“Letters” - A Short by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn - 1954 - Translated from Yiddish by Miranda Cooper -2020

“Letters” - A Short by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn - 1954 - Translated from Yiddish by Miranda Cooper 2020



Born 1905 in Novvoradomsk, Poland

Immigrated 1904 to Montreal, with her parents

Passes on in 1975 in Montreal

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn was a long time preformer in the Montreal Yiddish Theater.  Second to New York City, Montreal had a large number of Yiddish immigrants.  While merging with much success into Canadian society, they cherished their heritage.

In addition to acting, Hamer-Jacklyn was a very frequent contributor of short stories to Yiddish language periodicals.

On January 9 2019 I posted upon two Short Stories by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn included in The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman

In a Museum". 1954 - tranlated by Ida Wynberg

"She Found an Audience" 1954 - translated by Alisa Poskanger


I was very happy to find on The 2020  Digital Edition of Pakn Treger  from The Yiddish Book Center a story that can be read online, “Letters”.

You may read this story here.


“Letters” is set on a ship leaving from New York City to Rio de Janeiro.  A thirty six year old woman has accepted the invitation of an aunt to relocate in Brazil.  She carries with her letters dating back 18 years to very recently from a married man with whom she had a very long running relationship.  When they first meet he tells her he will soon divorce his wife and marry her.  Now she goes on deck trying to get up the nerve to throw the letters in the ocean.  Letters begin to come in from all over Europe as his business grows.  He always tells her how much he loves her and how his wife will not consent to a divorce.  As we read the letters we see he obviously has no plans to actually marry her.

The woman’s agony as she cannot stand to admit it has all been deception are very well developed in just a few pages.

I liked this story a lot.

Here is a sample:

“Nina leaned over the railing of the ship. Her outstretched hand, trembling as it clutched a small box, was extended toward the sea. Soon she would open her hand and the sea would swallow up all the letters that had brought her warmth, promised her happiness, for so many years. She used to call it her “sacred box,” and because of it she had given away the best years of her life; now it seemed tainted, deceitful. She could neither keep the letters with her nor part with them.
She had been between water and sky for twelve days. Almost every evening, when the sky above the endless ocean began to darken, Nina would come out to the deck and station herself by the railing. For the life of her, she could not bring herself to fling the letters overboard once and for all, to let them decompose on the ocean floor. Day after day, she would stay until nightfall and then bring the box back to her cabin.
She would read them over one more time, and tomorrow it would happen, she decided resolutely. She wanted to arrive in the unfamiliar place free of the nightmare that had held her captive for half her life. She had given eighteen of her thirty-six years to Jacob Waldman.”




Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn (1905–1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated to Canada in 1914. Captivated by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen. Retaining her love of Yiddish as well as her dramatic connection with the theatre, her short stories serialized in the Canadian Yiddish daily Der Keneder Adler, as well as in major literary journals, depict a wide range of subjects spanning shtetl life, Holocaust narratives, and women’s search for creative expression in America. Her collection of short stories, including Lebens un gestalten ( Lives and Portraits) and Shtamen un tsveygn ( Stumps and Branches), published in the 1940s and 1950s, were received with critical acclaim. From The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman


Miranda Cooper is a New York–based writer, editor, and literary translator. Her translations from Yiddish have been published in Jewish Currents and Pakn Treger, and her literary and cultural criticism has been published by Kirkus Reviews, Jewish Currents, Tablet, JTA, In geveb, Alma, the Jewish Book Council, and the Yiddish Book Center. She currently serves as an editor of In geveb and was a 2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fe

Sarah Hamar-Jacklyn - Two Short Stories by one of the stars of The Canadian Yiddish Stage

Sarah Hamar-Jacklyn - Two Short Stories by one of the stars of The Canadian Yiddish Stage

"In a Museum". 1954 - tranlated by Ida Wynberg

"She Found an Audience" 1954 - translated by Alisa Poskanger

Born 1905 in Novvoradomsk, Poland

Immigrated 1904 to Montreal, with her parents

Passes on in 1975 in Montreal

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn was a long time preformer in the Montreal Yiddish Theater.  Second to New York City, Montreal had a large number of Yiddish immigrants.  While merging with much success into Canadian society, they cherished their heritage.  

In addition to acting, Hamer-Jacklyn was a very frrquent contributor of short stories to Yiddish language periodicals.

Both of today's stories demonstrate the theatrical influence on her work.  

The longer story, "She Found an Audience" is narrated by an aspiring young writer named Sarah.  She is close friends with two other ambitious young women.  Dora, her group nick name is "Isodora", is studying to become an actor  and a dancer, Zina is striving to become a famous singer. We see Sarah and Zina making good advances.  Dora gets nowhere but finds an audience in a very unexpected venue

"In a Museum" is the story, many will find it overly smaltzy and predictable but it was fun to read.  The lead character is a young widow.  After her husband's best friend makes very unwanted advances she finds passion during a Museum visit.

There is a Holocaust related story by her in the anthology, I hope to post on it on Janusry 27, Internstional Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn (1905–1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated to Canada in 1914. Captivated by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen. Retaining her love of Yiddish as well as her dramatic connection with the theatre, her short stories serialized in the Canadian Yiddish daily Der Keneder Adler, as well as in major literary journals, depict a wide range of subjects spanning shtetl life, Holocaust narratives, and women’s search for creative expression in America. Her collection of short stories, including Lebens un gestalten ( Lives and Portraits) and Shtamen un tsveygn ( Stumps and Branches), published in the 1940s and 1950s, were received with critical acclaim. From The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman

The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman includes three stories by Sarah Hamer-Jackalyn, a first date anthology partially focusing on works authored by Yiddish immigrants to Canada.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hamer-jacklyn-sarah

A very good short bio on Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn from the Jewish Woman' Archive

“MY MOTHER’S DREAM”- A Short Story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn

“My Mother’s Dream” by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, translated from Yiddish by Frieda Forman and Ethel Raicus

In this story the author goes back to the family environment she, and most of her first readers, left forty plus years ago, a small shtetl in Eastern Europe.

In Eastern European Jewish families sons were much more valued than daughters.  A woman who gave birth to only girls was considered a failure in her wifely duties.  A son was needed to say memorial prayers when his father died.  The wife in this story is pregnant again, hoping after several daughters to have a son.  Having only daughters was a reflection on her husband’s character.  As the story opens, narrated by the oldest daughter, early teenage, the husband’s mother is paying a visit.  The wife tells her she has been having unusual pains and at suggestion of a neighbor went to see a male doctor.  The mother in Law blows up, saying it was a disgrace to visit a male doctor, especially as the neighbor who recommended him has abandoned her faith and most shockingly “no longer even keeps a kosher house”.

We see the wife progress with her pregnancy, her pains persist.  Everyone has suggestions based on old practices but she never sees a doctor again.

As few can read this story, I’m going to reveal the shocking close.  The mother bleeds to death after a miscarriage.  The emotional torment inflicted by this comes across very powerfully.

A good story.

SARAH HAMER-JACKLYN (1905 –1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland in 1905, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated with her parents to Canada in 1914 at the age of nine. She was educated in the public schools of Toronto and received private Jewish lessons. Captivated at an early age by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen, travelling with a troupe across North America. Hamer-Jacklyn made her writing debut in 1934 with the story, “A Shopgirl,” which was serialized in Dcr tog. Her work continued to be published in the Tsukunft, Yidisber kemfer, Kanader odler, Der forvcrts and other periodicals in North America. Her first book, Lcbns un geshtaltn [Lives and Portraits], Europe and in America. Hamer-Jacklyn’s writing was praised by the critics for its richly coloured terrain, full-blooded characters and fluent dialogue; she was attuned to the life around her, whether in the rootedness and intimacy of the shtetl or in the raw and bewildering world of immigrants. Author and critic Yankev Glatshteyn marvelled at HamerJacklyn’s capacity to capture, decades after her emigration, the spiritual climate, daily life and family portraits of the shtetl. Her use of local dialect and idiom and of folklore contributes not only to the authenticity and freshness of her stories but also to the preservation of the linguistic aspect of pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish life. The dramatic impact of Hamer-Jacklyn’s old world stories 

reflects her background in theatre; they are, at the same time, true childhood memoirs. Hamer-Jacklyn later lived in New York. Her marriage ended in divorce, and she raised her son alone. She died on February 9, 1975.

I read this in FOUND TREASURES STORIES BY YIDDISH WOMEN WRITERS EDITED BY FRIEDA FORMAN, ETHEL RAICUS, SARAH SILBERSTEIN SWARTZ AND MARGIE WOLFE, from where the above bio is taken

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