The Presence Is in Exile, Too - Hardcover

Ayalti, Hanan J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1881320227 ISBN 13: 9781881320227

Publisher: River City Pub, 1997

Synopsis

Hanan Alyalti (1910-1988) wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish about kibbutz life in Israel, the Civil War in Spain, Jewish life in Paris in the thirties and during World War II, and the post-war Jewish refugee experience in New York and Europe. Many of the stories in this volume were published during his lifetime in Commentary, Midstream, Jewish Frontier, and Short Story International, among others.This is the first English translation of the collection. The stories are richly evocative, and by turns humorous, poignant, and inspiring. The well-known Jewish humorist, Der Lebediger, wrote of Ayalti's work, All major characters are drawn with a skilled hand, and with a vivacious pen. An afterword by Daniel Klenbort, the author's son, tells of his father's life and work. A glossary defines Yiddish terms and identifies obscure references.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Yiddish

From Publishers Weekly:

"When Israel is in Exile, then the Presence is in Exile, too!" This mournful refrain from a Hebrew prayer captures the spirit of this posthumous collection by Ayalti (aka Chonel Klenbort). Evoking the lives of Jews dispersed from Eastern Europe in the 1930s and '40s as they find refuge in France, New York, Mexico and the imaginary country of "Trataguay," these short stories (many previously published in Commentary, Midstream, Short Story International, etc.) are touching and inspiring without being sentimental. In the title story, a rabbi living in Paris between the wars is asked to provide minyans--a minyan is the quorum of 10 men needed for prayer--for mourners. Reb Issachar becomes "an entrepreneur in the Kaddish business," housing his minyan in a cafe that also shelters prostitutes, including Rachel, who begs the men to accept her money and pray for her deceased father. In "After a Cold Winter," a recent widower tries to seduce an African American domestic who has come to clean his Brooklyn apartment and ends up making her a poignant offer. In the haunting "The Man from Les Milles," survivors of a concentration camp in Vichy France meet in New York after the war. Although the prisoners of Les Milles weren't beaten or herded into gas chambers (merely frozen, starved and terrorized), the searing effects of the Holocaust still dominate their lives. Ayalti himself fled from the Nazis to South America and came to the U.S. in 1946. His fiction, written in Hebrew and Yiddish, is marked by matter-of-fact compassion.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: River City Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1881320227
• ISBN 13: 9781881320227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 255
• Editor: Klenbort Marcia, Klenbort Daniel