Warsaw based writer Salomea Perl was one of the rare women publishing literary Yiddish texts at the same time as the klasikers of Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moykher Sforim and Y. L. Peretz. Ruth Murphy's new translation of Perl's work, The Canvas and other stories, is a cause for celebration and reflection. The last thirty years has seen many previously ignored or lost female authors, like Salomea Perl, finally brought into the Yiddish canon. Join us for a discussion of The Canvas, exploring the rediscovery and translation of her work and placing it into its literary context. Moderated by Rokhl Kafrissen (Tablet Magazine) the conversation will feature translator Ruth Murphy alongside Yiddish scholars Anna Fishman Gonshor and Justin Cammy.

Buy the book.

Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist and playwright in New York City. Her ‘Rokhl’s Golden City’ column began appearing in Tablet in 2017, the only regular feature in the world dedicated to new Yiddish culture in all its iterations. Her op-eds on feminism, sociology and Jewish life appear in newspapers all over the world. She was a 2019-2020 14th Street Y LABA fellow, for which she wrote Shtumer Shabes (Silent Sabbath), a black comedy about the dangers of ethnography and human experimentation.

Ruth Murphy is a published and peer-reviewed professional translator specializing in the research and translation of Yiddish literature, historical documents and yizkor (memorial) books. Murphy’s translations have been featured in the Jewish Review of Books, Metamorphoses, and Pakn Treger. Murphy has also served as a translator for the Ellis Island Discography Project where she transcribed and translated multiple early 20th-century Yiddish songs relating to the Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrant experience.

Justin Cammy is chair and associate professor of Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College, and senior fellow of the Goldreich Institute for Yiddish at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of the introduction to The Full Pomegranate, a recent volume of Sutzkever poetry translated by Richard Fein. Cammy's own translation of Sutzkever's memoir Vilna Ghetto will appear with McGill-Queens University Press in 2021.

Anna Fishman Gonshor is Faculty Lecturer of Yiddish Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University (retired). She has been guest lecturer for several university Yiddish programs and various institutions across North America. As a translator her work includes film, articles for academic publications and archival materials. In addition, she is a longstanding faculty member of the YIVO Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.