Rachel Mines
Yiddish translator
Rachel is a Yiddish translator and educator based in Vancouver, Canada. She began translating Yiddish while teaching at Langara College, Vancouver, and in 2016 she was accepted into the Yiddish Book Center’s Translation Fellowship Program. Her translation project, The Rivals and Other Stories by Jonah Rosenfeld, was published in 2020 by Syracuse University Press. A companion volume, A Plague of Cholera and Other Stories by Jonah Rosenfeld, followed in 2024.
Watch a book trailer for The Rivals.
Read a review of The Rivals from the Association of Jewish Libraries (scroll to p. 43).
The Rivals rates a mention in TLS: The Times Literary Supplement!
Translation Projects
Who is Jonah Rosenfeld?
Jonah Rosenfeld is probably the greatest Yiddish writer you’ve never heard of. He was born around 1880 in Staryi Chortoryisk, Ukraine and endured a traumatic childhood that cast its tragic shadow over his life and art. He was born into abject poverty. His parents died in a cholera epidemic when he was twelve, and he spent his youth as an apprentice to a cruel boss who brutalized and tormented him mercilessly. A self-taught writer with no secular education, Rosenfeld began publishing his short fiction in 1904 and quickly rose to fame. Sadly, since only a few of his stories were translated from Yiddish, he was all but forgotten after his death in New York in 1944.
Rosenfeld’s work is marked by darkness and psychological realism. His characters struggle to survive, spiritually and physically, in their hostile worlds. Common themes are alienation, loneliness, loss of tradition, culture clash, and family dysfunction: themes that are just as relevant today as when the stories were written. As one reviewer, Rokhl Kafrissen, wrote in Tablet Magazine, “Rosenfeld’s works are not for the faint-hearted. … But for all their darkness, I can easily imagine readers powerfully connecting with them, relieved to see their own hidden pains reflected and honored.”
Read a selection of Rachel’s translations of Jonah Rosenfeld’s stories!
"The Inheritance"
poses this question: what is the legacy that fathers owe their children? The answer may surprise you.
"In a Crowded Place"
tells the story of a daydreaming woman on a train. Who is the handsome young man who sits down beside her, and how can she strike up a conversation with him?
"Call it Destiny"
Zelda has married a soldier who has been sent to the front lines. She doesn’t love him – so what does she want from the marriage?
"Cholera"
In this series of excerpts from a longer story, cholera has come to the town of Chartoryisk, and as a result, social divisions between the citizens are laid bare.
More of Rachel’s Translations
As well as the short fiction of Jonah Rosenfeld, Rachel has translated a selection of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer for a volume entitled In the World of Chaos: Early Writings, forthcoming from Academic Studies Press. Her translation in Tablet Magazine of a “lost chapter” from Singer’s Enemies: A Love Story features Nancy Isabelle, an androgynous, delightfully quirky, and generous young woman whose character was eliminated from the English version of the novel.
Rachel is currently working on a new collection of short fiction by Lithuanian/New York author Rachel Luria. “The Butterfly” is the story of a young woman whose husband saves a butterfly from drowning in the expectation she will set it free.
Other projects
In her spare time, Rachel researches, writes, and lectures about Jewish life in Lithuania before the Holocaust. Shtetl Shkud is a site devoted to the prewar Jewish community of Skuodas, Lithuania. Rachel has Lithuanian citizenship and is a member of the Lithuanian Community of British Columbia.