Perhaps the greatest Yiddish poet of the post-war era—if not of the language’s entire history—Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010) spent most of World War II in the Vilna ghetto before fleeing to the forests to fight with the partisans. Thereafter he settled in Israel. He was also a prolific author of prose, some of which, like this short story translated by Zackary Sholem Berger, comes close to poetry. The tale is set in the Aladdin Cafeteria in Jaffa, near the sea where, as the author reminds us, the prophet Jonah set sail for Tarshish:
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More about: Holocaust, Israeli literature, Jonah, Yiddish literature