Water without Sound
Malka Heifetz Tussman
1965
The sea
tore a rib from its side
and said:
Go! Lie down there, be
a sign that I
am great and mighty.
Go
be a sign.
The canal
lies at my window,
speechless.
What can be sadder
than water
without sound?
Translated by .
Marcia
Falk
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Creator Bio
Malka Heifetz Tussman
ca. 1896–1987
Born in Ukraine, Malka Heifetz Tussman immigrated to the United States in 1912. She lived in Wisconsin and California and became a Yiddish-language poet, loosely aligned with the introspectivists Jacob Glatstein and A. Leyeles. She taught in Yiddish secular schools and at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. Her themes addressed Jewish women in history, the natural world, and love. Heifetz Tussman published six volumes of poetry and wrote for numerous Yiddish journals. She received the Manger Prize for Yiddish Letters in 1981.
Related Guide
Jewish Writing in the Postwar United States
Jewish American writers gained mainstream success writing about immigrant experience, assimilation, and the trauma of the Holocaust.
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Jewish Culture in the Postwar United States
American Jews entered a "golden age" of cultural expression and self-confidence after World War II, with declining antisemitism and increasing political and cultural representation.
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