Chaim Grade

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Chaim Grade

1968 dust jacket photograph
Born (1910-04-04)April 4, 1910
Vilnius, Lithuania
Died 26 April 1982(1982-04-26) (aged 72)
Occupation Writer, Poet
Nationality American
Notable work(s)

Chaim Grade (April 4, 1910, in Vilnius, Lithuania (at the time occupied by the Russian Empire) – April 26, 1982, Los Angeles, California, buried in Riverside Cemetery, Saddle Brook, NJ ) was one of the leading Yiddish writers of the twentieth century.

Grade was raised Orthodox-leaning, and he studied in yeshiva as a teenager, but ended up secular, in part from his poetic ambitions. Losing his family in the Holocaust, he resettled in New York, and increasingly took to fiction, writing in Yiddish. Initially he was reluctant to have his work translated.[1][2]

He was praised by Elie Wiesel as "one of the great—if not the greatest—of living Yiddish novelists."[3]

Life

Chaim Grade, the son of Shlomo Mordecai Grade, a Hebrew teacher and maskil (advocate of the Haskalah, the European Jewish Enlightenment), received a secular as well as Jewish religious education. He learned for several years with Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, the Chazon Ish (1878–1953), one of observant Judaism's great Torah scholars. In 1932, Grade began publishing stories and poems in Yiddish, and in the early 1930s was among the founding members of the "Young Vilna" experimental group of artists and writers. He developed a reputation as one of the city's most articulate literary interpreters.

Toward the German invasion of Vilnius in World War II, Grade fled eastward and sought refuge in the Soviet Union. In the Holocaust he lost his wife Frumme-Liebe (daughter of the Rabbi of Glebokie) and his mother Vella Grade Rosenthal (daughter of Rabbi Rafael Blumenthal). When the war ended, he lived briefly in Poland and France before relocating to the United States in 1948.

Grade's second wife Inna (née Hecker) died in New York on May 2, 2010. She had translated a number of his books into English.

Works

Grade's postwar poetry is primarily concerned with Jewish survival in the wake of the Holocaust.

Grade's most highly acclaimed novels, The Agunah (1961, tr. 1974) and The Yeshiva (2 vol., 1967–68, tr. 1976–7), deal with the philosophical and ethical dilemmas of Jewish life in prewar Lithuania, particularly dwelling on the Novardok Mussar movement. These two works were translated from the original Yiddish into English by Curt Leviant.

Grade's short story, "My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner," describes the chance meeting of a Holocaust survivor with an old friend from the mussar Yeshiva. The narrator has lost his faith, while the friend has continued to lead a pious and devoted religious life. The former friends debate the place of religion in the postmodern world. The story has been made into a film, The Quarrel and a play.[4]

While less famous than Isaac Bashevis Singer or Sholem Aleichem, Chaim Grade is considered among the foremost stylists in Yiddish. His work is now hard to find in English.

Literary estate

His papers were very numerous and consumed much space of the apartment he shared with his wife Inna in the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Northwest Bronx. The public administrator of his papers, Bonnie Gould, made requests to several institutions, including Harvard University and YIVO to assist in cataloging Grade's papers.[5] As of August 31, 2010, the papers have been transferred to YIVO offices, for sorting.[6]

Bibliography

Novels and Short Stories
The Mute Prayer Quorum (Der shtumer minyen) 1976. Short stories. Untranslated.
Rabbis and Wives (Di kloyz un di gas - Synagogue and Street). 1974. Translated, New York: Knopf, 1982. ISBN 0-8052-0840-2 (Republished as The Sacred and The Profane).
Zeydes un eyniḳlekh (Grandfathers and grandsons). Untranslated. Story originally published in "Di kloyz un di gas".
The Yeshiva (Tzemach Atlas). 1967-68. Translated, (2 volumes) Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976-77. ISBN 0-672-52344-2
The Agunah. 1961. Translated, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974. ISBN 0-672-51954-2
Shrifrele. 1958. Untranslated. Published in "Der Shulhoyf".
Reb Nokhemel der Malve. 1958. Untranslated. Published in "Der Shulhoyf".
The Well (Der Brunem). 1958. Translated, Philadelphia: JPS, 1967. Published in "Der Shulhoyf".
My Mother's Sabbath Days. 1955. Translated, New York: Knopf, 1986. ISBN 0-394-50980-3. Portion republished in The Seven Little Lanes. New York: Bergen Belsen Memorial Press, 1972, which contains the stories “On strange soil,” “The seven lanes of the Vilna ghetto,” and “My quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner.”
"My Quarrel With Hersh Rasseyner" 1951. Translated in A Treasury of Yiddish Stories. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, eds. New York: Penguin, 1989. ISBN 0-14-014419-6

Serialized stories published in Yiddish newspapers
From Under the Earth (Fun Unter Der Erd) c. 1980-82. Uncompleted serialized novel published in "Forverts". Untranslated.
The Rabbi's House (Beys HaRav) c. 1960's-70's. Published in "Der Tog" and "Forverts". Untranslated.
Women of the Ghetto (Froyn fun Ghetto) c. 1960's. Published in "Forverts". Untranslated.

Poetry
On My Way to You (Af mayn veg tsu dir). 1969.
Parchment Earth. 1968.
Poem about the Soviet Yiddish Writers. 1962. Published in "An Anthology of Modern Yiddish Literature", Ed. Joseph Leftwich, 1974.
The Man of Fire (Der mentsh fun fayer). 1962. Translated in "An Anthology of Modern Yiddish Poetry", Ed. Ruth Whitman, 1966.
The Glow of Extinguished (Stars Shayn fun farloshene shtern). 1950. Translated in "The Golden Peacock: A Worldwide Treasury of Yiddish Poetry", Ed. Joseph Leftwich, 1961.
My Mother’s Will (Der mames tsavoe). 1949.
On the Ruins. 1947.
Refugees (Pleytim). 1947.
Overgrown Paths (Farvoksene vegn). 1947.
Generations (Doyres). 1945. Contains poems in "Yes" and "Musarists".
Musarists (Musernikes). 1939.
Yes (Yo). 1936.

References

  1. ↑ "I dwell among my people." Jewish Book News. 1979. 
  2. ↑ Grade found most translators did not understand Orthodoxy and Orthodox use of Yiddish. Leviant, Curt (2011). "Translating and Remembering Chaim Grade". Jewish Review of Books. 
  3. ↑ Review of The Agunah. The New York Times Book Review. 1974. 
  4. ↑ http://www.thequarreltheplay.com/Play.html
  5. ↑ Beekman, Daniel (August 15, 2010). "Writing of legendary Yiddish author Chaim Grade could become trash in hands of Bronx bureaucrats". New York Daily News. Retrieved September 4, 2012. 
  6. ↑ Joseph Berger, "Researchers Start Job of Sorting Out Yiddish Writer’s Papers," "New York Times," August 31, 2010 http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/researchers-start-job-of-sorting-out-yiddish-writers-papers/

Further reading

  • Colby, Vineta (ed). World Authors, 1975-1980
  • Kerbel, Sorrel (ed). Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century

External links

Authority control
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