Call It Destiny - A Short Story by Jonah Rosenfeld translated by Rachel Mines, 2019 - Original Yiddish published as “A basherte zakh” in Jonah Rosenfeld’s Gezamelte shriften fun Yonah Rozenfeld (New York: Yonah Rozenfeld komite, 1924), Volume III.

You may read “Call it Destiny” by Jonah  Rosenfeld here

Call It Destiny - A Short Story by Jonah Rosenfeld translated by Rachel Mines,2019

Original Yiddish published as “A basherte zakh” in Jonah Rosenfeld’s Gezamelte shriften fun Yonah Rozenfeld (New York: Yonah Rozenfeld komite, 1924), Volume III.

Jonah Rosenfeld

1880 born in The Ukraine

1904 - publishes his first Short Story

1921 - moves to New York City

1944 - passes away 

“Call it Destiny” is set in Eastern Europe during World War One.  A man has recently asked Zelda to marry him.  Zelda does not love him but she figures he is ok and nobody else may ask her.  When her fiance is drafted she wonders what her destiny will be?  Will he returned injured with her destiny to be married to a man injured in the war.  Will she end up never having married if he is killed.  Along with many other women she goes to the post office every day to see if he has written.  His few letters are not very informative or emotional.  Then one day she gets a letter from another man.  Her fiancé was his very close, his only friend in the army.  He tells her he gave her husband a proper Jewish funeral.  She begins to correspond with this man and his letters are much more meaningful than her late fiancé.  She lives with her mother and brother.  They begin to wonder if it is destiny to marry this man.

In just a few pages Rosenfeld lets us see the complex emotions of the woman.

I found this very interesting.

ROSENFELD, JONAH (1880–1944), Yiddish novelist and short storywriter. Born in the Ukraine, he was orphaned at 13, when both parents died during a cholera epidemic. He then wandered from town to town before settling in Odessa, where his older brother arranged an apprenticeship for him with a turner. In 1904, encouraged by Ḥ. N. *Bialikand I.L. *Peretz, he wrote his first short story, Der Lernyingl ("The Apprentice"), based on his own experiences. His stories soon found an audience in Yiddish periodicals. After 1909, they were reprinted in book form, culminating in a six-volume edition of his Gezamlte Shriftn ("Collected Works," 1924), which also included descriptions of his experiences before he left Russia (1920). After his arrival in New York(1921), his story "Konkurentn" ("Competitors," in Howe/Greenberg) was dramatized and successfully staged (1922), followed by his comedy Arayngefaln ("Lapsed," 1924). His significant later works included Er un Zi ("He and She," 1927), "the diary of an ex-writer"; Eyner Aleyn ("All Alone," 1940; Heb. 1964), a vivid autobiographical depiction of Rosenfeld's early apprenticeship, highly praised in the Yiddish press. Rosenfeld was a perceptive portrayer of strange characters and their complex psychic states. He viewed himself as a Yiddish Maxim Gorkywhose short stories and autobiographical fiction chronicled the inner life of the Jewish working class in Odessa and the Lower East Side tenements. He is one of the most original Yiddish prose writers of his generation.  From encylopedia.com 

Rachel Minesteaches in the English Department at Langara College, Vancouver, Canada. She has been translating and publishing Rosenfeld’s short stories since 2015 and is preparing a collection for publication by Syracuse University Press. She was a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow in 2016.