Three Translations with Four Questions by Rajzel Żychlińsky translated by Susan Cohen

Three Translations with Four Questions, a Poem, is a hybrid poem constructed from translations and responses: translations from Yiddish of three poems by Rajzel Żychlińsky (Snow, The Old White Hotel, and What Became Of), each followed by a poetic response called The Four Questions. Asking four questions is a traditional part of the Jewish Passover seder.

Rajzel Żychlińsky was born in Poland in 1910 and fled on the eve of World War II to the Soviet Union, where she and her husband had a son. After the war, in which her mother, sister, brother, and their children were murdered in concentration camps, she ultimately settled in New York. She died in California at the age of ninety. Although she spoke five languages, Żychlińsky chose to continue writing in Yiddish, publishing seven books and winning Israel’s Itzik Manger Prize. These poems are from The November Sun, published in 1977. Translated with the permission of Dr. Marek Kanter.
Susan Cohen’s third collection, Democracy of Fire (Broadstone Books; 2022) includes several poems about learning Yiddish. Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and many other publications, including the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. Her translations of Rajzel Żychlińsky have been published in Asymptote Journal, Los Angeles Review, and Women’s Voices for Change. She lives in Berkeley, California. www.susancohen-writer.com

18 April 2023