Boris Sandler  (באָריס סאַנדלער)
Author

Poems

Original

Übersetzung

די נעכט אין ירושלים yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

אויפֿן וועג קיין סדום yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

אַ רעטעניש פֿון שולמית yiddish

הענדעם־פּענדעם yiddish

די אָנגעשראָקענע זעברע yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

מחשבֿות אין דער צײַט פֿון וועלט־דערוואַרעמונג yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

דער טעם פֿון מײַן מאַמעס מילך yiddish

Translations: de en

to poem

קעשענעס yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

געאָגראַפֿיע־לימוד yiddish

Translations: de

to poem

Boris Sandler  באָריס סאַנדלער
Author

photo © gezett.de
* 06.01.1950, Bălți, Moldova
lives in: New York City, United States

Boris Sandler was born in 1950 in Bălți, Bessarabia (Yiddish: Beltz, today: Moldova), where he was raised among Holocaust survivors and their children in a Yiddish-speaking milieu.
Sandler began studying music at the age of five, and worked as a professional violinist for a decade, including seven years playing with the Moldovan State Orchestra.
As part of a group of Yiddish and other minority-language writers he studied literature at the Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow and in 1981 Sandler was among the first cohort of Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature at the graduate level in the USSR since Stalin's purge of Yiddish writers and educational institutions in the late 1940s.

 photo © gezett.de
He made his literary debut that same year in the USSR's state-sponsored Yiddish literary journal Sovetish Heymland, where he would later serve on the journal's editorial board. His first collection of short fiction, Stairway to a Miracle, was published in 1986.

In 1989 Sandler became the host and lead producer of the first regularly-appearing Yiddish-language television show On the Jewish Street, which aired for several years on Moldovan television.

Sandler moved to Israel in 1992, where he soon became active in the local community of Yiddish writers and journalists, contributing articles to the Yiddish press, working in a publishing house and at Hebrew University where he assisted in the cataloging of interwar Yiddish periodicals.

In addition to his work as the executive director of Leivick House Publishing, Sandler published a children's magazine Kind un Keyt. During this period three of Sandler's books appeared in Israel; the novella Case Number 5390 (1992) and the short story collections The Old Well (1994) and Gates (1997).

In 1998 Sandler moved to New York to begin working at the Yiddish edition of The Forward. After the unexpected death of editor-in-chief Mordechai Strigler several months later Sandler took over the newspaper, adding an international lineup of new contributors and training two generations of new Yiddish journalists. Additionally, Sandler oversaw the production of several thousand hours of The Forward's weekly Yiddish radio show, and produced a dozen CDs of Yiddish music and audio books, which were released under the aegis of The Forward. During this period several of Sandler's novels appeared as serials in the paper.

Besides his work as a writer and editor Sandler also produced a series of twelve documentary films about the lives of Yiddish writers. Most of these films, released between 2009 and 2016, were based on interviews conducted in the late 1990s, when the last generation of Yiddish writers who came of age before World War II were still active in Israel.

Sandler retired from the Yiddish Forward in 2016 after 18 years as editor-in-chief. He continues to publish his own fiction as well as the works of others in the online publication Yidish Branzhe, which he founded and edits.

Publications
  • Stairway to a Miracle

    [collection of short fiction]

    [Yiddish]

    Moscow: Sovietsky Pisatel Publishers, 1986

  • Stairway to a Miracle

    [collection of short fiction]

    [Russian translation]

    Moscow: Sovietsky Pisatel Publishers, 1988

  • Case Number 5390

    novella

    [Yiddish]

    Jerusalem: Y. L. Peretz Publishing, 1992

  • The Old Well

    collection of short stories

    [Yiddish]

    Jerusalem: Y. L. Peretz Publishing, 1994

  • Gates

    collection of short stories

    [Yiddish]

    Tel Aviv: H. Leivick Publishing, 1997

  • Глина и плоть

    [Russian Translation of Gates]

    Kishinev: Pontos Publishing, 2003

  • Die grunen Apfel des Paradieses

    [German Translation of Gates]

    Berlin: Ed. Dodo Publishing, 2003

  • When the Golem Closed His Eyes

    [Yiddish]

    Tel Aviv: H. Leivick Publishing, 2004

  • Nisht geshtoygn, nisht gefloygn

    Yiddish Rhyming Couplets for Children

    New York: Ed. Kind-un-Keyt, 2007

  • Red Shoes for Rachel

    [Yiddish]

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2008

  • In Klangennets fun Netsekh

    Yiddish Poems

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2010

  • Hidden Saints I Recall

    [Yiddish]

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2010

  • Stones Don’t Bear Witness

    [English Translation of When the Golem Closed His Eyes]

    Jersey City: KTAV Publishing, 2011

  • Green Apples of Paradise

    [Russian Translation of Gates]

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2011

  • Keinemsdorf

    [Yiddish]

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2012

  • Apocrypha

    Yiddish Poems

    New York: Forverts Publishing, 2014

  • Express-36

    [Russian Translation of Hidden Saints I Recall]

    Moscow: Ed. Knizhniki, 2017

  • Red Shoes for Rachel

    [English Translation]

    Syracruse: Syracruse University Press, 2017

  • Helfand Eli un Kleptshk-Bebtshik

    [Yiddish and Russian Translation]

    Birobidzhan, 2018

Awards
  • 2002 Jacob Fichman Prize

  • 2005 Dovid Hofshtein Prize

  • 2010 J. I. Segal Prize

  • 2010 J. I. Segal Prize

Links