Fradl Shtok
American poet and writer
Fradl Shtok (Yiddish: פֿראַדעל שטאָק) (also Fradel Stock, 1888 – 1952?) was a Jewish-American Yiddish-language poet and writer, who immigrated to the United States from Galicia, Austria-Hungary as a teenager.
Quotes edit
- They played some sad melody that drifted in through the window keeping people awake half the night. Some sadness would then grip the heart so you wouldn't know what it was you wanted.
- "The Veil" translated from Yiddish in Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers (1994)
- "So what, a young boychik is better? Playing cards and wasting his time dencing. At least a stable man... So what if he's a little stingy. Vell, a person's got to have some kind of defect."
- Sisters translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- Gosi, on the other hand, was always a silent type, taciturn, stubborn. And while nobody blamed her, she didn't want to go to parties, always staying quietly at home, obstinately waiting for something.
- Sisters translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- Annie is an ignorant girl, who can barely sign her name. But even she can feel the music in her head.
- "A Cut", translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- One must be stubborn to achieve one's goals, to be nobody's fool.
- A Cut translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- His laughter is meant to hide the greed that has begun to glint in his eyes.
- A Fur Salesman, translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- the silence stood like an iron wall, unyielding; it lay upon them like a heap of stones.
- The First Patient, translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- Just in the past two days the cherry trees had become a riot of blossoms.
- In the Village, translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
- She took a quick, furtive look at him and felt her heart blushing.
- The Daredevil, translated from the Yiddish by Allison Schachter and Jordan D. Finkin in From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories (2021)
"The Shorn Head"" edit
Translated from Yiddish by Irena Klepfisz in The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology (1989)
- Hungry, she'd run to the cemetery and undam a river of tears.
- Esther was indeed a friend, but a friend is not as deeply rooted in one's heart as one's misery, as one's grief.
- People said: Sheyndl is right as the world. And so decent. But she: inside her heart cried. Every time she looked at her shaytele with the bangs in front, her heart would twinge. . .her head was already bound.
- Old age brings a person troubles. Troubles make a person-make her old and gray before her time. Already little by little and thirty years old.
Quotes about Fradl Shtok edit
- In modern Yiddish writing, the moral, spiritual, and emotional capital of generations of Jewish women was utilized by male and female writers alike...Female prose writers, such as Fradl Shtok, Esther Kreitman, Rokhl Korn, Kadia Molodowsky, and Khava Rosenfarb, also deepened the awareness and understanding of the feminine contribution to Jewish civilization.
- Emanuel Goldsmith Introduction to Songs to a Moonstruck Lady (2005)
- Though she commanded attention by being the first Yiddish poet to use the sonnet form, Fradel's primary energy seemed to have gone into fiction. Her immigration must have had severe consequences on her writing and she obviously experienced language conflicts: Erzeylungen (Stories) appeared in 1919 and then an English novel, For Musicians Only in 1927. Both received poor reviews. Erzeylungen was set in Eastern Europe and in America. Some stories, humorous and satiric, depict Jewish society at critical moments: "Der ershter ban" (The first train) in a small shtetl or "Der ershter patsyent" (The first patient) of a young dentist in America. Other stories are more somber and describe the conflict between inner longings and social (i.e. Jewish) norms. Trapped by social and religious mores, Fradel's characters often cloak their feelings in "appropriate" behavior.
- Irena Klepfisz in in The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology (1989)
- I turn to Fradel Schtok and know that another woman writer experienced similar conflicts over mame-loshn. I read her stories of the shtetl and America and see the two worlds between which she was caught...All these Jewish women-Julia, Nadia, Patti, Gina, Fradel, Kadia-are my ancestors. They are mayne bobes, mumes, shvester, my grandmothers, aunts, sisters. Mir darfn zikh bakenen. We need to become acquainted.
- Irena Klepfisz "Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in America" in Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes (1990)
