Yente Serdatsky

Born Yente Raybman near Kovno (today Kaunas, Lithuania), Yente Serdatsky received a traditional education for girls and instruction in Hebrew, Russian, and German. Early in her life, her parents introduced her to a number of Yiddish writers then living in Kovno, most notably Avrom Reyzen. Having married, she ran a grocery store with her husband and brought up three children until 1905, when she left for Warsaw to pursue a writing career. Joining the group of writers that gathered at Y. L. Peretz’s home, Serdatsky published her first short story in the Yiddish journal Der veg, of which Peretz was an editor. Rejoining her husband and children the following year, she moved to the United States, living first in Chicago before settling in New York City. In New York, Serdatsky published short stories and plays in numerous Yiddish periodicals, becoming well connected in the Yiddish literary world there. She eventually joined the editorial staff of the Yiddish daily Forverts, where she remained until 1922, when she had a falling out with editor in chief Abraham Cahan over matters of salary. She returned to writing late in her life after a hiatus of two and a half decades.