Rachel (Rae) Dalven: An Accomplished Female Romaniote Historian, Translator, and Playwright

Abstract

Rachel Dalven was a Romaniote Jew, translator of modern Greek poetry, playwright, and historian of the Jews of Ioannina, Greece. She was an educated and well-traveled independent woman, who brought to the English-speaking audiences in the West the poets Cavafy, Ritsos, and Yosef Eliya as well as many female Greek poets. She visited the Jewish community of Ioannina several times in the 1930s, and wrote about the deportation and annihilation of the Jews from Ioannina in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was a cross between a Greek-speaking Romaniote Jew and a Sephardic Jew, both little-known subgroups within the Jewish minority. Residing in New York City, she benefited from being in a rich cultural hub with its connections and benefits in encouraging and enabling translation, poetry, theater, academic research, publishing, and travel grants.