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Letty Cottin Pogrebin wants Jews to own up to the corrosive power of shame
(JTA) — When a lawyer for Donald Trump asked E. Jean Carroll why she didn’t scream while allegedly being raped by Donald Trump, I thought of Letty Cottin Pogrebin. In her latest book, “Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy,” she writes about being assaulted by a famous poet — and how the shadow of shame kept women like her silent about attacks on their own bodies.
That incident in 1962, she writes, was “fifty-eight years before the #MeToo movement provided the sisterhood and solidarity that made survivors of abuse and rape feel safe enough to tell their stories.”
Now 83, Pogrebin could have coasted with a memoir celebrating her six decades as a leading feminist: She co-founded Ms. magazine, its Foundation for Women and the National Women’s Political Caucus. She served as president of Americans for Peace Now and in 1982 blew the whistle on antisemitism in the feminist movement.
Instead, “Shanda” is about her immigrant Jewish family and the secrets they carried through their lives. First marriages that were kept hidden. An unacknowledged half-sister. Money problems and domestic abuse. An uncle banished for sharing family dirt in public.
“My mania around secrecy and shame was sparked in 1951 by the discovery that my parents had concealed from me the truth about their personal histories, and every member of my large extended family, on both sides, was in on it,” writes Pogrebin, now 83. “Their need to avoid scandal was so compelling that, once identified, it provided the lens through which I could see my family with fresh eyes, spotlight their fears, and, in so doing, illuminate my own.”
“Shanda” (the Yiddish word describes the kind of behavior that brings shame on an entire family or even a people) is also a portrait of immigrant New York Jews in the 20th century. As her father and mother father move up in the world and leave their Yiddish-speaking, Old World families behind for new lives in the Bronx and Queens, they stand in for a generation of Jews and new Americans “bent on saving face and determined to be, if not exemplary, at least impeccably respectable.”
Pogrebin and I spoke last week ahead of the Eight Over Eighty Gala on May 31, where she will be honored with a group that includes another Jewish feminist icon, the writer Erica Jong, and musician Eve Queler, who founded her own ensemble, the Opera Orchestra of New York, when she wasn’t being given chances to conduct in the male-dominated world of classical music. The gala is a fundraiser for the New Jewish Home, a healthcare nonprofit serving older New Yorkers.
Pogrebin and I spoke about shame and how it plays out in public and private, from rape accusations against a former president to her regrets over how she wrote about her own abortions to how the Bible justifies family trickery.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
I found your book very moving because my parents’ generation, who like your family were middle-class Jews who grew up or lived in the New York metropolitan area, are also all gone now. Your book brought back to me that world of aunts and uncles and cousins, and kids like us who couldn’t imagine what kinds of secrets and traumas our parents and relatives were hiding. But you went back and asked all the questions that many of us are afraid to ask.
I can’t tell you how good writing it has been. I feel as though I have no weight on my back. And people who have read it gained such comfort from the normalization that happens when you read that others have been through what you’ve been through. And my family secrets are so varied — just one right after the other. The chameleon-like behavior of that generation — they became who they wanted to be through pretense or actual accomplishment.
In my mother’s case, pretense led the way. She went and got a studio photo that made it look like she graduated from high school when she didn’t. In the eighth grade, she went up to her uncle’s house in the north Bronx and had her dates pick her up there because of the shanda of where she lived on the Lower East Side with nine people in three rooms. She had to imagine herself the child of her uncle, who didn’t have an accent or had an accent but at least spoke English.
You describe yours as “an immigrant family torn between loyalty to their own kind and longing for American acceptance.”
There was the feeling that, “If only we could measure up, we would be real Americans.” My mother was a sewing machine operator who became a designer and figured out what American women wore when she came from rags and cardboard shoes, in steerage. So I admire them. As much as I was discomforted by the lies, I ended up having compassion for them.
It’s also a story of thwarted women, and all that lost potential of a generation in which few could contemplate a college degree or a career outside the home. Your mother worked for a time as a junior designer for Hattie Carnegie, a sort of Donna Karan of her day, but abandoned that after she met your dad and became, as you write, “Mrs. Jack Cottin.”
The powerlessness of women was complicated in the 1950s by the demands of the masculine Jewish ideal. So having a wife who didn’t work was proof that you were a man who could provide. As a result women sacrificed their own aspirations and passions. She protected her husband’s image by not pursuing her life outside the home. In a way my feminism is a positive, like a photograph, to the negative of my mother’s 1950s womanhood.
“I’m not an optimist. I call myself a ‘cockeyed strategist,” said Pogrebin, who has a home on the Upper West Side. (Mike Lovett)
You write that you “think of shame and secrecy as quintessentially Jewish issues.” What were the Jewish pressures that inspired your parents to tell so many stories that weren’t true?
Think about what we did. We hid behind our names. We changed our names. We sloughed off our accents. My mother learned to make My*T*Fine pudding instead of gefilte fish. Shame and secrecy have always been intrinsically Jewish to me, because of the “sha!” factor: At every supper party, there would be the moment when somebody would say, “Sha! We don’t talk about that!” So even though we talked about what felt like everything, there were things that couldn’t be touched: illness, the C-word [cancer]. If you wanted to make a shidduch [wedding match] with another family in the insular communities in which Jews lived, you couldn’t let it be known that there was cancer in the family, or mental illness.
While I was writing this memoir, I realized that the [Torah portion] I’m listening to one Shabbat morning is all about hiding. It is Jacob finding out that he didn’t marry Rachel, after all, but married somebody he didn’t love. All of the hiding that I took for granted in the Bible stories and I was raised on like mother’s milk was formative. They justified pretense, and they justified trickery. Rebecca lied to her husband and presented her younger son Jacob for the blessing because God told her, because it was for the greater good of the future the Jewish people.
I think Jews felt that same sort of way when it came to surviving. So we can get rid of our names. We wouldn’t have survived, whether we were hiding in a forest or behind a cabinet, a name or a passport, or [pushed into hiding] with [forced] conversions. Hiding was survival.
I was reading your book just as the E. Jean Carroll verdict came down, holding Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting her during an encounter in the mid-’90s. You write how in 1962, when you were working as a book publicist, the hard-drinking Irish poet Brendan Behan (who died in 1964) tried to rape you in a hotel room and you didn’t report it. Like Carroll, you didn’t think that it was something that could be reported because the cost was too high.
Certainly in that era powerful men could get away with horrible behavior because of shanda reasons.
Carroll said in her court testimony, “It was shameful to go to the police.”
You know that it happened to so many others and nobody paid the price. The man’s reputation was intact and we kept our jobs because we sacrificed our dignity and our truth. I was in a career, and I really was supporting myself. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I would have been pilloried for having gone to his hotel room, and nobody was there when he picked up an ashtray and threatened to break the window of the Chelsea Hotel unless I went up there with him.The cards were stacked against me.
In “Shanda,” you write about another kind of shame: The shame you now feel decades later about how you described the incident in your first book. You regret “how blithely I transformed an aggravated assault by a powerful man into a ‘sticky sexual encounter.’”
I wrote about the incident in such offhand terms, and wonder why. I wrote, basically, “Okay, girls, you’re gonna have to put up with this, but you’re gonna have to find your own magical sentence like I had with Behan” to get him to stop.
You write that you said, “You can’t do this to me! I’m a nice Jewish girl!” And that got him to back off.
Really painful.
I think that’s a powerful aspect of your book — how you look back at the ways you let down the movement or your family or friends and now regret. In 1991 you wrote a New York Times essay about an illegal abortion you had as a college senior in 1958, but not the second one you had only a few months later. While you were urging women to tell their stories of abortion, you note how a different shame kept you from telling the whole truth.
Jewish girls could be, you know, plain or ordinary, but they had to be smart, and I had been stupid. I could out myself as one of the many millions of women who had an abortion but not as a Jewish girl who made the same mistake [of getting pregnant] twice.
The book was written before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In the book you write powerfully about the shame, danger and loneliness among women when abortion was illegal, and now, after 50 years, it is happening again. Having been very much part of the generation of activists that saw Roe become the law of the land, how have you processed its demise?
Since the 1970s, we thought everything was happening in this proper linear way. We got legislation passed, we had litigation and we won, and we saw the percentage of women’s participation in the workplace all across professions and trades and everything else rise and rise. And then Ronald Reagan was elected and then there was the Moral Majority and then it was the Hyde Amendment [barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion]. I was sideswiped because I think I was naive enough to imagine that once we articulated what feminism was driving at and why women’s rights were important, and how the economic reality of families and discrimination against women weren’t just women’s issues, people would internalize it and understand it and justice would be done.
In the case of Roe, we could not imagine that rights could ever be taken away. We didn’t do something that we should have done, which is to have outed ourselves in a big way. It’s not enough that abortion was legal. We allowed it to remain stigmatized. We allowed the right wing to create their own valence around it. That negated solidarity. If we had talked about abortion as healthcare, if we had had our stories published and created organizations around remembering what it was like and people telling their stories about when abortion was illegal and dangerous…. Instead we allowed the religious right to prioritize [fetal] cells over a woman’s life. We just were not truthful with each other, so we didn’t create solidarity.
Are you heartened by the backlash against restrictive new laws in red states or optimistic that the next wave of activism can reclaim the right to abortion?
I’m not an optimist. I call myself a “cockeyed strategist.” If you look at my long resume, it is all about organizing: Ms. magazine, feminist organizations, women’s foundations, Black-Jewish dialogues, Torah study groups and Palestinian-Jewish dialogues.
Number one, we have to own the data and reframe the narrative. We have to open channels for discussion for women who have either had one or know someone who has had one, even in religious Catholic families. The state-by-state strategy was really slow, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted that. She almost didn’t get on the court because she didn’t like the nationwide, right-to-privacy strategy of Roe but instead wanted it won state by state, which would have required campaigns of acceptance and consciousness-raising.
So, the irony is she hasn’t lived to see that we’re going to have to do it her way.
You share a lot of family secrets in this book. Is this a book that you waited to write until, I’ll try to put this gently, most of the people had died?
I started this book when I was 78 years old, and there’s always a connection to my major birthdays. And turning 80 – you experience that number and it is so weird. It doesn’t describe me and it probably won’t describe you. I thought, this could well be my last book, so I needed to be completely transparent, put it all out there.
My mother and father and aunts and uncles were gone, but I have 24 cousins altogether. I went to my cousins, and told them I am going to write about the secret of your parents: It’s my uncle, but it’s your father. It’s your family story even though it’s my family, but it’s yours first. And every cousin, uniformly, said, “Are you kidding? You don’t even know the half of it,” and they’d tell me the whole story. I guess people want the truth out in the end.
Is that an aspect of getting older?
I think it’s a promise of liberation, which is what I have found. It’s this experience of being free from anything that I’ve hid. I don’t have to hide. Years ago, on our 35th wedding anniversary, we took our whole family to the Tenement Museum because we wanted them to see how far we’ve come in two generations.
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No Kings But God: What I Learned as Miss Israel in Times Square
Ayelet Raymond. Photo: Instagram
This Passover, as Miss Israel, I found myself in Times Square surrounded by protesters holding signs that read “No Kings.”
I came for a peaceful pro-Israel photoshoot, wearing my Star of David crown — the first ever designed by a beauty queen — but the moment I stepped into the crowd, everything changed.
I suddenly found myself surrounded by hundreds of anti-Israel protesters. People looked at me — at my crown, at my Miss Israel sash — and warned me to be careful showing Jewish symbols. I felt it too. The tension was real. It became a question of safety — do I leave, or do I stay?
I was born in Jerusalem, but have lived in the US for many years. And I will always be so proud to be an Israeli and a Jew.
In that moment, I asked myself: Ma Nishtana — what is different this year in New York, as antisemitism rises more than it ever has before?
Looking around, I thought about the Passover story, where there are two sources of power: Pharaoh and God.
Pharaoh had control, authority, and power over the Jewish people, but his power had limits. He could not stand against God.
In my early education in Jerusalem, in a Bait Yaakov school, I learned a simple truth — God is the King of all kings. That belief has carried the Jewish people through history.
That moment became my lesson of Passover in modern life.
The Jewish people did not leave Egypt when they felt safe or ready. They left with faith. They stepped into the unknown — vulnerable, exposed — and still moved toward freedom.
And here we are in 2026, at a time when antisemitism is rising in New York and all over the world, when being visibly Jewish brings tension.
So I made a choice — not to hide, but to be visibly Jewish without fear, wearing my Star of David crown in one of the most public places in the world.
From Jerusalem, where I was raised, to Times Square, where I stood that day, we end the Passover Seder each year with the words: “L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim Habnuya” — Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.
We do this because Jewish identity has never depended on comfort — it has always depended on the choice to stand tall for our beliefs and our faith.
Ayelet Raymond is Miss Israel, Miss World Influencer, and Miss World International — the social media personality @KosherBarbie, and a proud voice for Israel.
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A Growing Majority of the World’s Jews Are Israelis
A drone view of Jerusalem with the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
A Jewish friend of mine made what I thought was an interesting observation the other day. We were chatting about world affairs, and he pointed out that to those who hate Jews, we are all Israelis — that those who carry out antisemitic attacks on Jews in synagogues or at Jewish gatherings, be it in Europe, North America or Australia, make no distinction between Jews and Israelis.
In fact, the distinction between Jews and Israelis has always been a blurred one in the Arab/Muslim world. The original 1988 Hamas policy document, for example, mentions Jews, not Israelis.
One of the October 7 attackers boasted to his parents in a phone recording found after the Hamas attack that he “killed Jews”: “Your son killed Jews … Mom, your son is a hero.” And antisemitism, including Holocaust denial and genocidal threats, has been a cornerstone of Iranian government policy for decades.
A the same time, it occurred to me that when it comes to demographics, a growing majority of the world’s Jews are in fact Israelis.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of statistics (CBS), the world Jewish population is about 15.7 million — still one million less than the pre-Holocaust number. (The numbers can vary, depending on the criteria used to define who is a Jew, but these figures are generally reliable).
Close to one half of the Jews in the world, 7.2 million out of a total Israeli population of over 10 million, now live in Israel. If we add the thousands of Israelis who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union who are not halachically Jewish, the number is even more impressive.
Moreover, the CBS also notes that virtually all of the growth in the world Jewish population is taking place in Israel. This is because the Jewish fertility rate in Israel is much higher than for Diaspora Jews.
Much of what I have said so far is not new. But what is rarely mentioned is the fact that a growing proportion of the Jewish Diaspora is now made up of Israelis.
As in all democratic societies, Israeli citizens are free to come and go, and emigration has always been a feature of Israeli population statistics, even during pre-state Mandatory Palestine. A report by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, notes that one million Israelis (Israeli nationals, and their children, including those born abroad) now live outside Israel. Two thirds live in the US and Canada, the remaining third in Europe.
While substantial numbers have emigrated to the UK and Germany, others have made their way to smaller countries, countries in which Jewish numbers had been declining because of low birth rates and emigration. Israelis now represent close to half of the Jewish population of Norway and Finland and over 20% of the Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain and Denmark.
Yet, here is the strange thing. These numbers are somewhat fluid. Some Israelis return, even after an absence of several years. For example, in 2025, 24,500 Israelis returned to Israel. This urge to return is particularly evident during time of war, a period of maximum personal risk. Why? According to Dan Perry of The Jerusalem Post, this need to return during war is based on a mixture of patriotism and Zionist messaging.
I think there is a simpler explanation, especially now. At a time when Jews are under attack everywhere, Israel is the only place where they can fight back.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
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Authentic Hasidic tales, translated into Polish
פֿאַר חסידישע מעשׂיות איז שטענדיק פֿאַראַן אַן עולם. אָט, אַ שטײגער, װעט באַלד אַרױס אַ נײַע דײַטשישע איבערזעצונג פֿון דעם פּױלישן שרײַבער סטאַניסלאַװ װינצענטס בעל־שם־טובֿ־לעגענדעס. װעגן דעם האָט זיך אַ מאָל (אױף פּױליש) באַקלאָגט דער ייִדישער קריטיקער בער מאַרק, אַז דװקא די „פֿינצטערע חסידות“ נעמט אױס בײַם ניט־ייִדישן לײענער־עולם.
דאָ ניט לאַנג האָט מען אױך אַרױסגעלאָזט פֿון ס׳נײַ די זכרונות פֿון עסטרײַכישן אױטאָר זאָמאַ (שלמה) מאָרגנשטערן, װאָס דערצײלט װעגן דער חסידישער גאַליציע פֿון זײַנע קינדער־יאָרן.
בנוגע דער באַליבטקײט און דעם כּישוף פֿון חסידיזם האָט װאָלף לאַצקי־באַרטאָלדי, מיט אַ יאָר הונדערט צוריק, געשריבן: „אונדזער ייִדישקײט איז פֿאַרגליװערט, אָבער מיט חסידות קאָן מען נאָך מגייר זײַן. והא ראַיה: משׂכּילים און פֿאַרשײַטע אַפּיקורסים האָבן זיך אומגעקערט צו ייִדישקײט אױפֿן װעג פֿון דער חסידות.“
אױך אין פּױלן איז לעצטנס אַרױס אַ נײַער באַנד חסידישע מעשׂיות. נאָר דאָס איז אַ בוך פֿון אַן אַנדער פֿאַרנעם, פֿון אַן אַנדער מדרגה. דאָ גײט ניט דװקא אין חסידישן ראָמאַנטיזם, נאָר אין אַ זאַמלונג עכטע חסידישע מעשׂיות מכּל־המינים, איבערגעזעצטע אױף פּױליש. אַזאַ כּוללדיקע זאַמלונג באַװײַזט זיך צום ערשטן מאָל אין װאָסער ניט איז לשון.
נאָך אַ חידוש: דער באַנד פֿון כּמעט 1,000 זײַטלעך גײט אַרױס אין דער ערשטער סעריע פֿון דער פּוילישער „נאַציאָנאַלער ביבליאָטעק“. אין דער צװײטער סעריע גיט מען אַרױס װערק פֿון דער „פֿרעמדער“ ליטעראַטור, אין דער ערשטער — װערק פֿון דער פּױלישער ליטעראַטור גופֿא. ס׳איז ניט דאָס ערשטע מאָל װאָס מע נעמט אַרײַן אין דער ערשטער סעריע אױך װערק אָנגעשריבענע לכתּחילה אױף אַן אַנדער שפּראַך. ס׳איז אָבער פֿון די געצײלטע בענד װאָס נעמען אַרײַן ליטעראַטור ניט פֿון קײן קריסטלעכע מחברים, און דערצו פֿון אַ נאַציאָנאַלער מינדערהײט.
ניט געקוקט אױף דעם פֿאַקט װאָס אָט די געקליבענע חסידישע מעשׂיות זאָלן מיט זיך פֿאָרשטעלן אַ חלק פּױלישע קולטור־נחלה, רעכנט מען זיך אָבער ניט מיט קײן מלוכישע גרענעצן. פֿאַרקערט, מע האָט זיך באַמיט צונױפֿזאַמלען מעשׂיות פֿון גאַנץ ייִדישלאַנד, אױך פֿון די „נײַע“ גלותן מעבֿר־לים, און פֿון אַלע תּקופֿות.
אױך זשאַנערן פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָרטן זײַנען דאָ פֿאַראַן: לענגערע דערצײלונגען, כּמו־װיסנשאַפֿטלעכע כראָניקעס און גאָר קורצע מעשׂהלעך. לאָמיר עפּעס פּאָסמאַקעװען פֿון אָט דער פֿיל־מיניקער זאַמלונג.
נאַט אײַך אַ מעשׂה פֿון די סאַמע ערשטע דורות חסידישע גוטע־ייִדן: די הײליקע ברידער ר׳ אלימלך און ר׳ זושע זצ״ל זײַנען אַװעק אָפּריכטן גלות כּדי צוצוציִען ייִדן צו חסידות. זײ האָבן אַזש אָנגעשפּאַרט ביז צו דער דײַטשישער גרענעץ אין קאַטאָװיץ. װען זײ האָבן זיך גענומען גײן װײַטער, האָט זיך אָבער באַװיזן דער שׂטן און געזאָגט זײ: טאָמער װעט איר אַריבער די דײַטשישע גרענעץ, טאָ זײַט װיסן אַז דעמאָלט װעל איך פֿאַרװאַנדלען אַלע ייִדן — אין חסידים. די ברידער האָבן זיך שטאַרק איבערגעשראָקן, אַז זײ האָבן דערזען, װי שלעכט ס׳װעט זײַן פֿאַר דער חסידות, װען די ברײטע מאַסן זאָלן זיך אײַנשליסן אין אירע רײען, װאָרן דעמאָלט װעט די חסידות אין גאַנצן פֿאַרלױרן גײן. און זײ האָבן זיך אומגעקערט אַהײם, אין זײער לאַנד.
טשיקאַװע: יענע ערשטע פֿאַרשפּרײטער פֿון חסידישקײט האָבן גאָר מורא געקראָגן זײער נײַע תּורה זאָל זיך ניט צעשפּרײטן צו פֿיל, כּדי זי זאָל חלילה ניט אָנװערן איר תּמצית. אַנדערש מיט עטלעכע דורות שפּעטער — אַזאַ מין ליטעראַרישער נבֿיא פֿונעם בעל־שם־טובֿס תּורה װי מאַרטין מרדכי בובער האָט דאָך געהאַלטן, אַז דאָס פֿירט דװקא ער צוריק צום לכתּחילהדיקן קװאַל, װען ער האָט ברײט אױפֿגעפּראַלט „די שערי־תּשובֿה פֿון חסידישן ראָמאַנטיזם“. אַזױ צי אַנדערש, האָט די ליטעראַרישע חסידות לױט בובערס און פּרצעס נוסח טאַקע אַנטפּלעקט דעם „נפֿשות־באַשאַפֿנדיקן כּוח“ פֿון דער חסידות (ציטאַטן פֿון לאַצקי־באַרטאָלדי).
די אַרױסגעבער פֿון דער פּױלישער אַנטאָלאָגיע „חסידישע מעשׂיות“, די פֿאָרשער מאַרטשין װאָדזשינסקי און װױטשיעך טװאָרעק, זשאַלעװען ניט קײן כּוחות אױף מפֿרסם צו זײַן דאָס בוך. אַחוץ די געװײנטלעכע מיטלען — ליטעראַרישע אָװנטן, נסיעות אױף ביכער־ירידן, ראַדיאָ־אינטערװיוען און דאָס גלײַכן — לאָזן זײ אַרױס אַ שײנע סעריע פֿילמעלעך מיט מער־װײניקער באַרימטע פּערזענלעכקײטן װאָס לײענען אָדער דערצײלן איבער מעשׂיות פֿון דער אַנטאָלאָגיע.
די אױבן געבראַכטע מעשׂה, למשל, לײענט זײערער אַ קאָלעגע פֿון ברעסלױער אוניװערסיטעט, דער פֿילאָלאָג יאַן מיאָדעק. מיאָדעקן קען אין פּױלן שיִער ניט יעדעס קינד. ער גיט שױן צענדליקער יאָרן עצות װי אַזױ צו רעדן אַ לײַטיש פּױליש. בײַ גלײַך מיט די אַנדערע פֿאָרלײענער, גיט אױך מיאָדעק אַ מאָל צו אַ זאַץ בשעתן לײענען. דער רבי ר׳ אלימלך און זײַן ברודער ר׳ משולם־זושע קערן זיך אום אַהײם, אין זײער לאַנד — קײן פּױלן, הײסט עס, גיט צו מיאָדעק און קוקט דעם צושױער־עולם אין די אױגן אַרײַן.
פֿאַרשטײט זיך אַז די אַרױסגעבער האָבן ניט אײנע אַליין באַװיזן אױפֿטאָן אַזאַ עובֿדה פֿון „אומקערן אַהײם“ די פּױלישע צדיקים מיט זײערע מעשׂיות. זײ האָט געהאָלפֿן אַ גאַנצע בריגאַדע איבערזעצער: צװישן זײ זײַנען דאָ דערפֿאַרענע מיט אַ לאַנגן סטאַזש און אַ נאָמען, נאָר אױך אָנהײבער אינעם פֿאַך, תּלמידים פֿון די אַרױסגעבער, װאָס האָבן זיך אַזױ אַרום געדרוקט צום ערשטן מאָל. צו זאָגן דעם גאַנצן אמת, בין איך הקטן אַלײן בײַגעװען בײַ די ערשטע שטאַפּלען פֿון פּראָיעקט. אַזױ האָב איך געקענט זען אַז מע לאָזט ניט אױף הפֿקר די איבערזעצער, נאָר מע זאָרגט מע זאָל זײ געבן אַן אָרנטלעכן אַרײַנפֿיר אינעם חסידיזם.
דערמיט האָט זיך פֿאַרנומען ניט אַבי װער, נאָר װיכטיקע מומחים, בתוכם די לינגוויסטקע לילי קאַהן װאָס האָט אײַנגעפֿירט דעם עולם אין די כּללים פֿון חסידישן לשון־קודש, צי דער היסטאָריקער גדי סגיבֿ (סאַגיװ) װאָס האָט אָפּגעהאַלטן אַ װאַרשטאַט װעגן חסידישן שטײגער דערצײלן מעשׂיות.
אױך דער פּױלישער לײענער װאָס נעמט אין האַנט אַרײַן דעם באַנד „חסידישע מעשׂיות“, איז זוכה צו אַן אַרײַנפֿיר, װי גאָט האָט געבאָטן. די רעדאַקטאָרן זײַנען מקדים די דערצײלונגען מיט „אַ װאָרט אַפֿריִער“ פֿון אַ צװײ הונדערט זײַטלעך — אַ מין מאָנאָגראַפֿיע פֿאַר זיך און, בײַם הײַנטיקן טאָג, דער סאַמע גרונטיקער טראַקטאַט װעגן חסידיזם װאָס איז פֿאַראַן אױף דער פּױלישער שפּראַך.
די מעשׂיות גײען לױטן כראָנאָלאָגישן סדר. װײַטער האָט מען זײ אײַנגעטײלט לױט געאָגראַפֿיע און טעמעס. לאָמיר צום סוף ברענגען נאָך צװײ בײַשפּילן. אינעם חלק װעגן חורבן און װידערגעבורט געפֿינען מיר אַ מעשׂה — װעגן פּױלישן פּױפּס, יאַן פּאַװעל דעם צװײטן. דער בלאָזשעװער רבי, ר׳ ישׂראל שפּיראָ, גיט דאָרט איבער אַז אַ פּױפּס איז ער געװאָרן — אין זכות פֿון אַן עצה װאָס ער, יאַן פּאַװעל, דעמאָלט אַ יונגער גלח אױפֿן נאָמען קאַראָל װױטילאַ, האָט געעצהט אַ פּאָליאַטשקע פֿון די חסידי־אומות־העולם װאָס האָט אױסבאַהאַלטן אַ ייִדיש ייִנגל פֿון די נאַצישע רוצחים, אַז זי דאַרף איבערגעבן דאָס קינד די אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישע קרובֿים, עס זאָל װאַקסן בײַ די אײגענע און טאַקע אַ ייִדיש קינד.
אַז מע האַלט שױן בײַ חסידישע מעשׂיות װעגן די קאַטױלן, איז אָט נאָך אַן אינטערעסאַנטע דוגמא, אַ מעשׂה װעגן כּוח פֿון דערצײלן מעשׂיות. אַ מאָל איז געװען אַ ייִד, און זײַן װײַב האָט ניט געבױרן קײן קינדער, האָט ער געבעטן אַן עצה בײַ ר׳ מרדכי טשערנאָבליער און ר׳ ישׂראלטשקע רוזשינער זי״ע, װאָס האָבן זיך פּונקט פֿאַרהאַלטן אין אײן שטעטל. דעמאָלט האָט דער רוזשינער רבי איבערגעגעבן אַ מעשׂה, אַ סגולה פֿאַר װײַבער װאָס קענען נעבעך קײן קינדער ניט האָבן.
ס׳האָט געטראָפֿן אין רױם, אַז אַ פֿרומער קריסט האָט געהאַט אַ טאָכטער, װאָס ער האָט זי געלערנט אַלע קאַטױלישע דינים און מנהגים. איז זי אונטערגעװאַקסן אַ געלערנטע. די יונגע פֿרױ האָט אָבער מקנא געװען די גלחים װאָס פֿאַרמאָגן אַ סך כּוח און מאַכט. האָט זי זיך איבערגעטאָן אין מאַנסבילשע קלײדער און איז אַװעק אין טעאָלאָגישן סעמינאַר. זי האָט אַזש אַריבערגעשטיגן אַלעמען דאָרט מיט איר בקיאות און קענטעניש. װען מע האָט געדאַרפֿט צוקלײַבן אַ נײַעם פּױפּס, האָט מען דעריבער אױסגעװײלט זי װי דעם ממלא־מקומו. איז זי אָבער אַראָפּ פֿון גלײַכן װעג און פֿאַרגאַנגען אין טראָגן. פּונקט װען מע האָט געהאַלטן אין פּראַװען אַ גרױסע חגא אױף די גאַסן פֿון שטאָט, האָט זי געקראָגן די װײען און געגאַנגען צו קינד. פֿון דעמאָלט אָן איז מען בודק צי דער מענטש איז ניט אַ מאָל אַ נקבֿה, אײדער מע קלײַבט אים אױס פֿאַר אַ פּױפּס.
בײַם פֿאַרענדיקן די מעשׂה האָט דער רוזשינער באַלד אױסגערופֿן: מזל־טובֿ, דײַן װײַב קומט אַ מזל־טובֿ, זי האָט ערשט געהאַט אַ זון. די דאָזיקע מעשׂה טוט אַ פּעולה, אַפֿילו אַ פּשוטער בשׂר־דם זאָל זי איבערדערצײלן.
אױך דעם פּױלישן לײענער־עולם קומט אַ מזל־טובֿ װאָס ער האָט זוכה געװען צו אַזאַ גאָלדענעם צוגאָב צו דער פּױלישער קולטור־ירושה. ס׳װילט זיך אױך מאַכן אַ שהחיינו לכּבֿוד די חסידישע מעשׂיות װאָס מע האָט זײ אײַנגעבירגערט אינעם פּױלישן ליטעראַרישן קאַנאָן אױף אַזאַ לײַטישן אופֿן.
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