Kadya Molodowsky:
Poet of the Paper Bridge

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Molodowsky was born May 10, 1894, in Bereza Kartuska (Бяро'за-Карту'ская), a town in White Russia. She was the daughter of a traditional rebbe. Molodowsky learned the alphabet and basic prayers from her paternal grandmother, and also studied with her father at home and as part of his cheder classes. Her father also had her tutored in Russian and other secular subjects, enabling her to take the high school graduation exams. At 18, one year after passing her exams, Molodowsky earned her teaching certification.

Soon after becoming a teacher, Molodowsky met Yechiel Halperin, a Hebrew revivalist and pedagogue. Molodowsky joined Halperin’s workshop for teachers and taught in his schools over the next six years, helping to build the foundation for modern Jewish secular education.

During this period, Molodowsky traveled extensively, forced to move as Halperin’s schools were relocated as a result of the upheavals of the First World War. In her travels, Molodowsky witnessed extreme poverty and the unbearable work and living conditions endured by most Jews during the war. This experience informed Molodowsky’s work throughout her life. Eventually Molodowsky parted ways with Halperin and left the world of the Hebrew revivalists to join a very different movement.

Kiev after the Bolshevik revolution was a center of social and literary ferment. Yiddish was given the approval of the new Soviet government, and a vital avant-garde Yiddish literary group quickly formed. The “Kiev Group” included such figures as Dovid Hofshteyn, Der Nister, Leyb Kvitko and, the most renowned of the group, Dovid Bergelson. Molodowsky moved to Kiev in late 1917 and fell in with the young writers. Bergelson recognized her poetic talents and encouraged her to publish in the group’s journal Eygns (Our Own).

The intrepid Molodowsky moved to Warsaw in 1924, essentially moving from one literary center to another. Among the Warsaw luminaries were I.J. and Bashevis Singer, Peretz Markish, and Melech Ravitch. Molodowsky contributed to their journal Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages), arguably the most important Yiddish literary journal of the time, and published her first book of poems Nights of Heshvan (1927) to critical acclaim. The most famous of her poems published in this first volume is the cycle Women’s Poems, in which Molodowsky explores challenges faced by women in traditional Jewish culture.

It is also in Warsaw that Molodowsky began a job that would forever affect her life and her fame as a poet. Founded in the early 1920s as a response to Jewish cultural autonomy after Polish independence, the CYSZO (Central Yiddish School Organization) provided secular Jewish education in Yiddish. As many young Jews began to redefine their Jewish identity in relation to the modern world. some emerged as new kinds of nontraditional rebbes or rebeyim. Kadya Molodowsky, one of the first and most important of these new rebbes, was on the vanguard of Yiddish secular education.

While teaching at the CYSZO schools, Molodowsky felt the need for children’s poetry that uplifted and engaged her students, and she began writing her own. These poems were collected in her second book, Tales (1931). Tales represented Molodwosky’s attempt to provide her students with an imaginative escape from their mind-numbing poverty. Adult Yiddish readers throughout Eastern Europe and America were captivated, catapulting Molodowsky to fame.

Eventually the destitution of the Jewish population in Warsaw began to wear on Molodowsky and she moved again, this time to New York. She arrived in 1935 and was welcomed into the New York literary community. Her book The Land of My Bones, published in 1937, explores the emotional and psychological affect of her travels and her search for a physical and spiritual home.

Like many Yiddish poets in America, the news of Jewish fate in Europe during the Second World War brought about a major change in Molodowsky’s work. No longer preoccupied by the problems of poverty or “homelessness,” she began to consider the eternal questions of God and Jewish identity. Her famous poem “God of Mercy” reflects sharp disillusionment and anger in reaction to the Nazi genocide: “God of Mercy/Choose another people.” Her book King David Is All That Remains, which contained this poem, was published by Molodowsky’s own imprint, appropriately the Paper Bridge Publishing Company. Thus, despite her ambivalence, the theme of hope and redemption lay in the very paper her poetry was printed on.

Molodowsky also worked extensively as an editor and founded two major Yiddish journals, Svive (Surroundings) and Heym (Home). Surroundings was the longest running of the two, appearing in New York bi-monthly from 1941-1974. Home was a journal dedicated to the subject of pioneering women in Israel. Molodowsky moved to Israel in 1949, soon after Israeli independence, following her “paper bridge” to what she considered the spiritual home of the Jewish people. She wrote most of her only novel, At the Gate, during her tenure there. She returned to New York in 1956.

Molodowsky’s final book of poetry, The Light from the Thornbush, published in 1965, is filled with personal monologues similar to tkhines, Yiddish women’s petitionary prayers. She ends the book with a section titled “Jerusalem,” an homage to the end of Jewish exile and oppression. Even though Molodowsky spent the rest of her days in New York, the idea of redemption in the Jewish homeland became her spiritual and creative focus. In 1971, the State of Israel presented her with the Manger Prize for Yiddish Literature, the highest honor the yidishe medina, the Jewish Land, can give to a Yiddish writer.

Kadya Molodowsky died in a nursing home near her family in Philadelphia in 1975. Her legacy, her paper bridge, describes and embodies her love for her people and her own search for redemption.

— Aaron Rubinstein