What happened after this - that is, after the amazing flowering of Yiddish culture and literature between the two world wars - was a tragedy of unima… - Chava Rosenfarb

I am not a card-carrying feminist, but the intellectual baggage that I bring to the act of writing is certainly coloured by my femininity.

I do not see myself primarily as a translator, although I have in fact, with the help of my daughter, translated much of my own work. Nevertheless, when I reflect more deeply on this subject, I realize that my entire life has been a process of translation. I have been translated from my birthplace in Europe to my present home in North America. I have written three novels, one collection of short stories, four books of poetry, three plays, many essays and travelogues. Yet, without translation, all of these would have been relegated to the graveyard of those few libraries that still contain books in my language, or to the bottom drawer of my own desk. This is because the language in which I write, Yiddish, has fewer and fewer readers and writers. Translation represents to me my literary future. It makes me think that not everything I write will be totally lost, even if things do inevitably get lost in translation.

I respect all definitions of art, but I cherish most the definition which states that art is an expression of the desire to communicate on the most meaningful level.