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.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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You’ll Return with God’s Help

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You will come back. You will, with God’s help, come back With a far-off, alien look. (I’m preparing myself, I already know, I’ve seen how they come back.) You will sit in your regular chair, unsure A…

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Water without Sound

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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…

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Like the Root

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You’ve grown but not grown up You’re ripe as earth is raw where roots probe deep Like all roots you probe in deep darkness Translated by Marcia Falk.