DINEH

Maze’s posthumous novel presents the beauty, poverty, and tragedy of Belarus during the First Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of a young Jewish girl.

Dineh was born in an impoverished region in Russia, now known as Belarus, and her family is one of only two Jewish households among many peasant families in the village of Ugli, although they have contact with Jewish families in surrounding communities. Her father, Sholem, owns an orchard and works the land, and he sells liquor from his cellar to tavern owners in nearby villages. With his wife, Peshe, he has five other children in addition to Dineh, and struggle is an everyday part of their lives. To make matters worse, the czar commands Sholem and other Jewish people to sell their land, either to the government or to people of the Russian Orthodox faith; two of Dineh’s siblings openly speak of socialism as revolution looms. Dineh’s wishes are simpler: to get an education like her brothers’ and to learn the Psalms, study the Talmud, and be able to read, write, tell stories, and recite prayers with the same lyricism as her father. However, Dineh’s fierce attachment to her home is ill-suited for a time of violent social change, and she’s forced to immigrate to America. This novel by Maze, who died in 1962, was posthumously edited by her confidant Shaffir and is skillfully translated from Yiddish by Taub. Its prose manages to be beautiful and biting yet straightforwardly plain at the same time: “impoverished Russian peasantry were rich in lyricism….They would pawn the last shirt in their closet and sing out and cry out their bitter fate.” The book is often digressive; for example, the narration tells of the many tragedies that cause a woman to cry herself blind and of the heartbreaking events that befall Dineh’s brother; however, these tangents don’t take away from the reading experience; on the contrary, they only sharpen the picture of the bygone era. (The novel’s table of contents promises translator notes and an appendix that were not available for review.)

A tragic, lovely, and important Yiddish novel in translation.