I am honored to host two amazing translators and scholars who are working hard to revive the work of great Yiddish women writers. We will hear about Chava Rosenfarb as a writer and as a mother, and we’ll delve into her masterful story “Edgia’s Revenge”— which imagines a woman kapo and her conduct during and after the Holocaust. It’s about who is the perpetrator, who is a victim, and what any of us owe in exchange for our lives. Link and Zoom info at the end of the newsletter.
Here are bios for Goldie Morgentaler—Rosenfarb’s daughter and the award-winning translator who has brought her mother’s work into English, and Kathryn Hellerstein— the distinguished scholar, writer, and translator who is deeply involved in the work of Yiddish women writers.
Goldie Morgentaler.
About Goldie Morgentaler
Goldie Morgentaler is Professor Emerita at the University of Lethbridge. Her translations of Chava Rosenfarb’s work into English have won several awards including, most recently, the 2019 Canadian Jewish Literary Award and the 2020 Segal Prize for the collection of Rosenfarb’s essays called Confessions of a Yiddish Writer. In October 2024, Morgentaler won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for her translation of the stories in In the Land of the Postscript, including “Edgia’s Revenge”.
About Kathryn Hellerstein
Kathryn Hellerstein is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Jewish Studies Program. A poet, translator, and scholar of Yiddish poetry, Hellerstein’s books include a translation and study of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's poems, In New York: A Selection, (Jewish Publication Society, 1982), Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky (Wayne State University Press, 1999), and Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, of which she is co-editor (W. W. Norton, 2001). Her monograph, A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987, won many awards including the National Jewish Book Award. She also contributed to American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (University of California Press, 1986).
Works in progress include Women Yiddish Poets: An Anthology; China through Yiddish Eyes: Cultural Translation in the Twentieth Century; and Jewish Women Poets as Translators: Changing Liturgy and Canon. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and many other institutions.
Here is a link to the PDF of the story in English translation, graciously provided by Goldie Morgentaler. If you prefer, you can certainly buy the collection and read it that way—you will not be sorry to have Rosenfarb stories in your home!
Salons are a thank-you to paid subscribers who make this newsletter possible. Monthly, annual, and gift subscriptions are available. Founding subscribers receive a 30-minute “Discuss Any Issue In Your Writing Life” session for themselves or a friend. New subscribers who join up to 30 minutes before the salon starts will receive Zoon info. Hope to see you later today!
