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Kadya Molodowsky  (May 10, 1894-March 23, 1975), claimed by some to be the first international Yiddish poet , was one of the most widely recognized Yiddish poets of the twentieth century. She was a distinguished female writer in a field dominated by men, with six major published poetry collections to her credit prior to her death. Eventually, Molodowsky became editor and founder of two internationally influential literary journals: Svive (Milieu) and Heym (Home). Near the end of her life she was honored as one of the few recipients of the Itsik Manger Prize for Yiddish letters (1971), an Israeli award named after the modernist Yiddish poet. Her surviving corpus of writing includes poetry and literature within her popular subjects of working class Jewish women, Yiddishism and Zionism, as well as an extensive collection of Yiddish poetry for young people.

Early Life and Education
Molodowsky was born into the home of her father, a teacher in the local Jewish schools, or kheyder, and a mother, who was a local entrepreneur, in the Polish town of Bereza Kartuska in 1894. Her education was extensive, due to her father's insistence on teaching her with tutors in Russian and Hebrew and her grandmother in Yiddish. With only her informal home school training, she passed her high school exams at seventeen and immediately began tutoring students. Eventually, she would study more formally in Hebrew education courses with _________

Marriage and Early Travel
Trapped in Kiev following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Kadye would eventually meet a young student in the Ukraine town, Simche Lev, whom she would marry by 1921.

America and Israel
The second forty years of Molodowsky's life were her most productive as a published author, due to her relocation to a growing world center of Yiddish publishing, New York City. Except for a four year residency in Israel (1948-1952) New York would remain the home of Kadye and Simche until Simche's death in 1974.

The move to America began with an invitation in 1935 by the editor of Farlag Matones in New York, Lipe Lehrer, which resulted in Molowdowsky traveling to America for the first time. Farlag Matones was the publishing house of the Sholem Aleichem Folk-Institut, which published a Molodowsky collection of short stories in 1957. But on her first arrival, without Simche, Kadye chose to stay in New York among her Yiddish literary supporters rather than travel to Philadelphia and stay with her sisters and father, who had immigrated years before. After unsuccessful attempts to obtain a visa in Warsaw, Simche persevered until he was rewarded with papers to join Kadye in New York in 1938.

In New York, Kadye continued to edit her journals while Simche continued his scholarly work, writing Jewish histories, as well as working as a Yiddish topographer for printers in the city.

A Teacher and Poet for Young People
Molodwsky taught young people as a tutor or a certified teacher from the age of seventeen until the end of her life. Because of the historical period of her teaching career—spanning two world wars (1914-19; 1939-1945), the Bolshevik revolution (1917) and the establishment of Israel (1948)—she moved her residence constantly throughout Eastern Europe, America and Israel. But during that time, she managed to teach in her hometown of Bereza (1911), then on to Warsaw Odessa (1916), Kiev, Warsaw (1921-1935), Brest-Litovsk (1923), Tel-Aviv (1948-1952) and New York City(1935-48; 1952-1975).

Molodowsky never had children of her own but throughout her life, she created poetry for young people. For over 40 years she found many publishers who would continue to publish new editions of her growing collection in every continent where Yiddish was published. Beginning in 1931, she took her years of classroom experience as a teacher and began to write poetry for young people in a new way. Where the greats of Yiddish literature—Mendele Moykher Sforim, Isaac Leib Peretz and Sholem Aleichem—had used children as loving, comic, and many times sentimental subjects in their work, Molodowsky used her observations and experience in the classroom to create poetry for young people from their perspective. With magical washtubs that did the work for you (A mayse mit a balya from Mayselekh, 1931), blue parasols that brightened the ghetto (Olke from Mayselekh, 1931), and marzipan for everyone (Martsipanes from Afn barg, 1938), she made Yiddish poetry accessible to the aspirations and developmental needs of young people challenged by a difficult, modern world. Modern reviewers noted that the Hebrew translations of her poetry were so influential in Israel, that young people were surprised to find out the author of the classic poems of their youth was, in fact, a Yiddish poet.

A Poet for Jewish Working Women
Beginning with her first published collection of poems in 1927, Kheshvendike nekht [Nights of Heshvan], Molodowsky uses images from the fall

Literary Ambitions and Colleagues
Molodowsky would never had been able to write as prolifically as she did, be published as much as she did or live the life of a writer as she did without her ambition and the support of her literary friends. From her beginning in Warsaw until the end of her life, she was always drawn to the community of other writers. These include Yiddish greats, such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Itsik Manger, Rokhl Korn,

Scholarship About Molodowsky
began with the respectable traditions of Yiddish writers and brought accessibility to all young people, regardless of their experiences in or out of the classrooms. This is possibly because of the rise of secular Yiddish schools, a movement which began in Poland, and for which, Molodowsky created a series of poems which went far beyond the expected  to modern readers of Yiddish poetry, has been in the classroom for young children. Molodowsky was one of the first poets to apply modern literary technique as an experienced classroom teacher to poetry for children. The results became classics wherever Yiddish poetry was enjoyed. She also participated in almost every major Yiddish literary movement during her lifetime, spanning the Russian symbolists, the Yiddish modernists,

To this day, she is one of the first poets to write poetry for children from the experience of teaching in Yiddish day schools in Poland

Family Life

Poetry

 * Kheshvendike nekht: lider. Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1927.
 * Dzshike gas. Warsaw: Literarishe Bleter, 1933, 1936.
 * Freydke. Warsaw: Literarishe Bleter, 1935, 1936.
 * In land fun mayn gebeyn: lider. Chicago: Farlag L. M. Shteyn, 1937.
 * Der melekh dovid aleyn Iz geblibn. New York: Farlag Papirene Brik, 1946.
 * In yerusalayim kumen malekhim. New York: Farlag Papirene Brik, 1952.
 * Likht fun dornboym: lider un poeme. Buenos Aires, Farlag Poaley Tsion Histadrut, 1965.
 * Shirei Yirushalayim. Hebrew translations by Mordehai Saber. Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1971.

Short Stories

 * A shtub mit zibn fentster. New York: Farlag Matones, 1957.

Novels

 * Fun lublin biz nyu-york: togbukh fun rivke zilberg. New York: Farlag Papirene Brik, 1942.
 * Baym toyer: roman fun dem lebn in yisroel. New York:CYCO, 1967.

Autobiography

 * “Mayn elterzeydns yerushe.” Svive (March 1965–April 1974). Serial autobiography.

Plays

 * Ale fentster tsu der zun: shpil in elef bilder. Warsaw, Literarishe Bleter, 1938.
 * Nokhn got fun midbar: drame. New York: Farlag Papirene Brik, 1949.
 * A hoyz oyf grand strit. New York, 1953.

Editor

 * Journals


 * Svive (Surroundings) New York bi-monthly from 1943–1944; 1955–1974.
 * Heym (Home) Tel-Aviv, 1948-1952.
 * Books


 * Lider fun khurbn: antologye, ed. Tel Aviv: Farlag I. L. Peretz, 1962.

Poetry for Young People

 * Mayselekh. Warsaw: Yidishe Shul Organizatsye in Poyln, 1931
 * Afn barg. New York: Yungvarg Bibliotek, 1938
 * Yidishe kinder: mayselekh. New York: Tsentral-Komitet fun di Yidishe Folks-Shuln in di Fareynikte Shtatn un Kanade, 1945.
 * Pithu et hasha’ar: shirei yeladim. Hebrew translations by Nathan Alterman, Fanya Bergshteyn, Yankev Fikhman, Lea Goldberg, Avraham Levinson, Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1945.
 * Martsepanes: mayselekh un lider far kinder. New York: Bildungs-Komitet fun Arbeter-Ring and Farlag CYCO, 1970.

Essays for Young People

 * Af di vegn fun tsion. New York: Pinchas Gingold Farlag of the National Committee of the Jewish Folk Schools, 1957.