Even the Heavens Tell Lies

Blume Lempel

1970

When I crossed the ocean, I carried with me the habit of speaking to the shadows, and it became my way of life. I look up at the stars that were extinguished long ago. For me they still shine with the first fire of creation. I don’t care that the heavens tell lies. I accept the fantasy along with the fact. I’m not looking for truth. I’m seeking the…

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Creator Bio

Blume Lempel

1907–1999

Born Blume Pfeffer in Chorostków, Galicia (now Khorostkiv, Ukraine), Blume Lempel overcame many obstacles to become a Yiddish prose writer of great originality. Lempel studied in a girls’ heder. A chance stopover in Paris to visit her brother on her way to Palestine in 1929 set her life on a different course. She married the furrier Lemel Lempel and in 1939 moved to New York. Writing under the pseudonym Rokhl Halpern, she published her first short story in 1943 in the Zionist Der tog, while her novel Tsvishn tsvey veltn appeared in the communist Morgn-frayhayt. Her works won Yiddish literary prizes, but at the time of her death, she remained largely unknown and untranslated.

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