Co-sponsored by the Toronto Workmen's Circle, Committee for Yiddish UJA Federation & Friends of Yiddish in Toronto.
Sunday November 6 at 2:00pm
At the Workmen's Circle Centre – 471 Lawrence Ave W
Dr. Goldie Morgentaler
The Yiddish-Canadian Writer in the Post-Holocaust World: A Tribute to Chava Rosenfarb
Dr. Goldie Morgentaler will discuss the unique body of work produced by her late mother, Chava Rosenfarb, z”l, a prolific Yiddish writer of Holocaust literature who was a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto. She authored numerous volumes of prose and poetry, most notably, The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto. Through her writings, she expressed her sense of personal accountability to those Yiddish speakers who perished and to those who survived, by bearing witness to their suffering in their language. By writing about the Holocaust in Yiddish, Rosenfarb felt herself to be responsible to maintain the language of the lost community of which she had once been a part and to which she held herself accountable.
Dr. Goldie Morgentaler, daughter of Chava Rosenfarb, is an award-winning translator. She is a professor of English at the University of Lethbridge, where she teaches nineteenth-century British and American literature. She has translated numerous Yiddish literary works into English and is the translator for much of her mother's work.
The lecture will be delivered in primarily in English, accompanied by readings in Yiddish of selections from Rosenfarb’s poetry and prose.
You are invited to the book launch for
One Foot in America
by Yuri Suhl
Published by Now and Then Books
Sunday May 29, 2011
1:30pm
Workmen’s Circle Centre
471 Lawrence Ave W.
No Reservations. Refreshments
Description
Originally published in 1950, Suhl’s autobiographical novel depicts the author’s experience as a young Jewish immigrant coming to America. Told with warmth, humour and Yiddish flavour, One Foot in America is a coming-of-age tale that paints a vivid picture of what life was like in many North American cities in the 1920s and 1930s. In the opinion of Bill Gladstone, the book publisher, “One Foot in America is a forgotten classic of Jewish immigrant fiction. “. Reviewers loved the novel when it first came out and believed that it would have a universal appeal, but it would be particularly relished by every Jew who grew up in an American home where the parents spoke Yiddish while the children answered in English.
Bill Gladstone, will discuss this book and two to three other classics from this genre. With the aid of a slide show, he will also depict the Jewish immigrant experience, both in Brooklyn and in Toronto in the 1920s.
Bill is a writer, editor, publisher and genealogist who has published several books and numerous short stories. He is a weekly columnist for the Canadian Jewish News and an occasional contributor to the Globe and Mail and many other publications. In 2008 he founded a publishing house, Now and Then Books. Bill is a past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Toronto and the book review editor of Avotaynu, the international journal of Jewish genealogy based in New Jersey. He gives frequent lectures and workshops related to Jewish genealogy and the history of the Jewish community in Toronto.
