The Thirteenth Hour

Poetry. Jewish Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Translated from the Yiddish by Zelda Kahan Newman. Bilingual edition. Rivka Basman Ben Haim's poems are witty and wise. Lyrical and personal, their length belies their depth. Rarely more than a page long, the poems often pack a punch. They are thought-provoking even as they sing. As a young teenager, the poet witnessed the Nazi destruction of her Jewish world. She tells the reader about this loss often, but never directly.

"Rivka Basman Ben-Haim is one of the very last representatives of the golden age of Yiddish poetry; I am delighted that there will now be a bilingual Yiddish-English edition of her selected poems. Zelda Kahan Newman's translations are very fine and sensitive. Thanks to Mayapple Press for making this available."—Yitskhok Niborski

"Rivka Basman Ben-Haim masterfully conveys entire worlds through the elegant, thoughtful, profound, and devastating poetic windows which she skillfully opens to her readers. Kudos to Zelda Kahan Newman for bringing these gems to both Yiddish speakers and non-Yiddish speakers with keen insight and sensitivity."—Motl Didner, Associate Artistic Director, The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene

Translator Bio:

Translator Zelda Kahan Newman, who formerly held the post of Judaic Studies at Lehman College/CUNY, is a linguist whose specialty is Yiddish, the language and its culture. For more than two decades, she has translated the Yiddish poetry of the Israeli poet, Rivka Basman Ben-Haim. She presently lives in Beer Sheva, Israel.

Rivka Basman Ben-Haim was 14 when the Nazis took over her town, and 18 when WWII ended. She began composing Yiddish poems in the Vilna ghetto, and the words themselves gave her the strength to live on. As a young bride, she helped her husband gather the stateless Jews whom no country would accept once WWII was over. The two helped send these unwanted, 'displaced persons' to what was then Palestine, in the effort known as the 'brikha'—the escape. Years later, when the poet and her husband were in what was then the Soviet Union, she met with Yiddish writers clandestinely, and did what she could for them. She is one of the unsung heroes of our time, and at 90 years, she is still writing poetry. She has won every award known to the world of Yiddish writers.