Thursday, June 6 at 7 pm, Congregation Emanu-El, 1461 Blanshard Street — Congregation Emanu-El Adult Education team invites you to a talk “Facts vs Fiction: Essays on the Holocaust, Jewish Literature and Yiddish in Chava Rosenfarb’s Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays” by Dr. Goldie Morgentaler on Thursday, June 6 at 7 pm in the synagogue.
Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011) was a Jewish-Canadian novelist and the recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the Itzik Manger Prize, Israel’s highest award for Yiddish literature. Born in Poland in 1923, she survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, immigrating to Canada in 1950 and settling in Montreal. There she wrote novels, poetry, short stories, plays, and essays, including The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto, a seminal novel on the Holocaust.
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays comprises thirteen personal and literary essays by Rosenfarb, ranging from autobiographical accounts of her childhood and experiences before and during the Holocaust to literary criticism that discusses the work of other Jewish writers.
Goldie Morgentaler is professor of English at the University of Lethbridge.