Yente Serdatzky

Yente Serdatzky (also Serdatsky and Sardatsky; 15 September 1877 – 1 May 1962) was a Russian-born American Yiddish-language writer of short fiction and plays, active in New York City.

Yenta Serdatzky
Born
Yente Raybman

September 15, 1877
Aleksotas, Lithuania
DiedMay 1, 1962
Other namesYenta Serdatsky, Yente Sardatsky, Yenta Serdatski, Jente Serdatzky

Early life

Serdatzky was born on 15 September 1877 as Yente Raybman in Aleksotas (Aleksat), near Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania (then in Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire), the daughter of a used furniture dealer who was also a scholar.[1] She received a secular as well as a basic Jewish education, and learned German, Russian, and Hebrew.[1] The family home was a gathering place for Yiddish writers around Kovno, including Avrom Reyzen, and in this way she became acquainted with contemporary Yiddish literature.[2][3]

Career

Serdatzky worked in a spice shop and ran a grocery store as a young woman. In 1905, the year of the Russian Revolution, she left her family and moved to Warsaw, to pursue her writing. There she joined the literary circle around I. L. Peretz. She had her literary debut with the story "Mirl," published in the Yiddish daily newspaper Der Veg (The Way), of which Peretz was the literary editor. Peretz supported her work, and published further writings by Serdatsky.[1][2][3]

In 1906, reunited with her family, Serdatzky emigrated to the United States. After living initially in Chicago, she settled in New York City, where she ran a soup kitchen on the city's Lower East Side. She published short stories, sketches, and one-act plays[4] in Yiddish periodicals including Fraye arbeter shtime (Free Voice of Labor),[5][6] Fraye gezelshaft (Free Society), Tsukunft (Future), Dos naye Land (The New Land), and Fraynd (Friend). She also published stories regularly in the Forverts (The Forward), and became a contributing editor there.[2]

In 1922, following a disagreement over payment with Forverts editor Abraham Cahan, Serdatzky was dismissed from the staff, though her demands for payment (and the magazine's refusal) dragged into the mid-1930s.[7] She dropped out of the literary scene for years, and supported herself in part by renting rooms. Much later in her life, from 1949 to 1955, she published over 30 stories in Isaac Liebman's Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly paper).[3][8]

Serdatzky's only book publication was Geklibene shriftn (Collected writings), published in New York by the Hebrew Publishing Company, in 1913.[9]

Critical reception

Abraham Cahan described Serdatzky in 1914 as a successful writer of "tales of real life."[10] The characters in her fiction are often women like herself, immigrants and intellectuals, inspired by left-wing political ideals, while facing disappointment in their everyday lives and relationships.[11] Her stories at times convey a sense of "pervasive loneliness."[8] She was called "The Queen of Union Square" by essayist Sh. Tennenbaum in 1969.[12] Interest in her work revived in the 1990s, and her work remains a topic of interest among feminist scholars of Yiddish literature, and scholars of American immigrant literature and culture.[3][6]

Personal life

Serdatsky married and had three children. At least three of her sisters also lived in the United States by 1952: Mary Press in Chicago, Yetta Chesney in Los Angeles, and Mollie Hirsch.[13] She died in 1962, aged 85 years.[11]

Translated works

Works by Serdatzky appear in translation in several English-language anthologies:

  • Serdatzky, Yente (2001) [1910–1922]. "Unchanged". In Chametzky, Jules; Felstiner, John; Flanzbaum, Hilene; Hellerstein, Kathryn (eds.). Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 150–154. ISBN 9780393048094.
  • ——————— (2015) [May 16–17, 1912]. "A Simkhe" [A Celebration]. In Wishnia, Kenneth (ed.). Jewish Noir: Contemporary Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds. Translated by Wishnia, Kenneth; Wishnia, Arnold. PM Press. pp. 130–141. ISBN 9781629631578.
  • ——————— (2007) [1913]. "Rosh Hashanah". In Bark, Sandra (ed.). Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories - An Anthology. Translated by Cassedy, Ellen. Grand Central Publishing. pp. 157–173. ISBN 9780446510363.
  • ——————— (2016) [June 6, 1920]. "The Devoted Cousin". In Glinter, Ezra (ed.). Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward. Translated by Kirzane, Jessica. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 97–102. ISBN 9780393254853.
  • ——————— (2016) [August 1, 1921]. "The Young Widow". In Glinter, Ezra (ed.). Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward. Translated by Kirzane, Jessica. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 102–107. ISBN 9780393254853.
  • ——————— (2016) [January 9, 1922]. "She Waits". In Glinter, Ezra (ed.). Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward. Translated by Kirzane, Jessica. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 102–107. ISBN 9780393254853.

References
  1. Klepfisz, Irena (1990). "Jewish Feminism 1913: Yente Serdatzky's "Confession"". Bridges. 1 (2): 77–78. ISSN 1046-8358. JSTOR 40358483.
  2. Zucker, Sheva. "Yente Serdatzky: Lonely Lady of Yiddish Literature." Yiddish 8.2 (1992): 69-79; here: 69.
  3. "Yente Serdatzky (1877-1962)" [author biography]. Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. Ed. Frieda Forman, Ethel Raicus, Sarah Siblerstein Swartz, and Margie Wolfe. Toronto, Ontario: Second Story Press, 1994. 365-366. ISBN 9780929005539
  4. Gollance, Sonia (2019-08-27). "Oyf der vakh (On Guard) by Yente Serdatzky". Digital Yiddish Theatre Project: Plotting Yiddish Drama. Retrieved 2019-08-28.
  5. Zimmer, Kenyon (2017-06-30). "Saul Yanovsky and Yiddish Anarchism on the Lower East Side". In Goyens, Tom (ed.). Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab's Saloon to Occupy Wall Street. University of Illinois Press. p. 42. doi:10.5406/j.ctv4ncnpj.5. ISBN 9780252099595. JSTOR 10.5406/j.ctv4ncnpj.
  6. Adler, Ruth; Dishon, Judith; Hellerstein, Kathryn; Niger, Shmuel; Pratt, Norma Fain (1994). Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 9780814324233.
  7. "About Pen Pushers". The Modern View. August 16, 1934. p. 7. Retrieved August 28, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. Zucker (1992), p. 70.
  9. Office, Library of Congress Copyright (1914). Catalogue of copyright entries: Books. Library of Congress. p. 248.
  10. "New Writers of the Ghetto." The Bookman 39 (March–August 1914). 637.
  11. Bilik, Dorothy. "Yente Serdatsky, 1877-1962," undated. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia [online version]. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved July 27, 2014.
  12. Pratt, Norma Fain (1980). "Culture and Radical Politics: Yiddish Women Writers, 1890–1940". American Jewish History. 70 (1): 79–80. ISSN 0164-0178. JSTOR 23881991.
  13. "Press". Chicago Tribune. October 1, 1952. p. 28. Retrieved August 28, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  • Serdatzky, Yente. "Platonic Love" [short story]. Trans. Jessica Kirzane. JewishFiction.net. April 2014.
  • Serdatzky, Yente. “Rosh Hashonah” [short story]. English translation read aloud by Linda Jiménez for Radio Sefarad.
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