>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
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>> Gail Shirazi: Hello, I'm Gail Shirazi at the Library of Congress, I'm a librarian the Israel Judaica section and I'd like to welcome you to today's program, The 13th Hour of Reading and Discussion of Yiddish Poetry of Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim presented by a translator, Professor Zelda Newman.  The program is cosponsored today by the Hebraic section of the African and Middle East Division here at the library and the Hebrew Language Table in cooperation with the Embassy of Israel.  I would like to thank Sharon Horowitz in the Hebraic section, Galena Tovarovski [phonetic] of the IJ section, Delphine Gamberg in the Embassy of Israel, and we have the cultural officer sitting with us today, Molly Tobin, her third day on the job.  Thank you Aaron Taub, head of the Israel and Judaica section who will also be reading.  And a special thank you to our main speaker Professor Newman.  Professor Newman received her BA in philosophy from Brooklyn College, her MA and PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan, her specialty -- well she's a linguist, but her specialty is Yiddish language and culture.  But she's involved in a variety of other activities.  She's lived in Israel for 30 years where she helped found Maslan, the Women's Center for Victims of Violence of the Negev.  She was elected to the Academy for awarding theater prizes in Israel and is a former head of Judaic studies at Lehman College of SUNY.  And she has an upcoming biography of the prolific Yiddish writer Kadya Molodowsky, she's now retired and living in Beersheba.  A few announcements before we begin, please turn off your cell phones.  This event is being taped for a webcast.  During the Q&A we're going to span the audience, so if you do not want to be filmed, please leave during that time.  And our program announcements for programs we're doing in the future for the Hebrew Language Table and the books will be available after the program.  So, I'm going to introduce Professor Newman, thank you.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Thank you.  
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[ Applause ]
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I'd also like to thank the Hebraic section of the African and Middle East Studies Division, the Hebrew Language Table and the Library of Congress.  Apparently, the Embassy of Israel is connected with this, so thank you to everybody.  As a lover of Yiddish and a bookworm I'm delighted to be here presenting to you a dual language Yiddish English book, this one over here.  The Yiddish poems of Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim and alongside them my English translations.  Nothing could be more fitting English is my native language, Yiddish is my [foreign language], the language I heard around me.  The Library of Congress is an extraordinary institution and Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim is an extraordinary individual.  All good literature illuminates the universal by examining the particular and poetry is the most particular of all literary forms.  As I take you through a tour of the poet's work the universal elements will leap out at you.  The particular ones are ones that I will point out and I'll fill you in on the details.  Rivka Basman was born in 1925 in the town of Vilkomir and what the Jews called [inaudible] or Lithuania.  When she looked back on her childhood there was one teacher who stood out.  Here is her poem about that teacher it's called [foreign language], My Teacher Riva.  This is how it goes, I'm going to read it first in Yiddish and then its translation in English.
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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Okay, here's the English translation.  My Teacher Riva.  Like sun in a rain caught in leaves your image shines forever in me my teacher Riva.  Unique and eternal your vision, a truly rooted vigil excuse me, a truly rooted vigil your love the strongest my teacher Riva.  So, I absorb the sunset which has lit before me a corner of memory through dark pains.  With years wait patiently where time has no dominion over them and there in a shtetl in Lithuania, at the first sung alphabet-letters dripped with honey and tears I swallowed your smile loomed in sadness.  Hours will probably overlap the latter reach the former and meet somewhere together by seas.  And there in a blue remembrance your name will gleam pristine, my teacher Riva.  This poem speaks of the first alphabet letters gripping with honey.  It was traditional in Eastern Europe to introduce young children to the Hebrew letters with which Yiddish is written by dipping a letter baked in honey and then giving the letter to the child in the shape of a letter.  Let's say an olive, the child would say olive and then swallow the letter.  This accomplished two things, it made the Hebrew letters literally and symbolically a part of the child and it is associated Jewish learning with a very pleasant experience.  Rivka new loss at a very young age, her mother died when she was still a child, her grandma stepped in.  When the Nazis emptied Rivka's town of Jews Rivka was 14.  She held onto her brother Arele and some of her poems are dedicated her brother Arele.  But he was torn out of her hands and she never saw him again.  Rivka spent two years in the Vilna ghetto where she met the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever.  Ten years older than Rivka Sutzkever was already a recognized Yiddish poet.  When Rivka told Sutzkever that she herself composed poems Sutzkever said, keep it up that's what will keep you alive and it did.  When Rivka was sent to the Kaiserwald Concentration Camps she continued to compose poems.  It's been said that at the Warsaw uprising the cry went out [foreign language], Jews don't be despaired.  And in that same spirit of the Nazis can control our bodies, but they can't control our spirit the women of this concentration camp decided to entertain the inmates every day.  So at the end of every grueling workday there were three women who entertained the inmates, one sang, one danced and one composed a poem and recited it that day.  It was Rivka who composed a poem and recited it every day.  This is Rivka's description of that experience.  It's called the Dermonung.
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Remembrance first in Yiddish.
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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Okay, here's the translation Remembrance.  They remember how I used to write poems, crying poems, silence poems on the red cobblestones.  Remember me at the barbed fence, my young skin tattooed from barbed points.  
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To see a tiny threat of sunset of my own setting in that last sun.  I sang then and my poem was itself our sun.  Okay, that's her poem about them.  It's worth pointing out that nowhere in this poem or in any poem ever written by Rivka are the Nazis or the Germans ever mentioned outright never.  It's as though the Germans were not allowed to control the spirits of the women and they are not allowed into Rivka's closed world of Yiddish poetry, they're closed off.  But that of course, does not mean that the inmates were able to forget what had happened.  The trauma was with them for life.  Here is Rivka's honest description of that and it's called [foreign language].
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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And this is the translation We Are Restless.  We are restless from wandering.  We are restless from seeking a cave in the night so a star shouldn't spot us.  We are restless for longing for those who never did die and are dead.  We are restless from being unable to tell ourselves of our unrest.  So Rivka did exactly as Sutzkever had predicted Rivka found solace in poetry, in her ability to find words for complex emotions and in the satisfaction that comes with the artistic creation.  Of course, a poet needs inspiration and the news may be fickle, it may not come when it's cold.  This is Rivka's poem describing the gratification that comes with finding the precise word [foreign language], that's the way the French call it.  Okay it's called [foreign language].  Just a minute, I thought I had it here.  Just a second, [foreign language] okay, [foreign language].
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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If you can and you will it becomes calm and still.  When it becomes so good, so easy it sings by itself, of itself.  The sounds listen to their own calm.  Rare when there's such a becalmed calm.  I'd go there more often if I knew how and to where.  So that's her poem on poetic inspiration.  Back now to the end of the war.  By the end of the war Rivka's father was no longer alive, he was murdered in a camp in Estonia just before the war ended.  So, at the war's end Rivka was alone in the world.  She met and married Shmuel nicknamed Mula Ben-Hayim after the war in Belgrade.  Mula ran the Belgrade station of the organization known as Berihah, the Hebrew word for flight or escape.  The members of this organization gathered the stateless Jews then wandering all over Europe wanted by no one and sent them illegally to what was then Palestine.  Here then was a young couple just starting life together who took it upon themselves to dodge the Interpol, the Interpol was looking for them and put their lives in danger to help settle fellow Jews in the one place in the world that was happy to have them then.  It's not surprising then that when Rivka and Mula, her husband, arrived in Israel in 1947, they settled in a kibbutz called Ha-Ma'pil.  Literally Ha-Ma'pil means one who ascends, who goes up.  This kibbutz took its name from a passage in the Book of Numbers, chapter 14, verse 44 and that's the original story of Ha-Ma'pil those who ascend.  Those of you who are so inclined can look it up, those of you are not so inclined can ask in the Q&A section there's a story about why this kibbutz was called Ha-Ma'pil.  What mattered for Rivka was that on the kibbutz she could heal.  She watched things grow, she got a teaching degree and she taught children and she watched them grow.  And that for her was therapeutic.  Most important, she had Mula, the love of her life and her life partner.  Mula was an artist, he's no longer alive.  This picture that you see here is his picture and all the prints in this book are his prints.  This is a poem addressed to him essentially to Mula, it is called [foreign language].
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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With you I am calm, remember she spoke about being restless so with Mula, her husband, she is calm.  With you I am calm and close and I need not withhold any words like leaves in a sun-lit crown anchored in their earth.  With you I am entirely with myself rooted to streaming wonder, which nests in drops of light even as it goes under.  With you the day is not divided, no separate now and yesterday, clothed in endless green and you're the eternal sentry.  Anyone notice that the book is dedicated to Mula?  Rivka wanted it that way.  Never one to avoid harsh truths Rivka had to admit that even as she healed the pain did not disappear.  In the following poem, she speaks of a slow process of healing and the untouched depths of grief.  And now Aaron will read the next five poems for you [foreign language].  
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>> Aaron Taub: Okay, can you hear me?  I don't know if you can.  So, I want to thank Zelda for her beautiful translations.  And I also want to say participating in this reading is especially meaningful to me because I met Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim in 2009, when I was giving a reading at [inaudible] in Tel Aviv and Rivka was there and was extremely encouraging and supportive.  And more recently, for a literary event of contemporary Yiddish poetry she translated one of my Yiddish poems into Hebrew and did a really beautiful job.  So, I wrote her a little note.  All right, so Di Depts.
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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You've stitched my ripped surface, pasted and gathered until there appeared a tiny light and I forgot about myself.  I'm just about healed, but the depths they haven't yet spoken.  
>> Zelda Kahan Newman:  Thank you Aaron.  I don't know if we're going to show this clip, but I should point out that the second line of the poem you're going to hear is [foreign language] and that is reference to the biblical verse [foreign language].
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From out of the depths I called and Rivka's poems are from out of the depths.  In the pre-World War 2 era the Jewish world was divided between the advocates of Yiddish as the language of the Jews and of Hebrew as the language of the Jews.  When the state of Israel was young Yiddish was denigrated as the language of the diaspora which Israelis were told to get rid of.  In the inclusive way that is typical of her and Rivka does translate from Hebrew to Yiddish and back.  Rivka was both Yiddish and Hebrew.  She spoke Hebrew of course, but she joined a group called Yung Yisroel.  This was a group of writers that was intent on maintaining and encouraging artistic creation in Yiddish within a Hebrew speaking environment.  And here is Rivka's poem called the [foreign language], the Intimacy Between Yiddish and Hebrew.  
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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>> Aaron Taub: The Intimacy of Yiddish and Hebrew.  How to explain intimacy of Yiddish and Hebrew.  Perhaps the way Yiddish breathes into a Hebrew word warms up the letters, gives them a softer step.  And then when Yiddish tells Hebrew about her tears both languages pray the identical prayer to God.
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>> Zelda Kahan Newman: In this poem that you've just heard the poet not only tells us about the intimacy between Yiddish and Hebrew she actually demonstrates it.  Yiddish often take a Hebrew word and Yiddishizes [phonetic] [foreign language] or in Yiddish [foreign language] or [foreign language] it.  As you may know, tomato, tomato Yiddish has dialects, so it's [foreign language] in one dialect and [foreign language] in another.  From the noun [foreign language] as we say in modern Hebrew Yiddish creates the verb [foreign language] and we say [foreign language] or [foreign language] depending on your dialect, they dream.  Now there is a Yiddish noun for the verb to pray, the verb prayer and that is [foreign language] in modern Israeli Hebrew or [foreign language] in Yiddish that's how it is, the Yiddish adopts the word and Yiddishizes it [foreign language].  But the Yiddish verb for praying is not from that noun it is the verb davening, that is the standard Yiddish word for praying.  But in this poem Rivka does not use the standard verb davening instead she creates a new Yiddish verb from the Yiddish [foreign language] she makes a new verb [inaudible], it's the verb that she made from the noun [foreign language] to pray.  So, she takes the verb, the noun [foreign language] or [foreign language] and she makes it into the verb [inaudible].  It's a possible word in Yiddish just because Yiddish can and does draw on Hebrew nouns to make Yiddish verbs.  And this is intimacy in action.  When Rivka was a child she read and grew to love the poetry of Kadya Molodowsky that's as you pointed out, that's my next project a biography of Kadya Molodowsky.  Kadya Molodowsky was the most prolific woman writer of Yiddish ever.  And right after the Holocaust Kadya wrote a poem called [foreign language] translated into English as Merciful God.  And in that poem, she rallied against God and she said to him, choose another people.  Now the way I see it Rivka responded to Kadya's charge against God in her poem entitled [foreign language].
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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>> Aaron Taub: Whiteness for Kadya Molodowsky.  If whiteness were to cover everything I would wait for you.  And in the white world I would ask about your footfall.  If whiteness were to cover everything I would recognize your pace and with each step I'd ask so where isn't God.  
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>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Poets do not speak the language of rhetoric or philosophy theirs is a language of sense data.  Remember that Rivka in her private language the color of beauty and wonder is blue.  Remember, she spoke about a blue remembrance from the teacher of her youth.  But for Kadya white was her private color for wonder and beauty.  And in this poem Whiteness Rivka is responding to Kadya's complaint.  She counters that complaint against God by pointing to the beauty and wonder of nature, his world and she says is God not there as well and she leaves that tantalizing question up in the air.  From 1963 to 1965, Rivka's husband Mula was Israel's cultural attache to what was then the Soviet Union.  There dodging the ever-present KGB Rivka met clandestinely with beleaguered Yiddish writers.  And there again, her courage came to the fore.  In their last years together Rivka and Mula lived in the Artists Colony in [inaudible] and that is when he painted this beautiful picture that you see over here of [inaudible] called Safed.  I'd like to share with you two more poems, the first is a poem on friendship called [foreign language], Younger Than time.  
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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>> Aaron Taub: Younger Than Time.  There is an old friendship young I appearance which comes and speaks of cherry blossoms, preserves the sap which a honeybee has long lost.  There is an old friendship younger than time, it comes and inquires about each separately, a silence that's concealed rejuvenates the mind.  There is an old friendship younger than time.
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>> Zelda Kahan Newman:  I want to explain to all of you that [foreign language] literally means years and I translate it as time.  If you knew Rivka's [inaudible] you would know that she often uses [foreign language] to mean time.  And I discussed this with her and she said it's okay, it's okay time is good.  So, it's not by accident I do know what [foreign language] means, it means years, but that's how she means it here.  I owe my editor, Judith P. Kerman an insight into this poem.  There's a line I the poem that Aaron just read for you which goes like this, it comes and speaks about each separately, so Judith said to me each what, each person, each event, each what, you're leaving her hanging.  And the answer of course, is that with genuine friendship you need not spell out or give voice to everything.  If you and your friend are on the same wavelength you can and do leave things unsaid and still there's complete understanding.  
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So that is why Rivka does not say about each what, about each you know the rest, your friend knows the rest.  The final poem that I want to share with you happens to be the last one in this collection.  I think it is a profound insight on the magic of music and its hold over us.  It is entitled [foreign language].  
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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>> Aaron Taub: The Song with the Old-Time Refrain.  The song with the old-time refrain returns and returns once again.  Exact words eluded, but it longs for the tear in them, which has no fear of time and still looks for the rider who rides bedecked in golden spurs, who comes and says and deceives.  And then it remembers the tear and seeks a sword in the words which are drenched with the sweet lament.  And after that the old refrain.  
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>> Zelda Kahan Newman: So, I'm going to give you the way I understand this poem.  A musical refrain this poem tells us is hard to shake because it comes with memory and anticipation and hopes.  And even after the sought after hope are dashed the memory of them remains and we return to the music and memories associated with it because the sounds are drenched with a sweet lament.  Follow with me the music of this poem, the song with the old-time refrain returns and returns once again.  So here you have word magic celebrating sound magic.  Now you know why I wanted to put out this book.  Rivka Basman is an unsung hero of the Jewish people and for poems are a gift to poetry lovers everywhere.  Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Gail Shirazi: Show the clip of Rivka reading one of her poem and then we'll have a chance for questions and answers.  
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
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Anybody have a question?  Haim [phonetic].
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[ Inaudible Comment ]
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>> Gail Shirazi: We have to repeat the question.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Okay, the question is how long it takes.  Each poem is different and you know it's like what Rivka says, [foreign language], you can do it and you want it and sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn't.  But there have been times when.
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[ Inaudible Comment ]
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It would be nice if you get it.  There have been times when I spend an awful lot of time on a translation and the next time I look at it I erase the whole business.  Every now and then things work out right, but you've got to get, you think of the sense, you think of the rhyme, you think of the meter and rarely do you get all three.  So, I know one line all in all in this entire collection, which I feel pretty comfortable with and that's [foreign language] and which I translated as, a stillness that's concealed rejuvenates the mind, which is as close as I could get.  And that requires two things [foreign language] is a word that does not exist in Yiddish it's a neologism the word is [foreign language] which means spring.  And Rivka makes up the word [foreign language] to you it would say in spring, but that's not a word in English.  So I decided on rejuvenates because it fit the rhythm ba-da-ba-da rejuvenates the mind.  And [foreign language] is not mind [foreign language] is memory, but I translated it as mind because it's a half rhyme with time and because without your memories have you got a mind.  So, it was two translations of a sense [foreign language] with a rhythm that works, but you know that's so rate that you get a rhythm and a half rhyme and the sense, it's almost asking for the impossible.  But you try for the impossible, if you don't try you'll never get there.  Any other questions?  
>> I have a question.  How did she save her poem, how did she?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Oh, thank you, thank you for saying that.  
>> Gail Shirazi: Repeat the question.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: So, the question is how she saves her poems.  When the Nazi camp was liquidated, the Nazis liquidated the camps they stripped the prisoners completely nude and they weren't allowed to take anything with them.  So, at the camp Rivka wrote her poems in micrography and rolled onto her tongue and she escaped with those poems.  But she says about those particular poems [foreign language], they were not sublimated enough.  She feels that they needed sublimation, she feels they were screamed from the heart and she hasn't published those.  But she says when she meets her maker she will put them in [foreign language].  But she feels it didn't go through enough sifting, it was too much of a scream and she doesn't think they're good enough.  But she says they remember the people they were with in the camps remembers them and certainly knows what they are and she's planning to leave them with [foreign language] as a memory, as a toke of what was.  Yes.
>> Can you talk about her life in [inaudible] before the Holocaust and what was her background.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Background in [inaudible], so Rivka told me that in [inaudible] Lithuania as the Jews called it then was in northeast Poland at the time.  There were different shtetl and in her shtetl, she says was the Yiddish speaking shtetl so she went to a Yiddish speaking school.  But Mula Shmuel, her husband, went to a Hebrew speaking school.  So, each shtetl has its preferred language.  So, she went to a Hebrew speaking school and began to [inaudible] and never finished.  And she got her degree later on when she was in Israel she went to get a teaching degree.  But she got to the first year of the [inaudible] and then it ended, but it was all in Yiddish which is how she first knew about Kadya Molodowsky.  Kadya Molodowsky is known in Israel for her children's poems.  She's known in this country for her adult poems and her novellas, and her short stories and everything else.
>> Did she come from a religious background?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: No, no she said it was a secular background and [inaudible], it was not religious background at all.  She's a very inclusive sort of person, she knows that I'm religious and she always calls me before Shabbos, never afterwards and she'll ask me what time candle lighting is so that we can have a conversation beforehand.  You had a question?  
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[ Inaudible Comment ]
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She and I speak Yiddish together, but she does often switch.  In fact, there's a wonderful story, we went to [inaudible] which is the Yiddish writers house.  And someone said, don't speak Hebrew speak Yiddish [foreign language] and she said [inaudible] always a Jewish language.  So, she had nothing against Hebrew, but of course, Yiddish as she says in one of these poems, Yiddish words live for her instead of people.
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They are what was left of her world which is gone and the Yiddish word are instead of that world.  So, for her Yiddish is crucial, but [inaudible] superior.  Unlike most of the other Yiddish writers [inaudible] who may have not had such a good grasp of Hebrew, her grasp of Hebrew is terrific.  But the poem that you didn't see was in [foreign language], in silence or stillness I speak Yiddish [foreign language], but by day [foreign language], by day it's easier for me to speak Hebrew.  But at night when there's no one around in her dreams and her nightmares she speaks Hebrew [foreign language] when she's calling out.  Yes, any other questions?
>> Can you say something about the state of the Yiddish publishing today.  We all know it's not what it was, but there are the centers and our people publishing and is there another generation picking up on it?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Okay, I'm glad you asked.  Yes, what's the state of Yiddish today, Yiddish publishing today.  In Israel, I think there's a good deal of hope.  There are people still writing Yiddish [inaudible] who teaches at the University of Indiana is a wonderful poet, but he calls himself Boris Karloff.  So, his poetic name is Boris Karloff and he used to put out books, but now he does everything on the internet.  And he's a young man, relatively young compared to my advanced old age.  And then [inaudible] in Israel and he has won an award for his poetry.  So, it's still going on, but is there an audience for Yiddish poetry.  So, here we have to talk about parallel worlds.  There's a world of Yiddish speakers growing by leaps and bounds, that's the world of [inaudible].  The [inaudible] are very careful and all the other [inaudible] groups they speak Yiddish from the minute they open their eyes to the end of the day among themselves, but they don't read Yiddish poetry.  Now let's go to a parallel world, there's a parallel world of Yiddish poets, but they don't think Yiddish from the moment they open their eyes to the end of the day.  So, I do my best to go from world to world.  I'm interested in the living Yiddish of [inaudible] and there's research on that, I did a bit and there's somebody else continuing at the [inaudible] University of New York.  It's a growing, wonderful, living language, it's not dying whatsoever, but they don't read [foreign language].  Now will they ever produce their own literary [inaudible], who knows.  As it looks now the two parallel lines they don't meet, there's the world of [inaudible] and they write, but not the sort of Yiddish poetry like Rivka does.  And there's the world of Yiddish poets, but they're not [inaudible] and I try to be a bridge, but they don't usually talk to each other, I wish they did, but they don't.  
>> Gail Shirazi: Any other questions?
>> I have one last one, can you please talk about the name of the [inaudible].
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Oh okay, so [foreign language].  There's a story it the Book of Numbers about the children of Israel they have just sinned with a sin of the spies and Moses tells them they will not enter the land of Israel except for two who didn't sin.  They cannot, they will not, they have to wander in the desert.  And after he tells them this defiantly they decide to it says [foreign language], they ascended the top of the summit of the hill and they try to enter and they were routed.  And Moses said if you try you'll be defeated, they tried they were defeated, they didn't manage.  So, after the war the Zionists looked around.  There's a traditional understanding in in Jewish thought that there will come a day when there will be peace in the whole world, justice will reign and God will gather the, do a gathering of all Jews to the land of Israel.  Well the Zionists looked around after the Holocaust and guess what, there was no peace all over the world, justice did not reign, and there didn't seem to be any way God was taking the children of Israel to the land of Israel.  And they said we're defiant we're going to do it.  There was a song [foreign language], let us [inaudible] and we'll manage, we'll do it, we won't be routed, we'll succeed, well enter the land of Israel.  They call themselves [foreign language] based on the defiant assent, but they said we won't, we won't lose, we'll get it, we'll get into the land of Israel.  And this kibbutz was called Ha-Ma'pil.  We will get into the land of Israel, we will do it.  If we wait too long there'll be no Jewish people to bring there.  So, these were the early Zionists and remember she and her husband were part of this group who illegally brought Jews to Palestine.  So, they went to this kibbutz which was part of Ha-Ma'pil those who believe that there's a chance for the children of Israel to get together on the road.  Yeah.
>> Can you talk about your translation process, I mean do you work with her, do you show them to her [inaudible]?
>> Gail Shirazi: Repeat the question.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Okay Adam's question is do I work with Rivka.  So, at the very beginning I showed her what we [foreign language], a pile of poems.  And I was really concerned because she did not think anybody had done a good job so far.  And she looked at poem after poem and she had not encouraged me at all, we had never known each other and she said it's a waste of your time and mine, no one's ever done an okay job.  And after she looked at I don't know the 20th translation she looked at me and she said, [foreign language] in Hebrew.  So, we became friends and she thought I did an okay job.  But when I lived when I taught at the [inaudible] University of New York she would send me poems in the mail and then I'd write her back or I'd see her when I came to Israel and we'd discuss it.  And every now and then there's a word that can be either a noun or a verb and I'll say, you know, which one is best.  And we sit together often just by ourselves in [inaudible] and I show her my translations and we talk, we shoot the breeze.  She tells me the background of her poems sometimes, it's wonderful hours I have memories of just her and me alone in this big room.  Not always has she seen every translation, but she trusts me and I hope I don't betray her trust.  On the whole she knows most of these and I myself am not happy, you know, with some things I'll change it next time.  There's no perfection in this business.  
>> Has anybody done a biography of her and if not, have you thought maybe that would be one of your projects?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Well right now I want to finish the one on Kadya Molodowsky who had some things about her life that were pretty much not known.  Rivka is very not, she's very careful about people not talking about her, she's a very nonassertive person, very private.  And when one person wanted to do a movie about her she was hesitant.  If there's something she doesn't want to talk about, doesn't talk about the details of what happened in the camps, she does not want to and you have to respect her privacy on that.  With me she's told me parts about her life, but I think she wants her poetry to speak for her that's my impression.  That she doesn't especially want a biography she wants her poems to speak for her.  I could be wrong, but that's my impression.  I would her ask about it, but right now poetry she wants and she put out a book in 2016, we're in 2016.  She's 90 years old and she published a book this year.  Yeah.
>> So two more questions, have her poems been translated to other languages?  And then also given that she has so many books out how are you able to [inaudible]?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Okay, so the first question is has she been published in other languages?  She has indeed in many, I don't know how many, but I know her Hebrew translator is named [inaudible] who is a dear friend of hers and I would like to think he is a friend of mine.  He teaches [inaudible].  He's her Hebrew translator, but she's been translated into German and into Swedish and I think Korean and French.  If you look at the back of the book there's a woman named Sabine who has done her translations into French, there's a website for it and you can see it online.  I don't know how many, but quite a number.  Your second question was?
>> How are you able to [inaudible]?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Yes, and each time i think oh I didn't include that one oh, what a pity.  I can't even decide really, there's some that are favorites.  The poem about friendship is one of my favorites.  There are some that I really love, the last poem of the sleep [foreign language].  Some I love for their rhythm, some for their sense, they're all beautiful.  It's hard, it's almost like deciding between your children it's very difficult.  I don't know how I decided, it was what I thought would give enough of a range.  She has one poem called [foreign language] which is what we call in Yiddish [foreign language].  It doesn't sound like she's this woman of sweetness and light, but she knows how to answer I don't know what to say with a barb, but she has all kinds of, she's an honest person.
^M00:50:03
And when she feels it's necessary to let someone know, someone who she says at their heart lies a stone not exactly a compliment, so it's hard.  I tried to do one like that so that you know that it isn't all wonderful.  And she's a woman whose known pain.  I didn't include the one poem she considers her political poem, one.  I once said to Rivka, you know, you don't write about politics, she said oh I did once.  I said what was that, it's the poem about we should never give out a death sentence.  That's the poem we should never have a death sentence.  And you might think it's because we're all human, we're all created in God's image, no such thing.  We should never punish anyone, give them a punishment of death because life itself is painful, let them live, let them suffer.  So, you never know what she's going to say.  That's what she considers her one political poem.  Yeah, you had a question. 
>> Yeah.
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Uh-huh.
^M00:50:58
[ Inaudible Comment ]
^M00:51:05
Yeah okay, so in the 1960's, early 1960's, she went to [inaudible] and she went through Poland on their way home from the Soviet Union and she has poems there and they are extremely difficult, one at [inaudible] gravesite.  It's so hard to translate, I tried.  But you have a word like [foreign language] you can't translate that with one word.  You know they talk about [foreign language], it requires paragraphs.  So, I couldn't include that because it's just not easily translated.  Those were the ones which were the references.  She has a poem in this book which I think the reprises Archibald McLeish, a poem should be palpable and mute as a globed fruit and she has one here, which is a poem is a plum and its structure is like that and its sense is like that.  So, she's pretty smart and she reads an awful lot, but she really mentions them by name.  And she has a few references to Sutzkever, so yeah.  But you've got to know enough to know just as you've got to know that when she says [foreign language], it's a reference to [foreign language].  You know she says a lot with very little, so the more you know the more you understand.  
>> I came late I'm afraid apologies so perhaps you mentioned this.  Was she published by Sutzkever [inaudible]?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: Absolutely, that's how I got to know about her.  I had a subscription to the Golden [inaudible] and every time I saw a poem of hers it moved me.  So, I would sit when the kids were quiet or I had some free time and I'd do a translation and then after years of accumulating translations I -- actually I call the kibbutz.  I went to the library, those days libraries are not what they are now and I looked it up and it said she lived in kibbutz I the library.  Those days libraries is not what they are now and he looked it up and it said she lived in kibbutz Ha-Ma'pil.  When I called kibbutz Ha-Ma'pil they said, oh Rivka left years ago, but if it's Tuesday she's at the dentist and if it's Wednesday she's in [inaudible] and they were right.  So, I knew her from her work in the Golden [inaudible], not from her collections I didn't know those.  And then of course, later I got copies.  Yeah.
>> Did you consider having footnotes for some of the harder?
>> Zelda Kahan Newman: The only, there is one footnote in here.  Yeah, there's one here which is perhaps I should have on the [foreign language].  There's one footnote here and that's for the word [foreign language] because the editor said well who knows what [foreign language] is.  Okay, so we had a little footnote about [foreign language], but no, I didn't and perhaps that's a mistake.  I don't know.
>> Gail Shirazi: Any other questions?  Well thank you all for coming and I want to thank Rivka, it was a wonderful.
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