BLUME LEMPEL

BLUME LEMPEL (May 13, 1910-October 20, 1999)

            She was born in Khorostkov (Khorostkiv), eastern Galicia.  She attended religious elementary school and a Hebrew public school.  In 1929 she left for Paris, and in 1939 settled in New York.  She debuted in print on December 2, 1943 with a story (writing under the pen name Rokhl Halpern) in Tog (Day) in New York.  Her novel Tsvishn tsvey veltn (Between two worlds) appeared in Morgn frayhayt (Morning freedom) in 1947.  She also placed work in: Tsukunft (Future) in 1970, Zayn (To be), and Undzer eygn vort (Our own word) in New York; Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) in 1971 in Tel Aviv; and Kheshbn (The score) in Los Angeles.  In book form: A rege fun emes (A moment of truth) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1981), 253 pp.; Balade fun a kholem (Ballad of a dream), a prose collection (Tel Aviv: Yisroel bukh, 1986), 254 pp.  “Her prose is always penetrated,” noted A. Shpigelblat, “into the depths of its soul, and an incessant psychoanalyzing of a thoroughly Freudian bent, a pushing away of the curtains and exposing of what is concealed.”  She received the 1985 Atran Prize.  She died in New York.

Sources: A. Shpigelblat, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) (1981); Y. Berkman, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (June 5, 1981); Y. A. Rontsh, in Morgn frayhayt (New York) (June 21, 1981)

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 350-51, 546.