fainted from fear. Opinion had it that this first scare pursued him all his life, not because Big Khaye was a miserable or wretched wife, quite the opposite. She had a good heart and could bear no injustice. She protected her husband like a mother hen protects her chicks, as if , without her , Fisheleh Hunchback would, God forbid, have drowned in the waves of life like a leaky ship in the ocean." 

The narrator is a seven year old girl enrolled in Reb Fishel's supposedly boys only class.  The pupils range from children from rich families to kids who are only given a piece of stale bread for lunch.  His wife sees to it that everyone has a decent lunch.  She adjusts tuition based on family wealth. She also maintains class room discipline.

The story gave me a good feel for not just the class room but with the mothers as well.

Lili Berger (1916– 1996), born in Malken, Poland, was a prolific literary critic and essayist, novelist, and playwright. She settled in Paris at the end of 1936, teaching Yid- dish and contributing to important periodicals. During the Nazi occupation of France, she was active in the Resistance and was involved in the rescue of Jewish children from deportation. She returned to Warsaw after the war but left in 1968 during the great exodus, returning to Paris and resuming her literary activity until her death in 1995. Her many articles and essays were often about writers and artists, many of whom she had known personally.

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler - 2023

Originally publidhed - “Royt feigele” (“Little Red Bird”). In Yiddish. Di goldene keyt 139 (1994)

I greatly admire Chava Rosenfarb both as a writer and as a person. She is among the eight authors included in the header picture for my blog.

"Little Red Bird" focuses on a woman whose husband and four year old daughter were murdered in a German concentration camp.  Her daughter was thrown into the crematorium while still living.  She meets a man, while living in a post World War Two displaced persons camp.

"Manya and Feivel met after the war in the displaced-persons camp of Feldafing in Bavaria. Both had been members of the Bundist youth organization in Poland; he in Kracow, she in Lodz. They had discovered each other during those confusing post-liberation days of hope and despair. Neither of them had any surviving family, so their need for closeness and intimacy with another human being was great."

Manya is frustrated because she is not able to get pregnant.

"They are both upset about the direction the postwar world has taken, about the fact that the sacrifice of millions has been in vain. But in Manya’s case, there lingers beneath the surface of her general sorrow over the fate of the world an additional, more intimate pain, which translates into a longing to have another child. "

Manya does something deeply immoral.  I really hope others will have the opportunity to read this profound story so I will say no more.

I do feel obligated to share a bit more of the powerful unflincing prose of this story.

"Manya is standing by the window, peering out at the snow. A little girl is playing in the street among the mounds of snow. The child is about five years old. She wears a red coat and a red hat, just like Little Red Ridinghood, the child the wolf tried to devour in the story by the Brothers Grimm. Manya’s child was in fact devoured by the wolf—a wolf who was, in a sense, a grandchild of the wolf in the Grimm brothers’ story. Manya’s child had been destroyed by the Germans when she was five years old. Her name had been Faygele, Little Bird. She too had had a red coat. When she wore the red coat her parents called her roit faygele, little red bird. Her parents delighted in the sight of Faygele wearing her red coat. The color suited her. It harmonized with the dark brown hair her mother would roll in tissue paper to form curls. The curls peeked out charmingly from underneath Faygele’s red hat. It did not occur to Faygele’s parents to associate the color red with the color of blood— Faygele’s blood."

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States.

Mel Ulm 

My Quarrel With Hersh Rasseyner - A Short Story by Chaim Grade- translated from the Yiddish by Ruth Wisse

My Quarrel With Hersh Rasseyner - A Short Story by Chaim Grade - 1952- translated from the Yiddish with an illuminating introduction by Ruth Wisse - 2020

https://mosaicmagazine.com/author/chaim-grade

Today's Story and the introduction can be read at the link above.

 "For nearly a thousand years, European Jews thought, spoke, argued, and lived out their lives in Yiddish. It was the language of an entire civilization, built on the foundations of educational institutions, voluntary associations, and communal organizations that over time became the central repository of modern Jewish culture. It was in Yiddish that European Jewry confronted modernity—confronted, that is, the rise of nationalism, Enlightenment liberalism, Communism, and its own twin impulses for religious reform and religious orthodoxy. That this civilization was brimming over with vitality into the 20th century can be seen by the fact that it managed to simultaneously nurse a decidedly secular literary tradition and cultivate institutions of traditional Jewish learning arguably unsurpassed by any other Jewish community at any time in Jewish history. That all came to an abrupt end with Hitler’s war on the Jews. The destruction of the 1930s and 1940s posed enormous questions, and spurred investigation and answer by those who survived it. Chaim Grade, one of the most extraordinary modern Yiddish writers, offers a very pointed answer to the Holocaust in his 1952 story “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner.” True Jewish continuity, Grade seems to say, was not to be found merely in the physical survival of Jewish communities, but in the survival of the theological, intellectual, and moral arguments that have always characterized Jewish life. The Jewish people is structured by its contentions and disputes, and not even the risk of physical annihilation can silence the abiding claims of obligation and freedom that press upon every Jew, then and now. The story is a true masterpiece, one of the finest expressions of modern Jewish culture. Mosaic is pleased beyond measure to bring you Ruth R. Wisse’s rendering of the first unabridged English translation of the text, along with her sparkling interpretive and introductory essay." From the preface by Mosaic 

I quoted at some length from the preface as their account of the historical 

 importance of this work way surpasses my abilities and knowledge.

It relays a conversation of between 

Two now older Jewish men who survived the Holocaust, one in a Concentration Camp and one escaped to Russia. Both were raised and educated in Vilna in Lithuanian. They encountered each other two years after the war was over, on a bus in Paris. Each had assumed the other died during the Holocaust.   Both did lose all their families.

The man who was in a camp taught traditional teachings to a group of Jewish boys also imprisoned there. He was a very strong believer in the teachings of the Torah. The other man had lost much of his faith due to the Holocaust.  He reasoned how can we be the chosen people, how can we not hate the Germans. He is an established poet, read widely by  Europeans of a wide diversity.  He takes pride in this and takes his self worth from the praise of what the other man sees as the corruption of the world.

Each man is challenged by the other,  

Anyone who does not understand why understanding the meaning of the Holocaust obviously does not have any awareness of events in the Middle East now.

"“That is the outlook and the Musar path of ‘the old one,’ Reb Yosef Yoizl— may his merit be a shield for us—and thousands of Novaredok students steeped themselves in it day and night. We labored to make ourselves better, each of us filed and polished his own soul, with examiners gathering evidence of our improvement like pearls. But you laughed at us. Then came the German—may his name be blotted out—and murdered our sainted students. And now here we both stand before the devastated Community of Israel. But you face a khurbn of your own—the destruction of your faith in the world. That’s what hurts you and torments you, so you ask me: why weren’t the wise men of the Gentiles able to be good if they wanted to be good? And you find contradictions in what I said. But the contradiction you find is in yourself. You thought the world was striving to become better but you discovered that it was striving for our blood."

The conversation will require your full attention.

Chaim Grade Born in Vilna in 1910, Chaim Grade was a novelist and poet, known for such works as The Yeshiva. He settled in the Bronx following World War II, where he lived until his death in 1982.

Ruth R. Wisse Ruth R. Wisse is a research professor at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her most recent book is No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (2013, paperback 2015).

THE GLATSTEIN CHRONICLES By Jacob Glatstein, Part One - Homeward Bound- first published 1936 - translated from Yiddish by Maier Deshell and Norbert Guterman -2010- with an Introduction by Ruth Wisse

THE GLATSTEIN CHRONICLES By Jacob Glatstein, Part One - Homeward Bound- first published 1936 - translated from Yiddish by Maier Deshell and Norbert Guterman -2010- with an Introduction by Ruth Wisse

Jacob Glatstein 

April 20,1896 - Lublin, Poland

1914- emigrated to New York City (due to increasing antisemitism) - joining his uncle-In NYC, he found thatYiddish, the common language of several million immigrants, generated newspapers, theater companies, publishing houses, humor magazines, a music industry, and an aspiring high literary culture. He began a long very successful career as a writer in various genres.

November 19,1971- New York City

The Voyage Out is part One of a fictionalized personal account of a Yiddish writer who returns to Poland in 1934. Conceived as a trilogy, this project was begun shortly after Glatstein returned to New York. The first installment appeared in the little magazine Inzikh (In the self) in 1934, and the book Ven yash iz geforn (When Yash set out) was published three years later. In The Voyage Out the preponderance of plotting takes place on a seven day cruise from New York City to Paris. From Paris the narrator travels on to Lublin to see his mother. He has not seen her since he emigrated to New York City twenty years ago. His siblings sent him a letter saying "hurry back, your mother will die soon".

In her introduction Professor Wisse compares The Voyage Out to The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (published in 1924). 

 After departing and checking into his second class cabin, he begins to explore the ship. He evaluates everyone by their lucks, especially women. On this seagoing Magic Mountain there are numerous ethnic categories he sees. The narrator has lots of conversations with other Jews about the good and bad aspects of being Jewish. The impending disastrous shadow of Hitler ominously looms over all the Jewish passengers. Of course in 1936 no one knew how bad it would be for Polish Jews. There are groups of Russians, some born in America, believe firmly in the dream of a communist state. Others have fled from Stalin.

When the ship lands, ship board connections are quickly forgotten. 

Aboard ship people feel free to embellish there travel plans. A trip to visit a tin-smith uncle becomes a journey to inherit a huge tin mine.

Many on ship want a bit of romance. The presentation of women in The Voyage Out is very descriptive of their bodies, with a fixation on bosom and bottom sizes. A group of 15 year old girls are up for anything.

There a lots of very telling conversations. Some passengers just want a captive audience. Class lines are very clear aboard.

"Unlike his Yiddish contemporaries and predecessors who were raised mostly on Russian, Polish, and German literatures, Glatstein also read Anglo-American literature, including T. S. Eliot,Ezra Pound, and James Joyce—expatriates like himself, who rendered the disintegration of their inherited traditions as masterworks of wasteland and exile...The Glatstein chronicles stretch like a tightrope across a chasm. Book One, “Homeward Bound,” opens as the poet sets out for his native city and ends with the train conductor’s call for “Lublin!”. From Professor Wisse's introduction 

I will share a few passages- the news of the Night of the Long Knives has reached the ship:

"I realized that to the Gentiles, Hitler meant something altogether different than he did to me. My non-Jewish fellow passengers . . . regarded Hitler as merely Germany’s dictator. To me, to 600,000 German Jews, and indeed to all the 17 million Jews worldwide, Hitler was the embodiment of the dreaded historical hatemonger, latest in a long line of persecutors that stretched from Haman . . . wielding a bloody pen that was writing a dreadful new chapter of Jewish history." This is not just a novel, but a prophecy.

The fact is that a real war is being waged against us, a war of attrition . . . There’s no escaping it: all the countries have imposed a siege . . . Believe me, the Poles are much cleverer than Hitler. They don’t rant and rave, they just pass over our bodies with a steamroller and drive us right into the ground . . . Formerly you could escape by emigrating. Today our people are staring death in the eyes...

“It started with Pharaoh who bathed in the blood of Jewish children. Why, oh why, why do we deserve this, Mr. Steinman? What do they have against us, Mr. Steinman?”

“Ah, you’re raising fundamental questions,” Steinman said. He had become grave. “You want to go to the root of things. Well, I’ll tell you: they want to destroy us, nothing less. Yes, to destroy us. For instance, take me—I am a patriotic Pole. And yet they’d destroy me too. They want to exterminate us, purely and simply. Yes, exterminate us.”

Thecprecarious situation of European Jewry comes more clearly into focus. On his way through Germany en route to Warsaw, the train is boarded by a group of Hitler Youth. “My first reaction wasn’t rage but childish surprise, that what I had only read or heard about I was seeing with my own eyes,” the narrator notes. “I thought of New York, where giant rallies were being held, protesting these very salutes, and here I had spanned the magical distance and come face to face with the actuality.” Later, upon arriving at his aunt’s home in Warsaw, he observes: “My aunt had never been known to keep a neat house, but now the gloom stemmed from poverty, not sloppy housekeeping. The difference was obvious. Poverty wasn’t merely black but muddy black, the earthy color of things about to crumble.

I am very grateful to the publisher and translators for making this powerful work available in English.

I will post on part two, set in Poland soon.

Mel Ulm

   

 

The Magician of Lublin by Issac Bashevis Singer - 1960-translated from the Yiddish by Elaine Gottlieb and Josepth Singer- 183 Pages

The Magician of Lublin by Issac Bashevis Singer - 1960-translated from the Yiddish by Elaine Gottlieb and Josepth Singer- 183 Pages

Issac Singer (1902-1991-born Poland) won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for the full body of his work. He is best known to the general public as the author of Yentil, the basis for a very popular movie. Singer's, even though he left Poland in 1935 because of the rise of the Nazis, work is very rooted in the culture in which he was raised. He became an American citizen. Singer died and is buried in Florida. . He indicated his biggest influences as a short story writer were Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassan

The plot is set in the mid-1880s in Russian-ruled Poland. The main character Yasha Mazur is a magician from Lublin, who travels around Poland to perform before audiences. He is Jewish, but not very devout, and married to Esther. He has affairs with his assistant Magda, with a young Jewish woman in Piaski named Zeftel and with a middle class Catholic widow in Warsaw named Emilia.

The Magician of Lublin centers on man of dubious morality, a serial philander who scrapes out a living as a Magician, picking locks and doing various tricks. He wants to work in Paris, Rome even America. His agent can not place him. He is loved by his wife and mistresses. He has no children. Warsaw is full of theives, hookers, people starving while others enjoy extremely affluent existences.

He thinks a lot about his religious teachings from his youth but can now see little sense in them. His wife knows he has other women but still has a passion for him. The ending, in which we flash forward three years is an amazing turn.

The Magician of Lublin goes into the entrapment of young women to be sold to brothels in Argentina, theatrical work, the cost of living, the indifference of the rich to the poor, the relationships among various national groups among other things 

It is a an exciting work with numerous cliff hangers. There are near R rated sex scenes 

This book is included in The Kindle Unlimited program along with 23 other Singer works.

I hope to read much more by Singer 

Mel Ulm

 

"Seeds in the Desert" - A Short Story by Mendel Mann- originally published in Yiddish in 1966 -translation Copyright 2019 Heather Valencia

 Born: December 9, 1916, Płońsk, Poland

Died: 1975, Paris, France

Today's Story may be read in the sample of the Kindle Edition of the book

"Seeds in the Desert" - A Short Story by Mendel Mann- originally published in Yiddish in 1966 -translation Copyright 2019 Heather Valencia

"Seeds in the Desert" opens in The Bedouin market in Beersheba, Israel. The narrator's account of his time lets us see his reaction to a place in which he is both occupier, refuge, and observor:

"Lying on my bed in the shabby little hotel in the Moroccan quarter of Beersheba, I find myself bursting into bitter, defiant laughter. I go and throw open the window. Again I hear the noise of the blaring radio. Now the tables are occupied by women with double chins, and in the gutters children are playing with abandoned cigar butts and poking about in the rubbish Lying on my bed in the shabby little hotel in the Moroccan quarter of Beersheba, I find myself bursting into bitter, defiant laughter. I go and throw open the window. Again I hear the noise of the blaring radio. Now the tables are occupied by women with double chins, and in the gutters children are playing with abandoned cigar butts and poking about in the rubbish from the Bedouin market. Prams stand beside the café tables. Hookahs. A young mother has taken out her breast, round and white like a full moon, and she thrusts the nipple into the mouth of a crying baby. The sharp neon light falls on the tables. I stare at the mother’s moon-breast with the tiny child sucking on it. I am scared of the screams that will pierce the heart of the night like a knife. I know they will soon begin. I pray to almighty God that He will protect us. The silence also frightens me, for I constantly seem to hear sinister footsteps"

The narrator converses with an older man, a Jew who immigrated to Israel from India. We see struggles to fit into a new homeland 

MANN, MENDEL (Mendl Man ; 1916–1975), Yiddish novelist and painter. Mann was born in Płonsk, Poland. He died in Paris.When his art education in Warsaw was interrupted by the Nazi invasion, he fled eastwards and enlisted in the Red Army, in which he witnessed the siege of Moscow and the occupation of Berlin. After the war he settled in Łodz and published a volume of verse, Di Shtilkayt Mont ("Silence Calls," 1945). Following the Kielce pogrom, he moved to Regensburg in 1946, where he edited a Yiddish dp newspaper. He immigrated to Israel in 1948, where he published Oyfgevakhte Erd ("Awakened Earth," 1953), a collection of stories reflecting the lives of Jewish refugees living in a former Palestinian village. From 1949 he was a co-editor of Di Goldene Keyt. The novel, In a Farvorloztn Dorf ("In an Abandoned Village," 1954), is based on the life of Zionist emigrants to Palestine from Jewish villages in the vicinity of Płonsk. His most outstanding work is a trilogy of novels reflecting his wartime experiences. The constituent volumes are Bay di Toyern fun Moskve (1956; At the Gates of Moscow, 1963), Bay der Vaysl ("At the Vistula," 1958), and Dos Faln fun Berlin ("The Fall of Berlin," 1960). The action deals with fighting on the Eastern Front seen through the eyes of Jews serving in the Red Army (whose contribution is minimized to indulge Stalin's prejudice), the reactions of the Russian and Ukrainian population as the Nazis approach Moscow, the instinctive patriotism of ordinary Soviet soldiers and their aspirations for greater freedom after the war. The Nazi leaders are portrayed as histrionic charlatans. Further important prose works are Nakht iber Glushino ("Night over Glushino," 1957), Di Gas fun Bliendike Mandlen ("The Street of Almond Blossoms," 1958), a collection of stories set in Palestine, Al Naharoys Poyln ("By the Rivers of Poland," 1962), and a further volume of stories, Der Shvartser Demb ("The Black Oak," 1969). In 1961 Mann moved to Paris and became the editor of Undzer Vort. He built up a significant art collection and became a friend of Marc Chagall. In 1963 he edited the Yiddish section of Sefer Plonsk ve-ha-Sevivah, the Płonsk memorial volume. There were exhibitions of his paintings in the 1930s in Warsaw and in 1967 in Paris. His works have been extensively translated into French and German. From the Enclopedia Britanica website

The Spinoza of Market Street, title story of a short-story collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in Yiddish in 1944 as “Der Spinozist.” The collection was published in English in 1961.

 "The Spinoza of Market Street" by Issac Bashevis Singer -1961 - translated from the Yiddish by Translated by Martha Glicklich and Cecil Hemley - 2006 - 17 Pages

The Spinoza of Market Street, title story of a short-story collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in Yiddish in 1944 as “Der Spinozist.” The collection was published in English in 1961.

Today's Story Can be Read in the Kindle sample of the book pictured above. It is included in The Collected Stories 

Issac Singer (1902-1991-born Poland) won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for the full body of his work. He is best known to the general public as the author of Yentil, the basis for a very popular movie. Singer's, even though he left Poland in 1935 because of the rise of the Nazis, work is very rooted in the culture in which he was raised. He became an American citizen. Singer died and is buried in Florida. . He indicated his biggest influences as a short story writer were Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant 

My cursory research indicates that "The Spinoza of Market Street" is considered one of his best short stories.

He published 100s of stories. Here (from Wikipedia) are his collection in English 

Short story collections

Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957)—Yiddish original: גימפּל תּם

The Spinoza of Market Street (1961)

Short Friday and Other Stories (1963)

The Séance and Other Stories (1968)

A Friend of Kafka and Other Stories (1970)

The Fools of Chelm and Their History (1973)

A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974)—shared the National Book Award, fiction, with Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon[15]

Passions and Other Stories (1975)

Old Love (1979)

The Collected Stories (1982)

The Image and Other Stories (1985)

The Death of Methuselah and Other Stories (1988)

There is also a three volume Library of America edition of his work.

"The story is set in Warsaw on the brink of World War I. There Dr. Nahum Fischelson lives a meagre, isolated existence alone in an attic room overlooking teeming Market Street. An intellectual supported by an annuity from the Jewish community of Berlin, he devotes his energies to explicating the philosophical works of the 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza, descending to the street only once a week to buy food. When war cuts off his funds from Germany, he descends to Market Street and discovers that he no longer knows anyone there, so preoccupied has he been with Spinoza. Black Dobbe, an unattractive and illiterate woman who lives in the attic room next to his, goes to the philosopher’s room to have him read a letter she has received. When she discovers Fischelson unconscious and ill, she nurses him back to health. To the amusement of their neighbours, Fischelson and Black Dobbe are married. Fischelson discovers that he has the ardour and vigour of a young man. As he gazes at the stars, he silently asks Spinoza to forgive him his happiness and his acceptance of the world of passion and joy." From the website of the Enclopedia Britanica 

I was initially curious about this story as very long ago I read The Ethics of Spinoza. I never returned to it but I can easily see how one might develop an obsessive interest. Similar to the older male central character in "A Friend of Kafka" and older man regains his sexual appetites after years of inactivity. To me this story marvellously portrayed pre-World War One War Warsaw and the atmosphere of the city during the war. It shows the callow behavior of the young in mocking the relationship of Dobbe and Doctor Fischelson.  

It is about or maybe better said, foreshadows a society in which loving Spinoza is just the preoccupation of irrelevant old men.

Mel Ulm

A Friend of Kafka" - A Short Story by Issac Bashevis Singer - Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub from the Yiddish - originally published in The New Yorker -March 15,1968

 "A Friend of Kafka" - A Short Story by Issac Bashevis Singer - Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub from the Yiddish - originally published in The New Yorker -March 15,1968

Issac Singer (1902-1901-born Poland) won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for the full body of his work. He is best known to the public as the author of Yentil, the basis for a very popular movie. Singer's, even though he left Poland in 1935 because of the rise of the Nazis, work is very rooted in the culture in which he was raised. He became an American citizen. Singer died and is buried in Florida. . He indicated his biggest influences as a short story writer were Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant 

You can read the story in the Kindle sample of the book pictured above. It is included in The Collected Short Stories of Issac Bashevis Singer as well as the Library of America collection of his works.

A few days ago I read a wonderful story by Issac Singer, "The Gentleman from Cracow" set among farmers, merchants of Ashkanazi heritage in Cracow,Poland. Today's story, "A Friend of Kafka" is set in Warsaw amongst people involved in the Yiddish theater, highly literate men, women play a big part in the story but pretty much as the sexually attract the men in the story. There are aristocrats among the characters. The narrative is structured around the conversations of two friends. A lot is about the relationship of one of the men to Franz Kafka. One of the characters used to be big in the theater, the other is a writer. A good deal happens in the story. An old man's sexual capacity is restored in a sexual encounter with a countess hiding from a murderous lover.

The narrator always has to loan money to the old actor who loves to hear himself talk on everything from the brothel visit he took Kafka on to his chess game with the fates.

“Didn’t you once ask what makes me go on, or do I imagine that you did? What gives me the strength to bear poverty, sickness, and, worst of all, hopelessness? That’s a good question, my young friend. I asked the same question when I first read the Book of Job. Why did Job continue to live and suffer? So that in the end he would have more daughters, more donkeys, more camels? No. The answer is that it was for the game itself. We all play chess with Fate as a partner. He makes a move; we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves; we try to prevent it. We know we can’t win, but we’re driven to give him a good fight"

"A Friend of Kafka" is ten minutes of delight, funny, and made me feel I was getting private gossip from old Warsaw.

There are about 40 Singer Short stories in the edition I have of his work. I hope to read all of them

Mel Ulm

Falik and his House by Jacob Dinezon - 1904 - translated from the Yiddish by Mindy Liberman - 2021

Falik and his House by Jacob Dinezon - 1904 - translated from the Yiddish by Mindy Liberman - 2021

“The greatest Yiddish writer you never heard off” - The Forward 

My Prior Posts on Jacob Dinezon

Website of The Jacob Dinezon Project - includes detailed biographical data and infomation on available works in translation

I first began reading Yiddish literature in translation in December of 2012, prompted by The Yale University Press  giving me a collection of essential works.  The alleged theme of my blog is literary works about people who lead reading centered lives and I quickly came to see how central reading was to Yiddish culture.  

I think my favorite work of Yiddish literature is the deeply hilarious profoundly revealing The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by Sholem Aleichem, on whose work the movie The Fiddler on the Roof is based.  In the stories of pogroms by I. L. Peretz a terrible history was brought to life with incredible depth.  Of course the issue in any literary culture of whose work endures is only partially based on merit, writers come in an out of fashion.  I think in the case of a literature like Yiddish from a partially destroyed culture dependent on translations for works to be read this is very much true.  Of course most publishers are shy to produce the works of relatively unknown writers in translation for fair to them business reasons,  

Thanks to the selfless dedication and strongly focused work of Scott Davis, Jacob Dinezon (1851 to 1919-Warsaw - I urge all to read the very informative webpage on Dinezon I link to at the start of this post for background information on Dinezon and his relationships with other now much better known writers) Dinezon will soon become a canon status Yiddish writer.

The three previous novels by Jacob Dinezon I have had the great pleasure of reading focused on young men, struggling to make their way in Poland while dealing with romances and often judgemental older people.  In Falik and his House the central character is a man at least well into his sixties.  His two sons have moved to America and want him and their mother to move and live with them.  Stopping Falik is his very strong emotional attachment to the House he has owned for forty years. His children were born there, he often thinks of the early days of his marriage. Sadly the House is very much in need of a new Roof, among numerous other issues.  Falik works as a tailor, money is not so good now.  He asks his sons to send him money but nothing but letters arrive.  A neighbor tries to get him to sell, offering a fair price.  His wife wants to Go to America.  The marriage dynamics are very well done. His tenants complain when a big rain floods their rooms.  In all this, Falik is feeling the impact of his age, in a way the survival of the House is a metaphor for his own survival.  He sees the decline of old traditions. He wonders if his sons in America, with his never seen grandchildren, keep any traditions.  To make it worse, his daughter, son in Law and their children are going to America soon.  

There are great letters from the sons and to them from Falik.  We see the community is changing Under his feet. The characters are perfectly realized.  Foodies will  find things to enjoy. 

In these times I needed a positive ending to this story.  The closing of the plot was a pure joy.  I must admit this is my personal favourite of his works.  

Mel u

 

 

The Collected Stories of Pinchas Goldhar - A Pioneer Yiddish Writer in Australia - “Cain” - A Short Story

 

The Collected Stories of Pinchas Goldhar - A Pioneer Yiddish Writer in Australia, with an introduction by Pam MacLean. 2016. Stories first published between 1931 and 1947 in Yiddish

I was delighted today to stumble upon a collection of short stories by a Yiddish language writer who moved from Poland to Australia, Pinchas Goldhar.

1901- Born in Łódź, Poland

1926 - Moves, along with his widowed father and three siblings to Melbourne, Australia.  The father was rightly concerned about the rise of antisemitism in Poland.  In her introduction to the collection Pam MacLean that in this period Australia was allowing all white immigrants to settle in the country.  

1931  - The first Yiddish language newspaper is started in Australia with Pinchas Goldhar as editor.  The Jewish population in Australia was culturally dominated by Jews from England but there were enough Yiddish readers to support publications and books,  Goldhar translated a number of Australian writers into Yiddish.  He also worked at his father’s dye factory.

1934 Marries and will have three children,  his son contributed an afterword to the collection.

1947- passes away in Melbourne 

Unlike Yiddish immigrants to New York City, immigrants to Australia did not have a vast community to support them.  You had to learn English.  Some immigrants found jobs in the city, others started ranches and farms in the outback.  Goldhar has several stories showing just how isolated these settlers were.  Just like immigrants in New York City, Australian Jews became aware of the horrors of the Holocaust.  This was something no Yiddish writer could ignore.  The first two stories in the collection have a Holocaust setting.

“Cain” is structured as a final letter to his family, from a well known physician:

“DOCTOR HERMANN LOWENSTEIN took his own life by hanging himself in a concentration camp near Dresden. He had been famous throughout the medical world for his scientific experiments and discoveries, and his death was met with a profound sense of regret amongst his contemporaries. He wrote a farewell letter to his family that the Nazis mistakenly overlooked. For a long time this letter travelled a difficult, hazardous and secret road and, when it finally reached Mrs Lowenstein, it was so torn and wrinkled that it was almost impossible to decipher –evidence of how difficult its path had been. 

“This is what Dr Lowenstein wrote in his letter: My loved ones, my dear Klara and children! This letter is not being written to you by a person who has killed himself but by a murderer, someone who has spilt his brother’s blood. I don’t want this letter to arouse your sympathy or be used in defence of my actions. I have sentenced myself to death but I still feel that it is an insufficient punishment for my crime. I am writing to let you know the terrible truth. I don’t want you to grieve over my death, I don’t want you to carry loving feelings for me.”

First published in 1933 in Yiddish, translated by Tania Bruce

I don’t want  to reveal why he sentenced himself to death other than to say it was from shame at what the Germans caused him to become.  The ending of this story, a story as sad as sad can be, is beautiful and redemptive of the human spirit. 

I downloaded the sample Kindle Edition.  It contains a preface, a very informative introduction and two complete stories including “Cain”.

This collection is a major edition to my understanding of the huge scope of Yiddish literature.  It is fairly priced.

Mel u

“The Esrog” - A Short Story by Sholem Aleichem, translated by Curt Levian from The Yiddish - 1910?

“The Esrog” - A Short Story
by Sholem Aleichem, translated by Curt Levian from The Yiddish  - 1910?

You may read today’s story here.

Sholem Aleichem

1859 Born in The Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire

1916 Dies in New York City, then part of The U.S.A.  His funeral is attended by 250,000

To most people, certainly me a few years ago, Yiddish writers were divided into two categories, Sholom Aleichem and a bunch of authors I have never heard about that I would never have read were it not for Yale University Press giving me a full set of The Yale Yiddish Library.  These nine volumes, introduced by top authorities in Yiddish Studies, include some of the great classics.
Among the works were two totally marvelous novels  by Sholom Aleichem.  All of the works were pre-Holocaust, written in Eastern Europe and Russia.  All were by men.  As Yiddish speakers left Europe, mostly to NYC then Toronto and Montréal women writers like Blume Lempel and Chava Rosenfarb began publishing in Yiddish.  I have talked a bit about the history of Yiddish Literature (running from around 1875 to maybe 2004 with the passing of the last of the emigrated writers) in prior posts.  My perception is most seriously into Yiddish Literature, a huge treasure trove of Short Stories, are “heritage readers” seeking ties with the world of their ancestors in Eastern Europe.  Behind it is also a powerful message to those who would destroy Jewish Culture, you lose, we win.  I read in this area because it is an incredibly wonderful literature.  The stories range from heart breaking to funnier than a Mel Brooks movie.  Yiddish scholarship has very strong support and thanks to the internet, and maybe especially The Yiddish Book Center, interest is rapidly growing.  YouTube has lots of good videos and readings of stories.

Anyway Sholom Aleichem is by far now most known Yiddish writer.  He is most famous from the movie Fiddler on the Roof based on his Tevye Cycle, centering on a Russian dairyman and his relationship with his daughters.

In order to appreciate this story you need to understand the import of the Esrog (sometimes translated as “Ettog” i. Ashkenazi tradition .

“Etrog (Hebrew: אֶתְרוֹג‎, plural: etrogim; Ashkenazi Hebrew: esrog, plural: esrogim) is the yellow citron or Citrus medica used by Jews during the week-long holiday of Sukkot as one of the four species. Together with the lulav, hadass, and aravah, the etrog is taken in hand and held or waved during specific portions of the holiday prayers. Special care is often given to selecting an etrog for the performance of the Sukkot holiday rituals.” - from Wikepedia

Here are opening line, showing Sholem Aleichem skill at quickly creating character through dialogue:

“ This year we’re going to buy an esrog,” my father declared, and I imagined my father coming to shul, like a respectable householder with his own esrog and lulav and not using the congregation’s as did other poor people in town.
When I heard this news, I could no longer restrain myself and told everyone in kheyder that this Sukkos we would have our very own esrog. But no one believed me.
“Look who’s getting his own esrog!” some of my pals snickered. “That pauper is going to buy himself his own esrog! He probably thinks it’s a cheap lemon!” “

You can feel the excitement in the family when the proud father shows his family the esrog:

“Well, Father did buy one and his hands quivered with joy as he held it. He called Mama and smilingly pointed to it, as though it were an expensive necklace.
Mama approached silently and slowly stretched her hand to take hold of the esrog, whose heavenly fragrance spread to every corner of the room.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Look, but don’t touch.  But if you want to sniff it, you may.”
But I wasn’t even offered that much. I wasn’t even allowed to get too close to it. Not even to have a peek at it. For it was too risky.
“Uh-oh! Look, who’s here,” said Mama. “If you let him come close he’ll bite off the stem.”
“God forbid,” said Father, wary of the evil eye.”

The father puts it in a cabinet and tells his son do not touch the sacred fruit.  Of course he cannot resist the temptation.

I will leave the rest of this marvelous story for you to discover

“Aunt Taibele” - a short story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, translated from The Yiddish by Miranda Cooper - first published 1965, translated 2020

“Aunt Taibele” - a short story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, translated from The Yiddish  by Miranda Cooper - first published 1965, translated 2020

You may read “Aunt Taibele” here 

Born 1905 in Novvoradomsk, Poland

Immigrated 1904 to Montreal, with her parents

Passes on in 1975 in Montreal

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn was a long time preformer in the Montreal Yiddish Theater.  Second to New York City, Montreal had a large number of Yiddish immigrants.  While merging with much success into Canadian society, they cherished their heritage. 

In addition to acting, Hamer-Jacklyn was a very frequent contributor of short stories to Yiddish language periodicals.

On January 9 2019 I posted upon two Short Stories by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn included in The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles

Today’s story ends with a pandemic taking a high toll.  It seemed very appropriate somehow to post on this now.  The story also reflects the closeness though hardly drama free families of the shtetls of Eastern Europe and Russia.

“Aunt Taibele” is both funny and very sad, a combation not uncommon in Yiddish literature.  The story is set in Nowo-Radomsk,Poland.

Here is the opening description of Aunt Taibele:

“Aunt Taibele was coming to Nowo-Radomsk from Gwoźnica. She was really more of a distant relative, but the whole family called her “aunt.”

In our house, there was always talk of “Aunt Taibele.” Grandma used to travel to Gwoźnica often to visit her and her husband and see to it that the young couple always had food on the table. She told us that Moyshe Haim, Taibele’s husband, complained that his wife was a public nuisance, a wicked woman, a shrew. And Taibele said that her husband was a glutton and a drunkard—he had to have a snack before he went to daven, and what’s more, he was a big bon vivant. Grandma always sided with Aunt Taibele.”

Aunt Taibele is divorced with one child.”Whereever she went she was angry and sullen, full of grievances against the world and her ex-husband”.She soon moves out on her own and establishes a business making and selling soap.

“She only stayed with us for two weeks, during which time she found herself an apartment and started a soap business. Once a week on market day, she would set up a little stand for her homemade soap and sell it to ladies. During the rest of the week she courted customers in well-to-do houses and sold them fragrant, exotic soaps. She never borrowed from anyone but also hated to pay out of her own pocket. This business was her source of income. Her only goal in life was to take pity on people, help the sick, collect charity for the destitute. She applied cupping glasses to her patients and leeches under their ears, helped ward off the evil eye, and anointed the ill with salve and ointment that she had made herself from various medicinal herbs. Aunt Taibele never missed a funeral. She would weep and accompany the corpse to the cemetery. With secret joy, she listened to the difficulties of sad souls and consoled them. And soon all of Nowo-Radomsk called her “Aunt Taibele”.

Soon people in the community begin looking for a new husband for her.  But she rejects perfectly decent men.  She has one close friend, a widower with a sick son. Somehow this woman’s misery draws her to her.  Once the widow marries a grocer with a secure income Taibele draws away.

Then one fine day Taibele marries again, to a grave-digger.  

“Aunt Taibele married the gravedigger, who was an energetic man, but unclean and unkempt, with a neglected house. The whole shtetl speculated that the couple wouldn’t even last as long as the time between the Fast of Esther and Purim. 

But it soon became clear that this was a match made in heaven. The marriage imbued Aunt Taibele with new life. A red flush spread across her cheeks. Her ever-sour face shone. She replaced all her household items, threw away the old beds, bought new ones. She shined her bronze candlesticks, hung new curtains, scoured, polished, and bleached the two rooms. Suddenly she became a real lady of the house, and saw to it that her husband was clean and well put together. She cooked and baked. She also worked together with her husband at the cemetery, accompanying each new corpse, never leaving the grave until the last shovelful of earth had fallen.”

Then a plague began to spread in the area.  There was a Custom at the time to hold what were called “Plague Wedding” were staged in an effort to ward of the plague.  Here is Miranda Cooper’s explanation of this:

“plague weddings, known as mageyfe khasenes or shvartse khasenes. This superstitious ritual involved marrying people on the margins of society to one another in an effort to ward off the plague. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased interest in this ritual, still little-known in many Jewish communities”.

“Then a plague broke out in Nowo-Radomsk. The rabbi ordered that the black khupe be erected over the cemetery. The whole town, under the leadership of Aunt Taibele, got involved. An orphan girl was found and married to Berele, the town fool. Aunt Taibele stood in for the orphan’s mother for the wedding. She and another community matriarch went to the stores for meat, fish, challah, wine, and liquor, and they set about cooking.  

Almost the whole town gathered at the cemetery. Aunt Taibele and her husband accompanied the orphan bride to the khupe. Aunt Taibele, dressed in her silk dress, distributed food among the poor and announced the wedding presents, gathering them all in a large box. She even found an apartment for the young couple. When the plague began to subside, she felt that it was thanks in large part to her and her husband.”

The story ends happily.  

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn (1905–1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated to Canada in 1914. Captivated by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen. Retaining her love of Yiddish as well as her dramatic connection with the theatre, her short stories serialized in the Canadian Yiddish daily Der Keneder Adler, as well as in major literary journals, depict a wide range of subjects spanning shtetl life, Holocaust narratives, and women’s search for creative expression in America. Her collection of short stories, including Lebens un gestalten ( Lives and Portraits) and Shtamen un tsveygn ( Stumps and Branches), published in the 1940s and 1950s, were received with critical acclaim. From The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman

Miranda Cooper is a New York–based writer, editor, and literary translator. Her translations from Yiddish have been published in Jewish Currents and Pakn Treger, and her literary and cultural criticism has been published by Kirkus Reviews, Jewish Currents, Tablet, JTA, In geveb, Alma, the Jewish Book Council, and the Yiddish Book Center. She currently serves as an editor of In geveb and was a 2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow.

This is my fourth story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn.  I hope a collection of her stories will be published soon.

Joe Gets Suspended from The Union - A Short Story by Y. Y. Zevin - 1909 . Translated from The Yiddish by Dan Setzer - 2015

Joe Gets Suspended from The Union - A Short Story by Y. Y. Zevin - 1909 . Translated from The Yiddish by Dan Setzer - 2015

This story is included in the collection of stories by Y. Y. Zevin, Joe The Waiter, translated  by Dan Setzer

You may read today’s story here

Israel Joseph Zevin published under several names, Y. Y. Zevin and Tashrak were the most common. He also published as himself.  (There is a detailed bio below.)

Born - 1872 in Horki, Belorussia

1887 - Moves to New York City

Dies - 1926 in New York City

Isreael Zevin was a very prolific multi-genre writer.  He published in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish.  It is for his brief humorous fictions about immigrates getting used to New York City that he are still read.

“Joe Gets Suspended” must have made New City readers of Yiddish (estimated at about 250,000) laugh and wryly smile saying “yeah that is how things are for a man trying to make a living as a waiter in New York City.  Joe, a member of the Waiters Union, is serving dinner.  A union official enters the restuarant and advises him he has been suspended from the Union.  If he keeps serving, they will throw a strike closing The place down.  Through some weird Union rules sevice cannot be resumed to the customers.  They must start over with a new waiter.  Some get mad and walk out.  Joe asks “why am I suspended.?”  He is told he must come to a union meeting at one A. M, waiters often work until midnight.

The reason for his suspension was just so crazy I was delighted by inventiveness of the author.



TASHRAK (Heb. 1926–1872; תּשר״ק), most common pseudonym of Israel Joseph Zevin, a humorist and pioneer of the Yiddish press in America. Born in Horki (Belorussia), Zevin immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1880s. From 1893 until his death he was on the staff of the Orthodox daily Yidishes Tageblat in New York, and wrote under his own name and the pseudonym Yudkovitch. He became a member of the paper's editorial board and for a time served as its editor-in-chief. From 1924 he wrote, under the names Dr. A. Adelman and Meyer Zonenshayn, for the Morgn Zhurnal, also in New York. His writings – stories, feuilletons, and articles on current affairs – appeared in other American newspapers and in the foreign press. He won recognition principally for his humorous tales about the typical Jewish immigrant's adventures in the U.S. (later these appeared in book form as Y.Y. Zevins Geklibene Shriftn ("Selected Works of Y.Y. Zevin," 1906); Geklibene Shriftn ("Selected Works," 1909); and Tashraks Beste Ertseylungen ("Tashrak's Best Stories," 4 vols., 1910). He also published anthologies of aggadot, midrashim, and proverbs (Ale Mesholim fun Dubner Magid ("The Complete Proverbs of the Dubner Maggid," 2 vols., 1925); Ale Agodes fun Talmud … ("The Complete Aggadot of the Talmud," 3 vols., 1922); Der Oytser fun Ale Medroshim, ("The Complete Treasury of Proverbs," 4 vols., 1926)), which he had collected and translated into Yiddish toward the end of his life. Zevin wrote children's stories (Mayselekh far Kinder, "Stories For Children," 1919), a number of stories in Hebrew, and a posthumously published novel. From 1905 he began to write in English, mainly translating his own stories which appeared in the English section of the Tageblat and in the weekly American Hebrew. Between 1914 and 1917 he was a regular contributor to the Sunday issue of the New York Herald, and became known for his essays, interviews, and humorous pieces on New York Jewish life.

From https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/tashrak

Dan Setzer is a Maryland-based translator of Yiddish and Italian. He is currently translating the memoirs of a German soldier who served in World War II.

I offer my thanks to Dan Setzer for making this and other heritage stories available

Mel u

.

“Letters” - A Short by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn - 1954 - Translated from Yiddish by Miranda Cooper -2020

“Letters” - A Short by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn - 1954 - Translated from Yiddish by Miranda Cooper 2020



Born 1905 in Novvoradomsk, Poland

Immigrated 1904 to Montreal, with her parents

Passes on in 1975 in Montreal

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn was a long time preformer in the Montreal Yiddish Theater.  Second to New York City, Montreal had a large number of Yiddish immigrants.  While merging with much success into Canadian society, they cherished their heritage.

In addition to acting, Hamer-Jacklyn was a very frequent contributor of short stories to Yiddish language periodicals.

On January 9 2019 I posted upon two Short Stories by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn included in The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman

In a Museum". 1954 - tranlated by Ida Wynberg

"She Found an Audience" 1954 - translated by Alisa Poskanger


I was very happy to find on The 2020  Digital Edition of Pakn Treger  from The Yiddish Book Center a story that can be read online, “Letters”.

You may read this story here.


“Letters” is set on a ship leaving from New York City to Rio de Janeiro.  A thirty six year old woman has accepted the invitation of an aunt to relocate in Brazil.  She carries with her letters dating back 18 years to very recently from a married man with whom she had a very long running relationship.  When they first meet he tells her he will soon divorce his wife and marry her.  Now she goes on deck trying to get up the nerve to throw the letters in the ocean.  Letters begin to come in from all over Europe as his business grows.  He always tells her how much he loves her and how his wife will not consent to a divorce.  As we read the letters we see he obviously has no plans to actually marry her.

The woman’s agony as she cannot stand to admit it has all been deception are very well developed in just a few pages.

I liked this story a lot.

Here is a sample:

“Nina leaned over the railing of the ship. Her outstretched hand, trembling as it clutched a small box, was extended toward the sea. Soon she would open her hand and the sea would swallow up all the letters that had brought her warmth, promised her happiness, for so many years. She used to call it her “sacred box,” and because of it she had given away the best years of her life; now it seemed tainted, deceitful. She could neither keep the letters with her nor part with them.
She had been between water and sky for twelve days. Almost every evening, when the sky above the endless ocean began to darken, Nina would come out to the deck and station herself by the railing. For the life of her, she could not bring herself to fling the letters overboard once and for all, to let them decompose on the ocean floor. Day after day, she would stay until nightfall and then bring the box back to her cabin.
She would read them over one more time, and tomorrow it would happen, she decided resolutely. She wanted to arrive in the unfamiliar place free of the nightmare that had held her captive for half her life. She had given eighteen of her thirty-six years to Jacob Waldman.”




Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn (1905–1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated to Canada in 1914. Captivated by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen. Retaining her love of Yiddish as well as her dramatic connection with the theatre, her short stories serialized in the Canadian Yiddish daily Der Keneder Adler, as well as in major literary journals, depict a wide range of subjects spanning shtetl life, Holocaust narratives, and women’s search for creative expression in America. Her collection of short stories, including Lebens un gestalten ( Lives and Portraits) and Shtamen un tsveygn ( Stumps and Branches), published in the 1940s and 1950s, were received with critical acclaim. From The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman


Miranda Cooper is a New York–based writer, editor, and literary translator. Her translations from Yiddish have been published in Jewish Currents and Pakn Treger, and her literary and cultural criticism has been published by Kirkus Reviews, Jewish Currents, Tablet, JTA, In geveb, Alma, the Jewish Book Council, and the Yiddish Book Center. She currently serves as an editor of In geveb and was a 2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fe

The First Patient -A Short Story by Fradel Shtok - 1919 - translated from Yiddish by Jordan Finkin - 2020

The First Patient -A Short Story by Fradel Shtok - 1919 - translated from Yiddish Jordan Finkin - 2020


The Translation is published in the 2020 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue

You may read today’s story here


1890 born Skale, Galacia in Austro-Hungaria

1907 - Immigrates to New York City

1952 - died in New York City in a mental hospital ( this date is found in some sources) little is know about her life after 1919.  The collection in which this story appeared in 1919
 received a scathing review in the Yiddish Press and she withdrew from most literary contacts after that. I could not determine if she ever married or had children. Her mother died when she was one and her father was sent to prison for murder before she moved to New York City.  Some say she supported herself as a seamstress.

A standard immigrate parent cliche is the sacrifices to get their son through medical school, even a dentist is very big matter .

In this story a young man fresh out of dental school is in the room with his first patient, a woman who needs a tooth pulled. His parents are in the waiting room.  They are going crazy wondering how their son is doing.  When they hear cries of pain the father peeps through the keyhole to try to see what is happening.

As the woman leaves a drama ensues about if she will pay on the way out and how much.  Watching this was a lot of fun.  In just a few pages we learn not only about the family but the patient as well.

“When the new dentist, Turner, a young man of twenty-one, received his first patient he became flustered, turned red, and spoke too much. His parents were sitting in the waiting room watching. After working so long for that diploma, they wanted to get a little joy from it.
Turner guided the patient—a middle-aged woman—into the private exam room, sat her in the chair, and closed the door behind him.
When the dentist’s mother heard the patient in the other room, she actually leapt up from her seat and blurted out, “A patient!” Her husband restrained her, “Shh, sit still.” And when she couldn’t sit still and went to have a look through the crack in the door, he got angry: “Stop running around like that, you’ll frighten the patient.”
When their son came out to get something, the two of them stood up. “Who is it?”
“A patient.”
“What does she want?”
“A tooth pulled.”
The father moved closer to him. “Look, son, this is it, your big chance.”
The son was offended. “Papa, what’s the matter with you?”
“No, don’t be mad. I won’t say any more: just be careful.”

I have access to one more short story by Fradel Shtok and will read soon.


“Born at the edges of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the small village of Skala, Fradel Shtok (1890–1990) immigrated to New York at around the age of eighteen. She began publishing her poetry in a variety of venues and quickly made a name for herself as an up-and-coming poet. In her modernist poetry she experimented with classic forms, notably the sonnet. Shtok also wrote and published short fiction, including her only book-length collection of Yiddish prose, Gezamlte ertseylungen (1919). The settings of these stories tack back and forth between the edges of the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire and the bustle of Jewish immigrants in New York. These modernist tales deal with the travails of young women looking for love and desire in a world that spurns them and with the strivings and disappointments of immigrant life in New York. This story, “The First Patient,” features a young dentist seeing one of his first patients. Accompanying him are his overbearing parents, kibitzing and intervening in his practice. At once broad comedy and a sensitive character sketch from multiple perspectives, “The First Patient” is a subtle vignette of immigrant life through Shtok’s modernist narrative lens. We are currently at work on a translation of a selection of these stories” -Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter