I don't analyze or rationalize about art, about form and style. Everything is clear as day and comes to me as easily as if I were a medium and some o… - Chava Rosenfarb

We Jews have every right to be proud of our Yiddish literature, which flowered in such a short time, and which explored both the heights and the depths of Jewish thought and feeling. But the depiction of Jewish women is, with some exceptions, not among our literature's finest accomplishments...some male Yiddish prose writers did faithfully and realistically describe the situation of women in the late-nineteenth century. They depicted their female characters with great tenderness and understanding. But as a general rule, they avoided looking deeper into the more complicated qualities that make up a woman's individuality. The male writer sympathized with the woman's plight; he idealized her, sang her praises, wondered at her, but he knew nothing about who she really was. He did not illuminate her from within.

It seems to me that there is an inherent difference between being a Yiddish writer and being a writer of any other language. The difference is both psychological and linguistic. The Yiddish language, written with the Hebrew letters of the Bible, automatically places every Yiddish text within the context of Jewish history, of Jewish national and religious experience, and so endows it with a near-sacred quality. The mystical power that Jews ascribe to the Hebrew letters seems to influence the texture of even the most secular Yiddish works, endowing them with an additional lustre. As a result, the relationship between the Yiddish writer and her public is imbued with a sense of spiritual and intellectual connection.

Just like an object located in space, an event in time is subject to the laws of perspective; the object diminishes and fades the further one moves away from it. But with our tragedy, the opposite happens. The greater the lapse of time that separates us from our past, the clearer and larger our tragedy grows. Our reason cannot digest the ciphers of destruction; they become an abstraction called six million. We are young. Most of us are in our twenties. Our individual horror stories gathered together would outlast even the longest life. We crave the opportunity to tell at least some of these stories. But no one is willing to listen. So we tell them to each other. We remember. We reminisce. We forget ourselves in remembering. Steeped in our misery, we long for happiness. We live in two realities, the one that is past seeming more real, more palpable, than the actual one.