Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I'm pleased to announce the upcoming publication of* Blessed Hands: Stories*,
my translation into English of the Yiddish-language *Gebenshte hent:
dertseylungen* by Frume Halpern. The book can be pre-ordered at a 20%
discount ($20 instead of $25) until October 16, 2023 from the Frayed Edge
Press
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.frayededgepress.com/blessed_hands.html__;!!KGKeukY!3cn-4A5xDyp6B6Svhvz9mRt920z_x6RCEBe7kebYAyk4QONGoC5SpBFy9dX0Kr1iaMyCV-FYK1O7M05IC_KFhy6811ehVMHDjb2d_HRhIe8$
> website. The
discount is only for direct orders from the publisher. However, the book is
also available (without the pre-order discount) from many booksellers,
including Bookshop.org
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://bookshop.org/p/books/blessed-hands-stories-frume-halpern/20637640?ean=9781642510492__;!!KGKeukY!3cn-4A5xDyp6B6Svhvz9mRt920z_x6RCEBe7kebYAyk4QONGoC5SpBFy9dX0Kr1iaMyCV-FYK1O7M05IC_KFhy6811ehVMHDjb2dj0kdd3U$
>
and
Amazon. The book's official publication date is October 17, 2023.
Thank you, all, for your interest and support.
All my best,
Yermiyahu Ahron
===============================================
Halpern, Frume. *Blessed Hands: Stories*. Translated from the Yiddish by
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub; foreword by Isaac Elchanan Ranch; afterword by
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. Philadelphia: Frayed Edge Press, 2023. ISBN
9781642510492 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781642510515 (ebook)
*Advance Praise for Blessed Hands: Stories*
Left-wing writers like Frume Halpern constituted an important part of
American Yiddish literature in the 20th century. But until recently, many
have been absent from the English-language library. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
has helped to correct this lacuna, offering lucid translations that capture
the spirit and idiom of Halpern's aesthetics and social consciousness. From
an unlikely friendship between Jewish and Black women to a synagogue whose
elderly congregants are slowly dying, Halpern's moving soliloquies describe
everyday struggles with economic, racial, and gender disparities in
mid-century America.
--Amelia M. Glaser, author of *Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry
of Struggle From Scottsboro to Palestine*
On both sides of the Atlantic, Frume Halpern's healers and disrupters,
dreamy butchers and ambitious spinsters, aging newspaper vendors and
untutored mothers, comrades and believers—all strain to make sense of their
lives within the contradictory values and challenges of the 20th century.
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub's sensitive translations and detailed analysis
highlight Halpern's artistic commitment to make visible a seemingly
infinite number of protagonists whose struggles are marginalized and
unnoticed. With *Blessed Hands, *Taub has further expanded and enriched the
burgeoning body of Yiddish literature in English translation.
—Irena Klepfisz, author of *Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected
Poems, 1971-2021*
Frume Halpern’s stories illuminate the lives of those who give too much of
themselves in order to survive—like the mother who sells her own breast
milk to the wealthy while her own baby cries in hunger. I was moved again
and again by characters like the elderly couple who did not mingle with
neighbors and instead “took refuge in their own slice of poverty.” This
vibrant, deeply soulful translation by the distinguished writer and
translator Yermiyahu Ahron Taub—who writes that he feels Halpern’ s writing
“in his skin”—honors Halpern’s precision, humanity, and vision, and brings
all of it to life.
—Aviya Kushner, author of *The Grammar of God* and *Wolf Lamb Bomb*
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub’s translation of Frume Halpern’s *Blessed Hands *at
last brings to readers this extraordinary author’s complete collection of
short stories. Halpern’s radical compassion, her powerful commitment to
those whose social position, or physical limitations, leaves them outcast
from the promised land of America makes for compelling, unforgettable
fiction. Taub’s nuanced translation brings Halpern’s stunning and moving
words fully to light; his extensive afterword helps contextualize Halpern’s
remarkable accomplishment.
—Rhea Tregebov, author of *Rue des Rosier*
__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
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