by Ezra Glinter
Laura Yaros works as a certified translator and has been an activist in the feminist, lesbian, and progressive Jewish movements for over forty years. She has been a community radio broadcaster for thirty-four years and airs a weekly show called Matrix in Montreal, Canada.
Saul Noam Zaritt is an assistant professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard University. He received his doctorate in Jewish literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and he is the founding editor of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.
Barnett Zumoff is a medical doctor, a retired major general in the United States Air Force, former president of the Forward Association, and four-time president of the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring. He has published twenty-one volumes of Yiddish literary translations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALTHOUGH I HAD the unique pleasure of assembling this collection and of editing its translations, none of this would have been possible without the assistance and contributions of many people. I owe a special gratitude to all of my colleagues at the Forward who made up for my weekly absences while I worked on this book, and especially to Adam Langer, Bob Goldfarb, Chana Pollack, and Jordan Kutzik, whose help, advice, and support were critical throughout the process. Equally important were the talented staff at W. W. Norton, including my editor, Amy Cherry, her assistant Remy Cawley, and rights manager Jillian Brall, whose advice was indispensable to this project. Most of all I owe an immense debt to all of the translators who worked with me on this volume and who greatly exceeded their duties by helping me with research and recommendations, and who contributed their talents for a fraction of what they are worth.
A research-intensive project such as this could never exist without the organizations, staff, and facilities that make such work possible. My thanks go to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Center for Jewish History for providing me and many other researchers with their beautiful facilities at no charge, and to Zachary Loeb and his colleagues for patiently assisting with countless microfilm and book requests. I also thank Jan Shwarz, Amanda Siegel, David Stromberg, and Amir Shomroni for sharing their research and recommendations, and Eddy Portnoy for being my first guide to the vast world of newspaper microfilm. And I am immensely grateful to the family members of the writers included in these pages, who graciously shared their own family histories and memories with me.
On behalf of the Forward, I’d also like to express my appreciation to Edward Blank, whose generous financial sponsorship made this book possible. This book is dedicated to the memory of his mother, May Cohn, who came to the United States for the opportunity to be free and whose love, sacrifice, and counsel helped him achieve his potential.
For writers, an editor is usually their sounding board, encouraging good instincts and curbing weaker ones. But to whom does an editor turn for such advice? For me that person was most often Esther Goodman, my Yiddish teacher of many years, who was the first person with whom I read most of these stories and who never failed to offer her unvarnished opinion of their merits. Last but not least, I owe everything to my parents, Nancy and Harry Glinter, without whom nothing I do would be possible, and to my grandmothers, Clara Cohen and Mania Epstein, who lived in a world of Yiddish long before I ever had the privilege of entering it. These stories are for them.
Copyright © 2017 by The Forward Association, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 2017 by Dara Horn
All rights reserved
First Edition
This book was made possible with the generous support of Edward
Blank and is dedicated to the memory of his mother, May Cohn.
The Story “Zeydes un eyneklekh” (“Grandfathers and
Grandchildren”) was published in Di Kloyz un di gas: dertseylungen.
Copyright © 1974 by Chaim Grade. Permission granted by YIVO
and its agent, Robin Straus Agency, Inc.
The story “Ekskursye af tsurik” (“A Journey Back in Time”) was
published in Balade fun a kholem. Copyright © 1986 by Blume Lempel.
Permission granted by Paul Lempel.
The translation of “Mona Bubbe” by Yente Mash was supported in
part by the Yiddish Book Center’s translation fellowship program.
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