Cribside and Other Stories, Fourteen Newly Translated Yiddish Works That Center Women’s Voices

AMHERST, MA (December 6, 2022)—The Yiddish Book Center recently published its 2022 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue, Cribside and Other Stories, featuring fourteen newly translated poems, short stories, and memoirs, all highlighting the complexities of women’s experiences. The free digital edition is available at yiddishbookcenter.org. It can also be purchased as an e-book. 

The works in this collection explore diverse challenges faced by women: mothers weighing whether to leave their children home alone in order to work; women partisans risking their lives in the struggle against fascism; grandmothers asking how to uphold Jewish traditions in a new modern world; daughters attempting to understand their mothers as women with lives of their own. Included are newly translated works by Ida Maze, Shmerke Kaczerginski, and Anna Margolin; with translations by Daniel Kennedy, Jessica Kirzane, and Ruth Murphy, among many others.  

“The Yiddish world is experiencing an important correction, with greater care and attention being given to women writers, their work, and their lives,” said Mindl Cohen, academic director at the Yiddish Book Center. “We are proud that Cribside and Other Stories contributes to this movement with new translations—many by alumni of our translation fellowship—that center Yiddish-speaking women.” 

“The works in this collection all express the universal longing to be seen and heard,” said Susan Bronson, executive director of the Yiddish Book Center. “Bringing to new audiences these works by women writing in Yiddish is part of the Center’s broader efforts to make Yiddish literature accessible and to enhance understanding of Jewish history and culture.” 

Cribside and Other Stories is the tenth annual digital translation issue of Pakn Treger published by the Yiddish Book Center. The first annual Pakn Treger digital translation issue was published in 2013 as part of the Center’s commitment to make Yiddish works available to the widest readership. That same year the Center created the Translation Fellowship to fund, train, and mentor aspiring translators. In 2019 the Center launched its own imprint, White Goat Press, to publish new translations of Yiddish literature. 

Cribside and Other Stories: 

Two Diaper Poems 
By Ida Maze, translated by Ri J. Turner  

Cribside: A Dramatization of Life in Politics 
By Yenta Serdatsky, translated by Jessica Kirzane 

Spadina 
By Yudica, translated by Faith Jones 

Fear 
By Sarah B. Smith, translated by Dan Setzer 

The Powdered Corpse 
By Rachel Luria, translated by Jonah Lubin 

On Boulevard de Belleville 
By Wolf Wieviorka, translated by Sarah Biskowitz 

Naomi Speaks to Her Daughters-in-law 
By Itzik Manger, translated by Murray Citron  

During Sleepless Nights 
By Anna Margolin, translated by Daniel Kennedy 

The Last Night 
By Rikle Glezer, translated by Corbin Allardice and Jay Saper 

Heroic Young Women 
By Shmerke Kaczerginski, translated by Lillian Leavitt 

At the Interrogation 
By Lili Berger, translated by Judy Nisenholt 

To Rosa Palatnik 
By Rokhl Kramf, translated by Abigail Weaver 

From My Childhood 
By Rokhl Feygenberg, translated by Ruth Murphy 

Oh, My Language 
By Roshelle Weprinsky, translated by Rebecca Weingart 

About the Yiddish Book Center 

The Yiddish Book Center is a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture. The million books recovered by the Yiddish Book Center represent Jews’ first sustained literary and cultural encounter with the modern world. They are a window on the past thousand years of Jewish history, a precursor of modern Jewish writing in English, Hebrew, and other languages, and a springboard for new creativity. Since its founding in 1980, the Center has launched a wide range of bibliographic, educational, and cultural programs to share these treasures with the wider world.  

In 2014 the Yiddish Book Center was awarded a National Medal for Museums and Libraries, the nation’s highest medal conferred on a museum or library, at a White House ceremony.  

Learn more at yiddishbookcenter.org.