I am grateful to fate for this hour of grace: Children and Motherhood in the Life and Writings of Rosa Lebensbaum

Abstract

Anna Margolin's innovative poetry has attracted the attention and admiration of Yiddish cultural research centers and literary critics worldwide. However, Rosa Lebensbaum—the real woman behind this pseudonym—has remained hidden for many years under the shadow of her well-known public figure. A family archive, carefully preserved by Rosa Lebensbaum's granddaughter in Israel, now allows the attention to be turned from Anna to Rosa. Private correspondence between Lebensbaum and her family—her divorcé, author Moshe Stavsky, and their son—reveals contradictions and understandings that illuminate new aspects in the poet's writing, as well as in her life and the lives of those around her. Based on this newly presented personal material, this article explores two aspects in the context of the life and writing of Rosa Lebensbaum; the first is personal while the other is cultural-historical. There was, on the one hand, a national, social, and creative renewal inspired by the Zionist movement, encouraging Jews to return to the land of Israel and the Hebrew language; yet, on the other hand, an American Jewish attempt to preserve and maintain the Yiddish culture, the language of exile against which the Jewish Yishuv in pre-state Israel fought vigorously. This clash of culture and languages—its implications and the price that many Jews were required to pay in pre-state Israel and America—form an additional central topic in this research.