Bociany (Library of Modern Jewish Literature)

Rosenfarb, Chava

ISBN 10: 0815611714 / ISBN 13: 9780815611714

Published by Syracuse University Press, 2024

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0004085675

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bociany (Library of Modern Jewish Literature)
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815611714
• ISBN 13: 9780815611714
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

In B<i>ociany</i>, Rosenfarb offers completely absorbing portrayals of Jews and Christians from several walks of life in the shtetl. Her primary characters are the scribe’s widow Hindele, her son Yacov, the chalk vendor Yossele Abedale, and his daughter Binele. Jewish relations with neighboring Catholics are generally civil, if complicated. Despite living next door to a convent, Hindele finds the nuns’ behavior implacably alien. Rosenfarb establishes an indelible sense of place, evoking its charm and the shtetl residents’ ease with the natural world. Her vivid characters and portrait of the preurban, pre-Holocaust world ring true. Yet even in isolated Bociany, new ideas—socialism, Zionism, Polish nationalism, secularism—begin to challenge the shtetl’s traditional agrarian and mercantile economy.

About the Author

<b>Chava Rosenfarb</b> was born in Łódź, Poland. She was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto as well as the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. She was the recipient of numerous literary prizes. In 1979, she was awarded the Manger Prize—the highest award for Yiddish literature—for her trilogy<i> Tree of Life</i> (<i>Der boim fun leib</i>).