Rare Photos of a Great Yiddish Poet

A window into a poet's life through the look in his eyes.

I was delighted to receive several rare photographs of the great Yiddish poet Israel Emiot from the poet Karen Alkalay-Gut, whose parents ran a Yiddish reading series in Rochester, New York. These photographs are from her personal collection.

In the photo above, Emiot is on the right, and Karen’s handsome father is on the left. “Emiot was desperate to find an audience,” Alkalay-Gut told me, “and a total refugee from a lost world.” 

I think you can see all of that in Emiot’s eyes.

Stay tuned for a look at the bilingual Yiddish-English collection and a Q & A with Alkalay-Gut about growing up surrounded by giants of Yiddish poetry—coming soon in a future newsletter post.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these marvelous photos of Yiddish writers and their supporters in Rochester, NY—all from Alkalay-Gut’s collection.

For more on Israel Emiot and his poems, please see the newsletter’s first issue, Three Jewish Poets Who Should Be Better Known https://aviyakushner.substack.com/p/three-jewish-poets-who-should-be

Israel Emiot is in the back, third from right. From Karen Alkalay-Gut’s collection.

Yiddish writers. Karen Alkalay-Gut can be seen in the table perpendicular to the dais, in the first seat on the right.

Poet Karen Alkalay-Gut’s parents, Louis and Doris Rosenstein, in the Israel Emiot Memorial Yiddish Library in Rochester, NY. Courtesy of Karen Alkalay-Gut.

And last but not least, the caption of the last photo deserves a close look. Wouldn’t it be lovely if more libraries were named after Yiddish poets?

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Hope you enjoyed this newsletter! I appreciate your support of writing with depth.