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YIVO digitizes writer Chaim Grade’s archive, a Yiddish treasure with a soap opera backstory
(JTA) — Years ago, when I worked at the Forward, I had a cameo in a real-life Yiddish drama.
A cub reporter named Max Gross sat just outside my office, where he answered the phones. A frequent caller was Inna Grade, the widow of the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and a fierce guardian of his literary legacy. Mrs. Grade would badger poor Max in dozens of phone calls, especially when a Forward story referred kindly to the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Grade’s widow described Singer as a “blasphemous buffoon” whose fame and reputation, she was convinced, came at the expense of her husband’s.
As Max explains in his 2008 memoir, “From Schlub to Stud,” Mrs. Grade “became a bit of a joke around the paper.” And yet in Yiddish literary circles, her protectiveness of one of the 20th century’s most important Yiddish writers was serious business: Because Inna Grade kept such a tight hold on her late husband’s papers — Chaim Grade (pronounced “Grah-deh”) died in 1982 — a generation of scholars was thwarted in taking his true measure.
Inna Grade died in 2010, leaving no signed will or survivors, and the contents of her cluttered Bronx apartment became the property of the borough’s public administrator. In 2013, Chaim Grade’s personal papers, 20,000-volume library, literary manuscripts and publication rights were awarded to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the National Library of Israel. They are now stored in YIVO headquarters on Manhattan’s W. 16th Street.
This week YIVO and the NLI will announce the completion of the digitization of “The Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade,” making the entire archive publicly accessible online. When the folks at YIVO invited me to come and look at the Grade collection, I knew I had to invite Max, not just because of his connection to Inna Grade but because he has become a critically acclaimed novelist in his own right: His 2020 novel “The Lost Shtetl,” which imagines a Jewish village in Poland that has somehow escaped the Holocaust, is in many ways an homage to the Yiddish literary tradition.
We met on Thursday with the YIVO staff, who were tickled by the T-shirt Max was wearing, which had a picture of Chaim Grade and the phrase “Grade is my homeboy.” (Max said his wife bought it for him, although neither could imagine the market for such a shirt.)
Stefanie Halpern, director of the YIVO archives, and novelist Max Gross discuss a thick file containing news clippings relating to the late Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade at YIVO’s Manhattan offices, Feb. 2, 2023. (New York Jewish Week)
The Grade papers — manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, lectures, speeches, essays — are stored in folders in gray boxes, whose neatness belies the years of effort that went into putting them in order. Jonathan Brent, executive director and CEO of YIVO, described for us the Grades’ apartment, which he visited shortly after Inna’s death.
“It was like a combination of my grandmother’s apartment and a writer’s home,” he said. “Everything was books, books to the ceiling. You open a drawer in the kitchen where you think there’ll be knives and forks, there are books, there are manuscripts. You open the cabinet in the bathroom, there are more manuscripts and books and books…. But the thing I remember most is that at the top of a shelf there was that much dust.” He held his fingers about two inches apart.
Inna Grade was Chaim Grade’s second wife. The writer was born in Vilna (now in Lithuania) in 1910. He was able to flee east during the Nazi occupation, leaving behind his mother and his first wife under the assumption that the Germans would only target adult men. It was a tragic miscalculation, and their deaths would haunt Grade the rest of his life. Inna Hecker was born in Ukraine in 1925, and met Grade in Moscow during the war. Married in 1945, they immigrated to the United States in 1948.
Chaim Grade had already established a reputation as a poet, playwright and prose stylist before the war; English translations of his novels “The Agunah” and “The Yeshiva” and serial publication of his novels in the Yiddish press brought him recognition in America for what the Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse calls a “Dostoyevskian talent to animate in fiction the destroyed Talmudic civilization of Europe.” Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber, in a YIVO release, says that Grade was possessed “by the spirit of the yeshiva world he’d left behind; then possessed by the spirits and memories of those who’d been murdered by the Nazis.”
Stefanie Halpern, director of the YIVO archives, showed us the physical evidence of that possession: Grade’s notebooks, in which he wrote down ideas and inspiration in a careful Yiddish script; manuscripts for at least two unpublished dramatic works, “The Dead Can’t Rise Up” and “Hurban” (“Sacrifice”); a photograph of Grade standing amidst the ruins of Vilna during his only visit after the war; pictures of the Bronx apartment taken when the couple was still alive, book-filled but still tidy.
Halpern also showed us the Yiddish typewriter recovered from the apartment, with what is believed to be the last page he worked on still rolled in its platen.
Chaim Grade’s typewriter, preserved in the condition it was found when the Yiddish author died in 1982, contains what are apparently the last lines he ever wrote. (New York Jewish Week)
The archivists are also careful to give Inna her due. After arriving in America she studied literature and received a master’s degree from Columbia, and often translated her husband’s work. Thanks to her, hundreds of clippings of Grade’s work and articles about him have survived.
Her correspondence reflects the lengths she went to protect her husband’s legacy during and after his lifetime, including a bizarre and lengthy letter to the Vatican complaining about Singer. “She was a brilliant and creative person, devoted in a way only a widow can be,” said Brent. “And perhaps devoted to a maddening extent.”
If all that sounds like the stuff of Jewish fiction, it is: In 1969, Cynthia Ozick wrote a novella called “Envy; or, Yiddish in America,” about Yiddish writers very much like Grade consumed with envy for a writer very much like Singer. “They hated him for the amazing thing that had happened to him — his fame — but this they never referred to,” wrote Ozick. “Instead they discussed his style: his Yiddish was impure, his sentences lacked grace and sweep, his paragraph transitions were amateur, vile.”
Halpern showed us a mailgram from Inna to the Forward that makes it clear that she and her husband read and hated the story. In it she describes Ozick as “no less grotesque than evil.”
For all of the gothic Yiddish aspects of its retrieval, “this is probably the single most important literary acquisition in YIVO’s postwar history,” Brent said of the archive. He described publishing projects already underway with Schocken Books and other publishers that will draw on the material.
Max and I discussed what it felt like to see what had become “a bit of a joke” around the Forward office placed at the center of an epic exercise in literary preservation. Max was struck by the way Inna’s personality came through in the papers. “This was her,” he said. “Her obsession, her struggle, all these things. It was definitely remarkable to see that.”
I recalled overhearing his conversations with Inna, and how her behavior could seem funny and exasperating, but also admirable and more than a little sad — in that her devotion to her husband’s reputation may also have prevented scholars from doing the work that would have made him better known.
“Exactly, but that’s one of the reasons why you get into Yiddish literature, because all of these things are true at the same time,” said Max. “Those kinds of scores, rivalries, feuds within Yiddish literature is what is so great about it. It is great to see that somebody really cared and that literature was taken so seriously. And the pettiness was something you couldn’t quite divest from the rest of it.”
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Iran Faces Economic Disaster as US Blockade Suffocates Regime’s Oil Lifeline
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, April 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
As intensifying US pressure squeezes the Iranian energy sector, Iran’s oil lifeline is fraying — exports are sliding, storage is nearing capacity, and mounting economic strain is fueling the risk of renewed internal unrest that could further test the regime’s grip on power.
According to a newly released report from commodity analytics firm Kpler, Iran’s oil exports fell sharply after a US naval blockade on Iranian ports took hold in mid-April, dropping from an average of just over 2 million barrels per day earlier this month and 1.85 million in March to only five tracked cargoes and roughly 567,000 barrels per day in the past two weeks.
Even with Iran’s national oil company already cutting output to avoid dangerous bottlenecks as storage approaches capacity limits, the country is running out of space quickly, with Kpler estimating remaining storage could be exhausted within 12 to 22 days.
Despite Iranian officials claiming that 31 tankers have escaped the blockade zone, there is no evidence of any successful transits, with vessels reportedly passing through the Strait of Hormuz only to be stopped short of the US blockade further south between the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
The US blockade has prevented the regime from exporting energy through the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global energy chokepoint through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
Amid a collapse in exports of more than 70 percent, the Iranian government has been forced to start cutting production, signaling a deepening economic crisis. Now the regime faces a critical choice between shutting wells and risking long-term damage to critical fields.
Sudden and prolonged shutdowns at oil production plants can cause lasting damage to reservoirs by disrupting pressure systems and flow dynamics, making it increasingly difficult — and in some cases impossible — to restart operations and restore production levels to their previous capacity, often costing millions to reverse.
According to Homayoun Falakshahi, head of Kpler’s crude oil analysis team, Iran’s oil sector has long suffered from underinvestment and poor reservoir management, resulting in an average recovery rate of just 25 percent. This means only about a quarter of the oil in a field can typically be extracted before production must be halted, and once wells are shut, restarting them makes it harder and less efficient to recover what remains.
Even though Kpler’s report estimates Tehran may not feel the full revenue hit for another three to four months due to payment delays and pre-existing sales flows, the regime is expected to face a heavy blow, with losses potentially reaching $200–250 million per day.
In an effort to prevent a wider infrastructure breakdown and avoid sharper production slowdowns, Iran is turning to improvised oil storage and alternative export routes.
Specifically, the regime is reportedly turning to disused “junk storage” sites, makeshift containers, floating storage on vessels, and even rail shipments of crude to China as export bottlenecks continue to build.
After repeated efforts to bring Iran back to the negotiating table to discuss its nuclear and missile programs and support for terrorism, the Trump administration escalated pressure on the Islamist regime earlier this month by imposing a naval blockade against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, aiming to reach a deal that would bring an end to the conflict.
Trump told aides this week to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran until the regime agrees to a favorable deal, according to multiple reports.
Since the start of the war with joint US-Israeli strikes earlier this year, Iran has used control over the Strait of Hormuz as a major source of leverage, militarizing the waterway and sharply restricting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most critical shipping corridors. However, the US blockade as taken away much of that leverage, with the calculus that the regime can only hold out for so long as Iran faces total economic collapse.
Adding to an already crippling economy, Iran’s national rial currency hit a record low Wednesday of 1.8 million to the dollar. The fall is expected to trigger further fuel inflation.
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign trade has also collapsed sharply during the first month of the conflict, deepening the country’s isolation from global markets.
Official customs data shows non-oil trade dropped to just $6.4 billion last month, a 30 percent decline from the previous month and 50 percent lower than a year earlier, before the war, Iran International reported.
As the country’s industrial base — a target of US-Israeli strikes before the ceasefire took effect earlier this month — comes under strain, the Iranian government has been forced to halt petrochemical and steel exports, sectors that account for more than a third of its non-oil revenue.
On Monday, the Iran Trade Promotion Organization ordered a suspension of steel slab and sheet exports until May 30, putting at risk industries that generate up to $20 billion annually.
With domestic tensions rising and the internal economic crisis worsening, Iranian officials are increasingly wary that renewed protests could erupt in the coming days, further destabilizing an already volatile situation.
Iran International reported that, this week, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting amid growing concern over a possible resurgence of protests, warning of renewed unrest following the nationwide anti-government demonstrations earlier this year, which security forces violently crushed, leaving tens of thousands of demonstrators tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
Officials now reportedly warn that worsening economic hardship, driven by inflation, rising unemployment, and damage to key industries such as petrochemicals and steel, could ignite the next wave of unrest.
According to Israeli intelligence assessments, widespread damage to Iran’s petrochemical and defense sectors has already wiped out an estimated 100,000 jobs.
Iranian security officials estimate that nationwide internet shutdowns have also left around 20 percent of online-dependent workers unemployed, warning that up to two million more private-sector jobs could be lost by the end of spring.
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Lebanon Must Reform its Army or Lose American Aid
Lebanese army members stand on a military vehicle during a Lebanese army media tour, to review the army’s operations in the southern Litani sector, in Alma Al-Shaab, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
Washington is working on establishing a system “where vetted units within the Lebanese Armed Forces [LAF] have the training, the equipment, and the capability to go after elements of Hezbollah and dismantle them,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose statement echoed growing frustration in Congress that Beirut should reform its military, or lose American aid.
On Capitol Hill, frustrated Senate powerhouses Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jim Risch (R-ID), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, seem to have lost all patience with the LAF. After funneling more than $3 billion in US taxpayer dollars into the force since 2004, the returns have been virtually zero.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who once threw the LAF commander out of his office for refusing to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization, is now issuing a blunt ultimatum: not one more American cent unless the LAF undergoes genuine, verifiable, and immediate reform.
That reform must begin right now with the LAF enforcing the Lebanese cabinet’s March 2 resolution ordering the military to disband Hezbollah and prohibit all its military activities.
Five days after that vote, however, LAF Commander Rudolph Haykal met with his top generals and declared that “preventing civil war” was their priority, code for refusing to disarm Hezbollah. The LAF has gone rogue, openly defying the elected civilian government it is sworn to obey.
Under Haykal, the LAF is not worth another dollar of American money. Graham is correct: real reform starts with firing Haykal and purging the senior ranks. Most top officers are compromised by or aligned with Hezbollah. They must be replaced by patriotic ones who put Lebanon first.
But leadership change is only the start. Washington must demand two non-negotiable structural reforms before releasing another dime: a complete reorientation of the LAF’s military doctrine and a rigorous, fully independent audit of its finances and operations.
The Lebanese Army was founded in 1946, with a doctrine that matched the vision of the country’s founders: a sovereign, predominantly Christian nation in a hostile Sunni Arab Levant.
Lebanon’s Christians deliberately carved out a distinct identity, distancing the country from the Arab-Islamic narrative and even emphasizing its European cultural roots.
For decades, the LAF performed its core mission with honor, defending Lebanon’s independence and neutrality against neighbors determined to absorb it into Greater Syria or a pan-Arab or Islamic superstate. Until 1991, every battle it fought served Lebanese sovereignty.
That mission was betrayed in 1991. Eager to reshape the post-Cold War Middle East, the United States rewarded Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad for joining the Gulf War coalition by handing him control of Lebanon.
Assad wasted no time. He purged patriotic officers and gutted the army’s doctrine. The LAF was no longer a defender of Lebanese independence. It became a tool for radical Arab “causes” — above all, an obsessive, unrelenting hostility toward Israel, which was recast from a peaceful neighbor into an existential enemy.
Worse, the new doctrine cynically embraced Hezbollah as a legitimate “popular resistance” group supposedly sanctioned by international law — a grotesque lie, especially after Israel’s unilateral, UN-certified withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
This situation lasted far too long. Hezbollah’s decision on October 8, 2023, to attack Israel “in support of Gaza” finally changed the equation. Israel’s devastating 2024 campaign weakened the militia’s leadership, including the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah.
With Hezbollah gravely weakened, Lebanon’s parliament elected President Joseph Aoun in December 2024 and quickly approved Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s cabinet, both openly committed to disarming the Iranian proxy. Yet cabinet resolutions are meaningless if the LAF refuses to obey the government it is supposed to serve.
The army’s excuses for inaction are unconvincing.
It claims Shia soldiers would mutiny and defect. That’s false. Hezbollah’s fighters are almost exclusively Shia, and the militia offers far better pay and benefits than the cash-strapped LAF. Many military-age Shia men have already joined the proxy, leaving the regular army disproportionately Sunni and Christian. There simply aren’t enough Shia left in the ranks to cause a serious split.
Surveys repeatedly show that at least one in four Lebanese Shia oppose Hezbollah’s armament. Those who choose the national army over the militia’s lavish incentives are among the most patriotic, and the least likely to follow Hezbollah’s orders.
Hezbollah’s real grip on the LAF comes through corruption, not numbers. The militia has co-opted dozens of non-Shia senior officers by securing their promotions and protecting their graft. Corruption is rampant. Lebanon ranks 153rd on Transparency International’s corruption index. Applicants to the military academy routinely pay bribes of at least $30,000 just to get in, according to word on the street.
Before any more US money flows, the LAF must submit to a thorough, independent international audit.
The path is clear and uncompromising. Replace Haykal and his compromised lieutenants. Restore a doctrine centered solely on defending Lebanese sovereignty and neutrality. Conduct a full independent audit.
Only then should America resume, and dramatically increase, its aid to build a professional, sovereign, and accountable Lebanese national army. A reformed LAF would finally be worth supporting. The current version is not.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
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Mamdani fails first political test in Manhattan race. Here’s why it matters to Jews
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was dealt a political blow Tuesday in a closely watched special election, a result that could reshape a high-stakes fight over protest protections that has galvanized the city’s Jewish community.
The race for an open Manhattan Council seat pitted Carl Wilson, an establishment candidate with deep ties to the district and backing from Council Speaker Julie Menin and City Comptroller Mark Levine, against Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Andrew Cuomo and the first of multiple women to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Boylan joined the Democratic Socialists of America last year — inspired by Mamdani — and has since emerged as a vocal critic of Israel.
The race took on outsized significance, with allies of Menin and establishment Democrats coalescing behind Wilson, a former chief of staff to ex-Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who vacated the seat after winning a special election to the state legislature in February. Meanwhile, activists aligned with Mamdani rallied behind Boylan. The district, in Chelsea and Greenwich Village, is a hub of the city’s LGBTQ+ community that includes the iconic Stonewall Inn.
Mamdani issued a late endorsement after early voting began last week, and quickly leaned in, campaigning with Boylan repeatedly and framing the race as a proving ground for his political operation. Mamdani is also seeking to extend that influence beyond City Hall, deploying top campaign aides and aggressively backing allies including Brad Lander and Claire Valdez in competitive June primaries for Congress.
Tuesday’s outcome — Wilson beating Boylan 43-25 in the ranked-choice contest, according to unofficial results — is being interpreted as a setback for Mamdani’s endorsement power and a sign that his electoral reach may be more limited than his rapid rise suggested.
Next NYC, a newly created super PAC tied to Cuomo, former city comptroller Scott Stringer and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, invested heavily in the contest to counter Mamdani’s influence. Stringer, who ran in last year’s mayoral race and has emerged as a prominent Jewish critic of Mamdani, framed the broader political goal as defeating candidates aligned with the mayor. “One down,” Stringer posted on X earlier this week ahead of the election, predicting Boylan’s defeat.
Mamdani’s setback boosts override push
Symbolism aside, the election could have some immediate legislative consequences for New York City, home to the largest concentration of Jewish voters in the U.S. At issue is a Council bill requiring safety plans for protests near schools. The legislation, referred to as a “buffer zone” measure, was strongly supported by many Jewish groups amid concerns about demonstrations targeting Jewish institutions.
The schools bill ran into opposition from progressive groups that raised objections connected to restricting free speech, especially on college campuses. It passed the City Council 30-19, which is not a veto-proof majority. Mamdani vetoed the measure on Friday, his first veto since taking office.
A similar bill concerning protests at houses of worship passed with a 44–5 veto-proof majority in the 51-member chamber, and can now become law.
Wilson backs the schools bill. Boylan sided with Mamdani.
With Wilson’s victory, Menin’s allies are now within striking distance of overriding the schools bill veto. The Council currently stands at 31 votes of the 34 needed. Manhattan Councilmember Gale Brewer, who abstained, is viewed as a potential swing vote. Leadership could now flip just two “no” votes to secure an override, an easier task in the wake of Mamdani’s political setback in Boylan’s loss.
If successful, it would mark a significant legislative defeat for the mayor and strengthen Menin’s hand in the Council. It will also embolden critics within the Jewish community, already uneasy over Mamdani’s responses to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests.
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