The long and complicated history of Jews in Ukraine was not always a happy one, but it would be a mistake to think of it as an unmitigated series of upheavals. To the contrary, the region gave rise to some of the greatest achievements of Jewish literature and culture, as the collections of the Yiddish Book Center bear witness. As exhibit A, you can listen to this program of readings and songs from Yiddish works in translation by Yiddish writers from Ukraine including Blume Lempel, Mendel Osherowitz, Dora Shulner, and Sholem Aleichem.
View our map of Yiddish writers who were born or lived or worked in Ukraine
High Doorsteps
Born in 1905 in Lithuania, Shira Gorshman did not begin writing until the late 1930s. By then she had lived in Palestine and Crimea, serving as a member of workers’ collectives in both locales. In Moscow she married the artist Mendel Gorshman and began writing as a response to the creative life there. She continued writing steadily until her death in Israel in 2001, often reflecting on the vulnerability and tenacity of Jewish life in different historical settings. In this story, “High Doorsteps,” she takes us into the world of Soviet labor communes. These utopian enterprises were not free of the power relations they sought to overturn. In this story Gorshman shows, through a gendered lens, how both resistance and solidarity are needed to create a more just world.
Read a translation of “High Doorsteps”
Songs and Stories
The long and complicated history of Jews in Ukraine was not always a happy one, but it would be a mistake to think of it as an unmitigated series of upheavals. To the contrary, the region gave rise to some of the greatest achievements of Jewish literature and culture, as the collections of the Yiddish Book Center bear witness. As exhibit A, you can listen to this program of readings and songs from Yiddish works in translation by Yiddish writers from Ukraine including Blume Lempel, Mendel Osherowitz, Dora Shulner, and Sholem Aleichem.
View our map of Yiddish writers who were born or lived or worked in Ukraine
High Doorsteps
Born in 1905 in Lithuania, Shira Gorshman did not begin writing until the late 1930s. By then she had lived in Palestine and Crimea, serving as a member of workers’ collectives in both locales. In Moscow she married the artist Mendel Gorshman and began writing as a response to the creative life there. She continued writing steadily until her death in Israel in 2001, often reflecting on the vulnerability and tenacity of Jewish life in different historical settings. In this story, “High Doorsteps,” she takes us into the world of Soviet labor communes. These utopian enterprises were not free of the power relations they sought to overturn. In this story Gorshman shows, through a gendered lens, how both resistance and solidarity are needed to create a more just world.
Read a translation of “High Doorsteps”
Upcoming!
FILM | The Adventures of Saul Bellow
Live screening at the Yiddish Book Center
Talkback with director Asaf Galay
Sunday, August 14, 2022 @ 2 p.m. EST
CONVERSATION | “The House of Memory: Jewish Stories from Jewish Women of Latin America,” with Marjorie Agosin
Thursday, September 15, @ 7 p.m. EDT
View our full calendar of events