Chava Rosenfarb

Rosenfarb continued to write in Yiddish. She published three volumes of poetry between 1947 and 1965. In 1972, she published what is considered to be her masterpiece, Der boim fun lebn (דער בוים פֿון לעבן), a three-volume novel detailing her experiences in the Łódź Ghetto, which appeared in English translation as The Tree of Life.[1][2] Her other novels are Botshani (באָטשאַני), a prequel to The Tree of Life, which was issued in English as two volumes, Bociany (meaning Storks in the Polish language) and Of Lodz and Love; and Briv tsu Abrashen (בריוו צו אבראשען), or Letters to Abrasha (not yet translated).

Rosenfarb's readership decreased as the secular Yiddish culture in the Americas began to erode and assimilate, so she turned to translation. She was a regular contributor to the Yiddish literary journal Di Goldene Keyt (די גאָלדענע קייט) – meaning, roughly translated, "The Golden Chain (of Generations)" – edited in Tel Aviv by the poet and Vilna Ghetto survivor Abraham Sutzkever, until it closed.[3] A collection of her stories in English translation, Survivors: Seven Short Stories, was published in 2004. A play, The Bird of the Ghetto, was performed in Hebrew translation in Israel by Israel's Nation Theatre, the Habimah, in 1966 and in English translation in Toronto by Threshold Theatre in 2012. A selection of her poetry was published in English in 2013 as Exile at Last. Most of the poems were translated by Rosenfarb herself.

She died on 30 January 2011 in Lethbridge, Alberta.[2] Her daughter, Goldie Morgentaler, is a professor of English literature at the University of Lethbridge as well as a prominent literary translator into English of her mother's work. Her son Abraham is a doctor in Boston and the author of several books on urology and men's health.

Rosenfarb was the recipient of numerous international literary prizes, including the Itzik Manger Prize, Israel's highest award for Yiddish literature, as well as a Canadian Jewish Book Award and the John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation. She was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Lethbridge in 2006.

Cover of Exile at Last (2013)

• Di balade fun nekhtikn vald די באלאדע פון נעכטיקן וואלד [The ballad of yesterday's forest] (London, 1947)
• Dos lid fun yidishn kelner Abram דאס ליד פון דעם יידישן קעלנער אבראם [The song of the Jewish waiter Abram]
• Geto un andere lider געטא און אנדערע לידער [Ghetto and other poems]
• Aroys fun gan-eydn ארויס פון גן-עדן [Out of Paradise]
• Der foigl fun geto דער פויגל פון געטא [The Bird of the Ghetto] (1966)
• Der boim fun lebn (1972) [trans. into English as The Tree of Life (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)]
• Letters to Abrash. The Montreal Gazette, May 7, 1995 (Briv tsu abrashen. Tel-Aviv, I. L. Peretz Publ. House, 1992)
• Bociany באטשאני (Syracuse University Press, 2000)
• Of Lodz and Love (Syracuse University Press, 2000)
• Survivors: Seven Short Stories (Cormorant Books, 2005)

• "The Tree of Life: A portrait of Chava Rosenfarb", CBC Radio, February 2001
• "Chava Rosenfarb + Alberto Manguel", Books & Writing, with Ramona Koval, Sunday 09/05/2004
• Joseph Sherman, ed., 'Chava Rosenfarb (Khave Roznfarb)' in Writers in Yiddish [Dictionary of Literary Biography 333] (New York: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 2007), pp. 250–256
• Chronik des Gettos Lodz
• Chava Rosenfarb Evening Upon the Publication of Her New Book of Poetry "Out of the Garden of Eden" Part 1 (April 6th, 1966) with Elie Wiesel, Melech Ravitch and Chaim Spilberg
• Chava Rosenfarb Evening Upon the Publication of Her New Book of Poetry "Out of the Garden of Eden" Part 2 (April 6th, 1966) with Elie Wiesel, Melech Ravitch and Chaim Spilberg

• Recorded Lecture by Chava Rosenfarb