Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish Lesbian author, academic and activist.
Background
Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941 and was 2 years old during the "varshever geto oyfshtand", (Yiddish for "the Warsaw ghetto uprising"). Her father, Michał Klepfisz, a member of "der algemeynernyidisher arbeter bund", (the Jewish Labour Bund), was killed on the second day of the uprising. Klepfisz escaped with her mother to the Polish countryside where they survived the Second World War by hiding and concealing their Jewish identities, aided by Polish peasants.
Irena and her mother moved to the United States in 1949.
Education
Klepfisz attended City College of New York, and studied with distinguished Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich, a founder of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Klepfisz graduated City College of New York with honors in English and Yiddish.
In 1963, she attended the University of Chicago to do graduate work in English Literature. Irena Klepfisz received a Doctor of Philosophy in English in 1970.
She currently teaches at Barnard College.
Career
After the war, the remaining family moved briefly to Łódź before moving to Sweden in 1946. Today Klepfisz is known as a, but her מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally "mother tongue") was Polish. As a child she also learned Swedish.
She began to learn Yiddish in Łódź in elementary school after the Second World War.
She learned English after emigrating to the United States. In The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women"s Anthology, which she co-edited with Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz describes the experience, up to age 16 or 17, of having "no language in which I was completely rooted.
Irena is well known for her translations of Yiddish poets Kadya Molodowsky, and Fradl Shtok Klepfisz has worked as an activist in feminist, lesbian, and secular Jewish communities. Irena Klepfisz has taught English, Yiddish, and Women"s Studies.
She currently teaches at Barnard in New York city.
Membership
Along with Nancy Bereano, Evelyn T. Beck, Bernice Mennis, Adrienne Rich, and Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Irena Klepfisz was a member of Di Vilde Chayes (English: The Wild Beasts), A Jewish feminist group that examined and responded to political issues in the Middle East, as well as to antisemitism.
