Chava Rosenfarb should be a familiar name. She lived most of her life in Montreal and was part of the city’s thriving literary culture. She was associated with well-known writers, including the poets Melekh Ravitch, J. I. Segal, and Rokhl Korn, as well as the poet Miriam Waddington and the novelist Adele Wiseman, whose work she translated. She was a frequent reader and speaker at the Jewish Public Library. And she was prolific. Rosenfarb produced poetry and drama, essays and fiction. Best known for The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto, an epic novel first published in 1972, she drew international attention and awards from Argentina, Israel, and the United States. If she is not better known as a Canadian writer, it is for one principal reason: Rosenfarb wrote in Yiddish.
Chava Rosenfarb was born in 1923 in Lodz, the city known as the Polish Manchester. During...
Ruth Panofsky teaches English literature at Toronto Metropolitan University. She recently received the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal.
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