Winner of the Modern Language Association's Fania & Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies (2018)

Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (the translators) on encountering Blume Lempel's stories wrote: "When we began reading and translating, we didn't know we were going to find a mother drawn into an incestuous relationship with her blind son. We didn't know we'd meet a young woman lying on the table at an abortion clinic. We didn't know we'd meet a middle-aged woman full of erotic imaginings as she readies herself for a blind date. Buried in this forgotten Yiddish-language material, we found modernist stories and modernist story-telling techniques imagine reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the conversational touch of Grace Paley."


Lempel (1907 1999) was one of a small number of writers in the United States who wrote in Yiddish into the 1990s. Though many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she did not confine herself to these landscapes or themes. She often wrote about the margins of society, and about subjects considered untouchable. her prize-winning fiction is remarkable for its psychological acuity, its unflinching examination of erotic themes and gender relations, and its technical virtuosity. Mirroring the dislocation of mostly women protagonists, her stories move between present and past, Old World and New, dream and reality.

While many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she also wrote about the margins of society, about subjects considered untouchable, among them abortion, prostitution, women's erotic imaginings, and even incest. She illuminated the inner lives of her characters mostly women. Her storylines migrate between past and present, Old World and New, dream and reality, modern-day New York and prewar Poland, bedtime story and passionate romance, and old-age dementia and girlhood dreams.

Immigrating to New York when Hitler rose to power, Blume Lempel began publishing her short stories in 1945. By the 1970s her work had become known throughout the Yiddish literary world. When she died in 1999, the Yiddish paper Forverts wrote: "Yiddish literature has lost one of its most remarkable women writers."

Ellen Cassedy, translator, is author of the award-winning study "We Are Here", about the Lithuanian Holocaust. With her colleague Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, they received the Yiddish Book Center 2012 Translation Prize for translating Blume Lempel. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of several books of poetry, including "Prayers of a Heretic/Tfiles fun an apikoyres" (2013),"Uncle Feygele"(2011), and "What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (2008)."


In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Yiddish writers and literature. Blume Lempel was one of the few great women Yiddish writers of the 20th Century. Unfortunately she died in 1999. But her son, Paul Lempel and her translators, Ellen Cassedy and Ahron Taub are willing to serve as surrogates and spread the word about this first time English collection of her stories. 1. We will produce 60-100 ARCs and send them out to the national media. 2.Ellen Cassedy will present this book to the Jewish Book Council's Jewish Book Fair Conference in May with the hope of securing offers to do readings at Fall and Spring Jewish Book Fairs around the country. 3. Jewish Book Council will prepare a readers club kit for this volume with supplementary readings, discussion questions and will post these materials on their Jewish Book Club website. There are 450 Jewish book clubs around the country and most are composed of women--a ripe audience for this book. 4. We will send out 100 review copies of this book to national media, Jewish media, fiction and women blogs, 5. We will conduct an intensive e-marketing and promotion campaign with facebook, twitter and tumblr 6. We will do five advertisements to promote this title to its key constituencies and markets. 7. This book will be submitted for the National Jewish Book Award among other awards.

About the Author
Blume Lempel: Born in Galicia in 1909, with the rise of Nazism, Lempel emigrated to New York in 1939. Although writing in Yiddish,the settings of her short stories were largely American. She continued to write and publish well into her 90s.Until now her work has remained mostly uncollected and untranslated. Ellen Cassedy: A former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, a former speechwriter in the Clinton Administration, Ellen is the author of "We are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust." Her work has appeared in Hadassah, The Jewish Daily Forward, the Huffington Post, Lilith,and many other fine journals. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub: Born and raised in Philadelphia and Baltimore, Taub graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Temple University. He received an M.A. in history from Emory University and an M.L.S. from Queens College, CUNY.The author of four books of poetry,he was honored as one of NYC's best Jewish artists.

Reviews
"Blume Lempel's short story collection is a splendid surprise and a significant revivification of a brilliantly robust Yiddish-American writer." -Cynthia Ozick "These stories are a remarkable achievement. . . . She [writes] with modernist acuity...With shrewdness, wit, and lyricism, Lempel gives voice to the women, the aging, the ill, and others who, from the margins of modern society, have had trouble making themselves heard." -Kirkus Reviews "Stunning . . . a brilliant, talented writer with one foot in the prewar world in Europe and the other in postwar America. . . . Highly recommended for all collections of Jewish literature." -Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter "Richly evocative, filled with pleasure and pain, and powerfully human and humane." -The Forward "An eclectic, original and inventive collection." -Lilith magazine "These are stories that deserve a cherished place in the canon of Jewish literature." -Foreword Reviews "These spare, skillful tales are both introspective and illuminating." -Philip K. Jason in the Washington Independent Review of Books "Rescuing a fine writer from oblivion." -Howard Freedman, Jweekly.com "Strange, muscled, riven with grief, Blume Lempel's short stories are for the ages." -C.M. Mayo "An unusual and important voice." -Amos Lassen "Blume Lempel conducts a conversation across multiple time zones and spheres . . . a heroic effort to create and sustain a choir of voices in Yiddish, her beloved and endangered language." -David G. Roskies, author of Yiddishlands: A Memoir "A wonderfully original and controversial writer. . . . Blume Lempel left a remarkable legacy that this beautifully translated volume finally makes accessible to a wider audience." -Anita Norich, author of Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the 20th Century "The thematic and stylistic scope of Blume Lempel's writing, as demonstrated admirably by Cassedy and Taub's translations, is wide and richly integrated." -Jeffrey Shandler, author of Adventures in Yiddishland: Post-Vernacular Language and Culture "This new translation of Blume Lempel's stories reanimates the melody of Yiddish, the mame-loshen. . . . As one of her characters puts it: 'No world language is comparable to Yiddish, to the Yiddish sigh, the Yiddish sense of humor.'" -Victoria Aarons, author of What Happened to Abraham? One of Book Riot's 100 Must-Read Books about Women and Religion.


Awards
Winner of Modern Language Association's Fania & Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies 2018 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781942134251
Author Blume Lempel
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Mandel Vilar Press
Publisher Mandel Vilar Press
Weight(grams) 439g