modern Yiddish literature came to maturity with the writing of the three classical writers, Mendele Mokher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz,… - Chava Rosenfarb

The crowd was in good spirits, convivial and singing, and for a while the troubles of the world seemed far away.

What intrigues me in human nature is precisely the thing that defies gender and sexual difference, heredity and upbringing. If my character is male, then I must try to immerse myself in his masculinity in order to inhabit him completely. The same is true if my character is female...I believe that in a successful literary work the writer rises above her inner censor and transcends the confines of gender; that in such a work it makes little difference if the female characters are depicted by a male or a female writer. In such a work the writer, whatever his or her actual gender, is a feminist. In such a work the female writer is faithful to her own essence and the male writer sees his female characters as autonomous beings, similar to himself and yet different. Such a work would make us realize that we all have an equal share in our common humanity. That, at least, would be my ideal.

Writing is a lonely profession, and after the Holocaust, Yiddish writers were doubly lonely.