Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers

by Frieda Forman (Editor), Ethel Raicus (Editor), Sarah Silberstein Swartz (Editor)

The first of its kind, this anthology showcases women’s writing previously available only in Yiddish. A book of voices from an almost forgotten female heritage, it features eighteen writers who speak powerfully of the events that shaped their lives; the daily fabric of life in Europe, the struggle from which new lives in North America, Palestine and then Israel were forged, the terror and challenge of survival during the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Genres: Short Stories, Jewish, Judaica, Fiction, Judaism

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Frieda Johles Forman was born in Vienna into a Yiddish-speaking family. After attending Hebrew College in Boston, she taught Hebrew and Jewish Studies, as well as Women’s Studies and Philosophy at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, where she founded “Kids Can Press.” She founded, and for two decades directed, the Women’s Educational Resource Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her publications include Taking Our Time: Feminist Perspectives of Temporalit. She was the researcher, an editor and translator of Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. Currently, she is writing a memoir of her refugee years in Switzerland during World War II.

(from http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/fo...)

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of all the books I read this semester for my course on women and religion, this was one of the most difficult. First of all the material was translated from Yiddish to English. More importantly, I believe that many of the stories were translated without assistance from the authors. I think reading translations is often difficult because the words from one language may not be available in another language.

Another reason it was difficult is that many of the authors' experiences are completely foreign to me. I did not grow up in a shetel, I did not have to survive immigration or the holocaust. Although I like reading about new worlds and different experiences, I had a hard time relating to some of these stories.

That said, I am grateful to the women who put this anthology together. These are stories that could have been easily lost. Everyday we lose links to the past and many of these women had gone on to do other things. I am amazed that these tales could be found, recovered and translated.

A couple of the stories will stay with me because they were so haunting. I keep returning to end of "The road of no return". I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Jewish history. Readers with more knowledge of that history would probably find this an easier read than I did.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women were writing Yiddish stories alongside Sholom Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer and I.L. Peretz -- both in Eastern Europe and New York's Lower East Side -- but very few were translated until many decades later. This anthology, with stories from a dozen women writers including Yente Serdatsky Blume Lempe and Rachel Korn, reveals the inner lives of women from the shtetls to the sweatshops, cruel marriages and passionate love affairs, and women, young and old, trying to break free from a patriarchy and smothering tradition.

[Nomy · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is just unbelievable. it make me feel connected to the yiddishe speaking women in my family who are all gone now. these women are such fierce, poetic, unapologetic writers. right now i'm in a section with holocaust stories in it, one where a family has to self-select who to send to the nazis. the grandma knows they want her to go but they won't say it... fucking gut wrenching. and another about a survivor living in new york who is drawn to a queer woman she meets but too afraid to try to love... ugh, this shit brings up this ferocity in me that wishes it had a language and a space to go. i wish i could talk to these women. i wish my aunt ina was alive still.

i was also really moved by the story about the woman who wants to be a dancer but instead gets married and moves to the u.s. and has a bunch of kids, she never even remembers that she dreams often about dancing, flying through the air, until one day something triggers the memory and she confuses her dreams with reality, she believes that she has always been able to fly through the air and just lost the ability, people think she is crazy so she just stops talking...

there are happy stories too, passionate women involved with radical organizing in the bund, reunions between estranged family members and old friends... but also lots of anger, bitterness at being born female and lack of options, being trapped in unchosen unwanted roles...

these are battle-scarred women who didn't shut up, who helped create the genre of yiddish literature but were locked out of the "canon" by men who wanted to "legitimize" the genre. i am so grateful that this volume exists. maybe some day i will be able to read them in yiddish.

[Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to read the stories and memoirs of women from the world of Yiddish.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

You may have read Shalom Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer, or Chaim Grade, and they certainly give one a feeling for late 19th century and early 20th century Yiddish culture and life, but you may not have experienced that same culture from a female perspective. The same world through the eyes of women writers is a fascinating and eye-opening discovery. This wonderful volume rescues some 13 writers from obscurity, with helpful biographical notes and contextualizing discussion. Irena Kelpfisz’s introductory essay, “Queens of Contradiction - A feminist introduction to Yiddish women writers” is good, but perhaps better read after one has read the stories than before.

Most of these stories are just good reads - short vignettes in the main from the ground level of ordinary lives of women, struggling with family life, with employment, with marriage. These are not stories of high philosophy - they are stories of life in the trenches of the home and workplace. These are stories of ground-level truths about immigration, about life in the early yishuv, about the dark inner world of a former female Jewish Kapo.

Talk about keeping it real - these stories banish any romantic “Fiddler on the Roof” illusions and bring you into a world of struggle and clear-visioned assessment of each world.

As I read, I felt that each successive story became stronger and more gripping than the last. The first few stories left me kind of shrugging - not dissatisfied, but not thrilled. But I stuck with it. Whether because of editorial ordering choices, or because I began to sink into these worlds, the stories kept growing on me, and seeming to become more intense and more modern. The penultimate novella, Edgia’s Revenge, by Chava Rosenfarb, the story of a woman whose guilty conscience follows her out of the death camps, is particularly strong. The final set, Five Stories by Rikudah Potash, a Yiddish writer who tells post-1948 Israeli stories of Mizrahi Jews from Yemen and Kurdistan, among others, is also very good.

[G]

A valuable resource; I hope there are now more collections like it. I also hope that in the future I might be able to read the stories in the original Yiddish.

[Socket Klatzker · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad this book exists. The marriage focus and melodramatic tone of the authors really gave me an idea of what life was like for the way ass brave writers of the few stories I read.