The Thirteenth Hour Poems by Rivka Basman Ben-Haim ilingual edition

 translated by Zelda Kahan Newman

Rivka Basman Ben Haim’s poems are witty and wise. Lyrical and personal, their length belies their depth. Rarely more than a page long, the poems often pack a punch. They are thought-provoking even as they sing. As a young teenager, the poet witnessed the Nazi destruction of her Jewish world. She tells the reader about this loss often, but never directly.

“Rivka Basman Ben-Haim is one of the very last representatives of the golden age of Yiddish poetry; I am delighted that there will now be a bilingual Yiddish-English edition of her selected poems. Zelda Kahan Newman’s translations are very fine and sensitive. Thanks to Mayapple Press for making this available.”—Yitskhok Niborski

“Rivka Basman Ben-Haim masterfully conveys entire worlds through the elegant, thoughtful, profound, and devastating poetic windows which she skillfully opens to her readers. Kudos to Zelda Kahan Newman for bringing these gems to both Yiddish speakers and non-Yiddish speakers with keen insight and sensitivity.”—Motl Didner, Associate Artistic Director, The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene

Translator Zelda Kahan Newman, who formerly held the post of Judaic Studies at Lehman College/CUNY, is a linguist whose specialty is Yiddish, the language and its culture. For more than two decades, she has translated the Yiddish poetry of the Israeli poet, Rivka Basman Ben-Haim. She presently lives in Beer Sheva, Israel.