Lempel, Blume
May 13, 1907–October 20, 1999
She was born in Khorostkov (later Khorostkiv, Ukraine), eastern Galicia. She attended religious elementary school and a Hebrew public school. In 1929 she left for Paris, and in 1939 settled in New York.
She debuted in print on December 2, 1943 with a story (writing under the pen name Rokhl Halpern) in Tog (Day) in New York. Her novel Tsvishn Tsvey Veltn (Between Two Worlds) was serialized in Morgn Frayhayt (Morning Freedom) in 1947 and published in book form as Storm Over Paris (New York: Philosophical Library) in 1954. Between 1968 and 1993, her work appeared in: Tsukunft (Future); Zayn (To Be); Undzer Eygn Vort (Our Own Word); Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain); Kheshbn (Reckoning); Yidishe Kultur (Yiddish Culture); Bay Zikh (On Our Own[?]; Algemayner Zhurnal (Universal Journal [?]); and Dorem Afrike (South Africa).
Translations into English appeared in Midstream; Bridges; and in the anthology Found Treasures (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1994).
In book form: A Rege fun Emes (A Moment of Truth) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1981), 253 pp.; Balade fun a Kholem (Ballad of a Dream)(Tel Aviv: Yisroel Bukh, 1986), 254 pp.
“Her prose is always penetrating,” noted A. Shpigelblat, “into the depths of her own soul and into the essence of things around her, with an incessant psychoanalyzing of a thoroughly Freudian bent, a parting of the veil and an exposing of what is hidden."
She received the 1981 Jeniavski Prize awarded by YKUF; the 1983 J.I. Segal Prize; the 1985 Atran Prize; and the 1989 Zhitlowsky Prize.
A collection of her short stories, translated into English by Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, was published as Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories (Mandel Vilar Press and Dryad Press, 2016) .
She died in Long Beach, New York.
Sources: A. Shpigelblat, in Di Goldene Keyt (Tel Aviv) (1981); Y. Berkman, in Letste Nayes (Tel Aviv) (June 5, 1981); Y. A. Rontsh, in Morgn Frayhayt (New York) (June 21, 1981)