OTC: Dr. Jessica Kirzane

OFF THE CUFF

Dr. Jessica Kirzane, Translator and Professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago

they think that you take something that’s already famous and already has an audience and you bring it to new audiences, or something where there is already curiosity — but you can create that curiosity. I guess the other thing that I try to teach my students about translation is that you have to keep your English language audience in mind. You want to be respectful to the Yiddish, but I think that your primary loyalty has to be to the comfort of your English language audience — making sure that the English is fluid, comfortable for people to read, and doesn’t feel stilted or like it’s pulling them back into Yiddish. Then it becomes hard work, and I don’t think that Miriam Karpilove was hard work to read in her own Yiddish — she should feel as much fun in English as she did in Yiddish.

How do you maintain a balance between preserving the original work in Yiddish and bringing that same original life to the work in English in connection with your focus on feminism?

In addition to translating the individual words, you also want to translate the mood that you get from the piece or the heart of the piece. To do that, I think you have to be a good writer in English. I sometimes say to people that I like translating because you get to do all of the fun parts of writing without having to make up the story — which is the thing I find hard to do. You get to think about words and phrases, how to make things sound right, and get into the nuts and bolts of writing. Then I get to celebrate this other person and her wonderful work. I would never praise myself the way I praise Miriam Karpilove, and this gives me the opportunity to really promote something without feeling uncomfortable in doing that. It’s a collaborative thing, and maybe this is a feminist thing; it’s not just about me as an individual, but it’s my collaboration with Miriam Karpilove and all of these other women who are involved in translating women writers in this movement that we’re building. I get to be part of promoting all of that. interesting will start reading that. It’s a great way to plug into the global Yiddish community. It would be a great next step for people.

Diary of A Lonely Girl in particular, I think, really resonates with college students. It’s about a single woman who is living away from her family and dates a series of awful men who are trying to pressure her to have sex with them. I think there’s something really powerful about knowing that has always happened, that it’s not a new phenomenon, and that this is a woman who is extremely strong in her selfconviction — she won’t be trampled on or put up with that behavior. I hope that students will feel similarly and learn about how to be strong in those kinds of situations.

Could you tell me a little bit about your background?

Well, let’s see. I grew up in New Jersey and in Virginia, and also a little bit in England — my family moved a lot. I went to college at the University of Virginia, and I got a B.A. in English Literature and in Jewish Studies. I was working on American Jewish fiction. While I was there, the summer after my Junior year, I got an internship at the Yiddish Book Center which is in Amherst, M.A., so I went there on a summer program thinking, “I’ll learn a little bit about Yiddish — sounds interesting, maybe it will help me with my learning about American Jewish literature.” I kind of fell in love with the community there and the passion people had for Yiddish, so I kept on taking Yiddish after that. I came back to my university, they happened to have intermediate Yiddish at the time, so I took that. Then I went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a year, and I took Yiddish and Hebrew there. Then I went to grad school at Columbia where I got my Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies, and now I’m at the University of Chicago teaching Yiddish language.

What drew you to Oberlin College as a community for this talk?

I was invited by Shari Rabin — and I was really excited to get the invitation. This is the first time I’ve spoken in person about this book since March 2020. I was invited to speak in a class this morning, and I was in a room with people who had read the book before, and I’ve never had that happen before. It was really cool.

Dr. Jessica Kirzane

Jeramie Robinson

Last Friday, Dr. Jessica Kirzane, a translator and professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago and editorin-chief of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, delivered a talk titled “Translating Yiddish Feminism at Oberlin College.” Dr. Kirzane discussed her translations of Miriam Karpilove’s works Judith and Diary of A Lonely Girl and spoke about her own work in connection with feminism as she strives to recover the voices of women in Yiddish literature. This talk was part of a series of events commemorating 50 years of Jewish Studies at Oberlin.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity and was conducted prior to the lecture.

How did you arrive at studying the connection between Judaism and feminism?

I guess I’ve always been interested in feminism, and I was always interested in women’s writing and women’s voices. Even as a kid, I used to read this series called Childhood of Famous Americans, which had these biographies for sevenyear-olds, and I only read the girls. So I’ve always been interested in women’s lives and biographies, but I didn’t connect that to my study of Yiddish in grad school, in what I was doing. Looking back on it, I think it’s because I wasn’t presented with very many women writers, and I understood that there was an assumption that there weren’t a lot of women writing in Yiddish among some of my professors and the scholarship. I sort of assumed that was what existed in the world.

Then I was researching a footnote for my dissertation, and one of my advisors suggested I should have a robust footnote about the idea of “free love” — an ideology that was espoused by radical leftists saying that love shouldn’t be bound by institutions like religion or government. I didn’t know very much about it, so I just typed the term into the Yiddish Book Center, and Diary of A Lonely Girl popped up as the second hit. I started reading it, and I was kind of surprised and delighted because it was something I had never thought existed. It sounded a lot like me. It was funny and about a woman’s life, so I started translating it. I started at a very lucky moment when there was this slowly growing momentum around publishing women writers, and I’ve sort of become part of this world of Yiddish translators who are working specifically on women who wrote in Yiddish. In the past five years, there have been multiple volumes that have come out all at once, so it feels like we’re in this watershed moment where it’s impossible to have a syllabus on Yiddish literature in America without including a woman.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Kirzane

As someone who works closely with students, translating Yiddish literature — specifically works written by women — what do you find is one important piece of knowledge to approach this topic with?

When people think about translators,

Is there anything you hope that the Oberlin community will take away from the work you’re sharing here?

In addition to translating, I am the editor-in-chief of an online journal called In geveb. It’s free and it’s online, so I hope that people who find this

Multicultural Visit Program Hosts More Than 70 Students in First Regular Session Since 2020

Continued from page 1

Many MVP attendees have applied Early Decision and been accepted in recent years. These students state that it was the community and diversity that encouraged them and strengthened the appeal to attend.

“MVP was the biggest part of me coming to Oberlin, especially because I didn’t know what Oberlin was until a counselor here told me to apply for MVP,” Cyril Amanfo, OC ’22, an Admissions counselor, said. “I met people who I still know now. I saw everything that Oberlin really had to offer in less than 72 hours. So it was really the biggest part of why I’m here now.”

Each prospective student was paired with one of 30 student ambassadors, giving them a chance to explore the campus with one of their future classmates, as well as ask their hosts questions about the Oberlin experience.

At the end of the program, prospective students can speak with the Admissions Office as well as ask questions to current students. After the weekend is over, MVP participants are sent a survey asking them to detail their experience.

“I really enjoyed Oberlin,” prospective student Toni J. Dismuke, who hails from Atlanta, said. “Since it is in Ohio, [I] thought it was gonna be a very quiet, very small town. I thought that the days were gonna be empty, and you’re just gonna sit in the dorms, but there’s something happening every five minutes. Like when we first got here, there was a parade going on. They drew us in, and we danced in the middle of this circle. It was just something to do, and it wasn’t performative. These events were happening with or without us. And it’s just the fact that they’re very open and that people were doing things for them. It’s not a show, this is how it is.”

There are several MVP programs starting back up this year, and College students can expect another round of prospective students on campus in the coming weeks.

“This is one of the most important programs to me that we put on college-wide because I know it got students like myself here,” Amanfo said. “It puts up an opportunity for students who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity. And that’s just really special to be part of that team now and watch students have that same opportunity.”

OPiniOnS

November 4, 2022 Established 1874

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Volume 152, Number 7

State Ballot Issues 1, 2 Address NonProblems, Should Be Voted Against

To the Editor:

Neither party is talking about the statewide ballot issues. Issue 1 and Issue 2. I repeat, statewide.

So what’s the story? As far as I can tell, the Republican-majority legislature voted to put them on the ballot. They didn’t pass them as legislation. These legislators are asking you — quietly — to make them amendments to our state constitution, only removable by another statewide vote.

Issues 1 and 2 are not grassroots proposals or initiatives because they are for non-problems — dare I say, fake problems.

We already have a bail system, judges already use their judgment about public safety, and people are pushing for bail reform. So Issue 1, to require that judges consider public safety — which they already do — is not respecting judges. Further, it also takes power from the Ohio Supreme Court and gives it to the legislature to set bail considerations. It could further punish innocent people with jail time. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Policy Counsel Patrick Higgins called this “guilty until proven wealthy.”

We also already have a voting system which requires citizenship to vote in judicial, state, and federal elections. Sometimes local entities, such as school boards and city councils, want non-citizens or not-yet-citizens to participate in local elections. Only one locality in Ohio, Yellow Springs, has done this so far. (Eleven municipalities in Maryland and two in Vermont allow non-citizens voting in local elections.) Issue 2 would ban local entities from allowing their non-citizens to vote in local elections. So this too addresses a non-problem.

Perhaps political operatives hope that anti-non-citizen language will motivate some Republican voters to vote. In a revealing piece in GQ Magazine in July 2019, Jay Willis concluded that this effort across various states “has less to do with real-world election security concerns than it does with facilitating Republican wins at the ballot box.”

“Issue 1 has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with policy,” ACLU Ohio Policy Director Jocelyn Rosnick said.

I don’t actually know what motivated these ballot proposals. I just know they’re unnecessary and that they limit our ability to make more finely-tuned policies. Please vote against sneaky Issues 1 and 2.

Aliza Weidenbaum Oberlin resident

News

City Partnership With LCCC Pilots Equity Planning Process

My thanks to the Review for Ava Miller’s Oct. 28 article on the City of Oberlin’s new partnership with Lorain County Community College (“City Partners with Lorain County Community College to Provide Industry Certificates to Residents”). As the article notes, this workforce development initiative will allow Oberlin residents with financial need to complete LCCC FastTrack programs, which link directly to high-demand jobs available in the county, at no cost to them in terms of tuition and fees.

The LCCC partnership is the first major initiative that has resulted from the City’s social equity planning process. The City will soon be hiring a social equity coordinator, who will work to move forward in other areas of the social equity plan including housing, health, mental health, police relationships, economic opportunity, government, justice, transportation, food empowerment, sustainability, and recreation. I am especially hopeful that the City will be able to have a significant impact with affordable housing. The City is also working with Cleveland’s Center for Community Solutions to develop detailed data on social equity disparities in Oberlin and to survey residents about various questions related to social equity.

All of this positions Oberlin well to make significant progress in improving social equity in our City.

Ray English Director of Libraries Emeritus Member of Oberlin City Council

Office of Financial Aid Advises Next Steps on Securing BidenHarris Administration’s Student Loan Debt Relief Funds

Ava Miller

Senior Staff Writer

On Aug. 24 this year, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced that they would provide targeted student loan debt relief to those fiscally impacted by the pandemic. The U.S. Department of Education would provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 or if their household income totals less than $250,000.

According to Michele Kosboth, the College’s director of financial aid, this program is available to currently enrolled Oberlin College students, alumni, and College employees.

“This includes people who have been in repayment as well as those who have yet to begin repayment, but have borrowed Federal Student Loans prior to June 30, 2022, and which are currently held by the federal government,” Kosboth wrote in an email to the Review.

This program comes at a time when the total cost for four-year colleges is increasing. The White House noted in a press release that the total cost of a four-year college education has almost tripled, even when inflation is taken into account.

“Federal support has not kept up,” the statement said. “Pell Grants once covered nearly 80 percent of the cost of a four-year public college degree for students from working families, but now only cover a third.”

A borrower’s relief is capped at the amount of their outstanding debt.

For example, a borrower with $15,000 of outstanding debt can only receive $15,000 even if they would otherwise be eligible for $20,000 of relief.

Many borrowers will be able to receive relief without applying because income data is already available to the U.S. Department of Education. For borrowers whose income data the U.S. Department of Education doesn’t have, the Administration has launched a simple application. The application does not require borrowers to upload any documentation.

“The Biden administration encourages everyone who is eligible to apply, but there are 8 million people for whom they have data who will get relief without applying, unless they opt out,” Kosboth wrote.

Due to a federal court order, applications are still being accepted, but loan discharge is currently suspended. While the Biden administration cannot currently issue debt relief, it can proceed with reviewing applications and preparing to transfer them to loan servicers.

College second-year Natalie Levine believes that the program is a good beginning but further action is needed.

“I think this is a step in the right direction, but there’s definitely more that should be done to support those who are struggling to access education,” Levine said.

Borrowers are advised to apply by mid-November in order to receive relief before the expiration of the current repayment pause on Dec. 31. This applies to borrowers who were previously in repayment. To apply, go to https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief/ application.