Yente Serdatzky

Yente Serdatzky (Serdatsky) (15 September 1877 – 1 May 1962) was a Jewish-American Yiddish-language writer.

Serdatzky was born as Yente Raybman, in Aleksat (Aleksotas), near Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania (then in the Russian Empire),[1] the daughter of a used furniture dealer who was also a scholar.[2] She received a secular as well as a basic Jewish education, and learned German, Russian, and Hebrew. The family home was a gathering place for Yiddish writers around Kovno, including Avrom Reyzen, and in this way she became acquainted with contemporary Yiddish literature.[1][2]

Serdatzky married and had three children, and eventually ran her own grocery store. In 1905, the year of the Russian Revolution, she took the radical step of leaving her family and moving to Warsaw, to pursue her writing. There she came into contact with the literary circle around I. L. Peretz. She had her literary debut with the story "Mirl," published in the Yiddish daily newspaper Der Veg (The Way), of which Peretz was the literary editor. She received encouragement from Peretz, and published further work in that paper.[1][2]

In 1907 Serdatzky emigrated to the United States. After living initially in Chicago, she settled in New York City, where she supported herself at first by running a soup kitchen. She published short stories, sketches, and one-act plays in Yiddish periodicals including Fraye arbeter shtime (Free Voice of Labor), Fraye gezelshaft (Free Society), Tsukunft (Future), Dos naye Land (The New Land), and Fraynd (Friend). She also published stories regularly in the Forverts (The Forward), and became a contributing editor there.

In 1922, following a disagreement with Forverts editor Abraham Cahan, Serdatzky was dismissed from the staff. After that she dropped out of the literary scene, and supported herself in part by renting rooms. Much later in her life, from 1949 to 1955, she published over 30 stories in Isaac Liebman's Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly paper).[2][3]

Abraham Cahan described Serdatzky in 1914 as a successful writer of "tales of real life."[4] The characters in her fiction are often women like herself, immigrants and intellectuals, inspired by left-wing political ideals, while facing disappointment in their everyday lives and relationships.[5] Her stories at times convey a sense of "pervasive loneliness."[3]

Serdatzky's only book publication was Geklibene shriftn (Collected writings), published in New York by the Hebrew Publishing Company, in 1913.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Zucker, Sheva. "Yente Serdatzky: Lonely Lady of Yiddish Literature." Yiddish 8.2 (1992): 69-79; here: 69.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Yente Serdatzky (1877-1962)" [author biography]. Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. Ed. Frieda Forman, Ethel Raicus, Sarah Siblerstein Swartz, and Margie Wolfe. Toronto, Ontario: Second Story Press, 1994. 365-366.
  3. 1 2 Zucker (1992), p. 70.
  4. ↑ "New Writers of the Ghetto." The Bookman 39 (March–August 1914). 637.
  5. ↑ Bilik, Dorothy. "Yente Serdatsky, 1877-1962," undated. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia [online version]. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved July 27, 2014.

External links

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