Bel Kaufman

Born in Berlin and raised in Odessa, Bel Kaufman immigrated to New York City with her family at the age of twelve. The granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, Kaufman became an accomplished author herself, earning degrees at Hunter College and Columbia University, and she eventually became a teacher in the city’s public-school system. Her multiple decades of experience with teaching gave shape to Up the Down Staircase, written in the form of teachers’ and students’ notes, class plans, blackboard assignments, and principals’ memos. The book’s success lifted the divorced, poverty-stricken Kaufman into a life of financial security that her family had never known. She established the Sholem Aleichem Foundation, remarried happily in the 1970s, and, at age 101, was still teaching two years before her death.