This post answers why, about a month ago, I deleted a post entitled INTRODUCING CHAVA ROSENFARB AND 'THE TREE OF LIFE'. Apparently, the post which included a photograph of Goldie Morgentaler, that I took at the conference, found favour with Goldie and she wanted the photograph mailed to her. She also happened to love my blog and considering how shy I am about such things, I hyperventilated and peed in my jeans…well, almost. I got this information from someone at the University who, being a former crime reporter, did not find it difficult to trace me and hence, got in touch with me. I let him send the photograph to Goldie Morgentaler but since I was afraid that word about my blog would spread to people out here, I deleted the post, changed my blog settings and url. It might appear weird but I do not want too many people to read my blog. I am uploading the post once again along with the photographs which featured in the original post.
May 8, 2009 will always be remembered as an important date in the calendar of the University of Łodz. 2009 being the 65th year of the liquidation of the Łodz Ghetto, the University was proud to have as a guest speaker at the 'Race, Religion, and Representation International Conference', Goldie Morgentaler, a Professor of American and British literature at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. She was to speak on her mother, Łodz-born Yiddish poet and novelist Chava Rosenfarb who became what many critics call the greatest Yiddish woman novelist. In addition to the many household chores a typical teenager might be expected to do, Chava put young Goldie to work, making her translate her Yiddish tales to English. Gradually, an incredible internationally-recognized mother/daughter literary and translation team developed in Yiddish and Jewish-Canadian literature. This was the first time that Goldie was visiting her mother's city.
Chava Rosenfarb, born in 1923, turned 17 the day after the infamous Litzmannstadt (Łodz) Ghetto came into being. She had begun writing poetry at the tender age of eight and continued her creative pursuit within the confines of the ghetto. There, she was soon noticed by a Yiddish literary giant who encouraged her to continue writing and introduced her to the secret and active literary circle within the ghetto. She attended secret literary workshops there, determined to become a poet and writer. Chava recorded her experiences of the ghetto life in her poetry and in her most important creative work, the trilogy, ‘The Tree of Life’, set in the ghetto. ‘The Tree of Life’ begins with a New Year’s Eve party in 1939 at the house of a famous Łodz manufacturer who has invited people from different walks of life. Life is still very normal then with no one having an inkling of what is to unfold. The second part of the trilogy is about the years 1939 to 1942 in the ghetto and the last part of the trilogy continues the story of the fictionalized individuals from 1942 until 1945. It follows the lives of twelve people, including the man who would become the Jewish leader within the ghetto. By the end of the novel, seven die and the fate of the rest are left unwritten, leaving a faint ray of hope that although scarred, they must have ultimately survived their ruthless fate. Chava wrote six novels but ‘The Tree of Life’ remains her monumental literary masterpiece. She is perhaps one of the few Holocaust survivors who has refrained from writing a memoir, feeling deeply that the creative medium of the novel would give her the opportunity to transcend history. Her characters in the novel are all fictional except the Jewish leader in the ghetto who appears in the novel as himself. Perhaps this is because he is an ambivalent character who intrigued Chava the most. The man who was known as a philanthropist before the ghetto happened, was quite the demon inside it. The rest of the cast in ‘The Tree of Life’ are combinations and permutations of people Chava met or heard of during the war years.
Another interesting aspect of the novel is that Chava shows repeatedly how Western culture lent itself to those in the ghetto as a means of escape from the constant reminder of starvation, cruelty and death. One of the characters in the novel keeps on quoting Horace soon after news of the establishment of the ghetto reaches his ears. His Latin quotes soon become a source of irritation to his family with his son finally throwing away the Horace in a fit of rage. In another episode, a school teacher is seen in her classroom teaching ‘The Tempest’ and is soon interrupted by a few SS men barging in to take away a few young boys from her class. While the teacher tries in vain to establish a sense of sanity and normalcy in an erstwhile sanctified space, her young students fail to find their inner peace in the romance of Ferdinand and Miranda which seems remote, far removed from the world of the ghetto. What is interesting is that the older generation seems to try and defy the truth by escaping into classic western literary texts, while the younger generation feels anger and disbelief at such denial.
Chava not only experienced the Łodz Ghetto first hand, but she also survived Auschwitz where her father died and Bergen-Belsen, where she might have died herself, having suffered a typhus fever. She eventually moved to Canada in 1950, having already married the future nationally-reputed abortion activist Henry Morgentaler. The urge to get her tales translated into English from Yiddish began with the realization that Yiddish would suffer a slow but inevitable and tragic death, burying along with it the creations of a dying intellectual and creative Jewry. ‘The Tree of Life’ written when Chava was 24 was translated into English in 1971(I could be mistaken here…might have been 1968-69). Years of experiences and changing worldview in between did affect the translation a bit and may have rendered the book the quality of a transcreation rather than a translation.
Goldie Morgentaler, in her plenary lecture that day, introduced a rare Yiddish literary gem and her mother, a remarkable woman of talent and fortitude. What remains to me a highpoint of the lecture was Professor Morgentaler quoting her mother as saying that Holocaust films on television can never recreate the atmosphere quite authentically because despite being visually accurate, they fail to capture the fetid smell that rose from Auschwitz.
P.S.: The photograph in colour is of Goldie Morgentaler, taken at the conference. The one below it is that of Chava Rosenfarb.
