Women Writers of Yiddish Literature

Taking stock of Yiddish literature in 1939, critic Shmuel Niger highlighted the increasing number and importance of women writers. However, awareness of women Yiddish writers diminished over the years. Today, a modest body of novels, short stories, poems and essays by Yiddish women may be found in English translation online and in print, and little in the way of literary history and criticism is available. This collection of critical essays is the first dedicated to the works of Yiddish women writers, introducing them to a new audience of English-speaking scholars and readers.

The late Rosemary Horowitz was a professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She published extensively on Jewish topics.

Edited by Rosemary Horowitz

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 320
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6881-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1990-3
Imprint: McFarland

Preface by Rosemary Horowitz 1
Lost and Found: Yiddish Women Writers (Irena Klepfisz) 5
A Review of Yiddish Women Writers in English-Language Anthologies (Rosemary Horowitz) 11
Still Waiting for Tomorrow: Lily Bes and Her Contemporaries in the 1920s (Hinde Ena Burstin) 26
The Red Flower: Rebellion and Guilt in the Poetry of Celia Dropkin (Sheva Zucker) 51
Borrowed Shoes: Shira Gorshman’s Politics of Literature (Faith Jones) 70
From Diamond Cutters to Dog Races: Antwerp and London in the Work of Esther Kreitman (Dafna Clifford) 88
To Dive into the Self: The Svive of Blume Lempel (Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub) 103
“Of all the men I am the most manly”: Aspects of Gender in the Poetry of Khane Levin (Joanna Lisek) 126
The Iron Rod of Desire: Imagism and Modernism in Anna Margolin’s Drunk from the Bitter Truth (Paula Hayes) 157
Forgotten Playwright: Kadya Molodowsky and the Yiddish Theater (Debra Caplan) 180
Gender and Nation in the 1945 Poems of Kadya Molodowsky and Malka Heifetz Tussman (Kathryn Hellerstein) 195
Gendered Experience in Chava Rosenfarb’s The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Łódź Ghetto (Julie Spergel) 208
The Earth Hurts Me: On the Poetry of Hadasa Rubin (Magdalena Ruta) 230
Remembering Two of Montreal’s Yiddish Women Poets: Esther Segal and Ida Maza (Rebecca Margolis) 248
Rajzel Zychlinski’s Poetical Trajectories in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Elvira Groezinger) 270
Bibliography 295
About the Contributors 308
Index 311

“Highly recommended”—Choice