Schaechter-Viswanath, Gitl
1958-
An editor and a poet, she was born in New York, a daughter of the linguist Mordkhe Schaechter. She studied at the Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary.
She debuted in print with poems in the columns of:
Yugntruf (Call to Youth) and
Afn Shvel (At the Threshold).
She edited:
Yugntruf,
Afn Shvel, and
YIVO-Bleter (YIVO Monthly Bulletin).
She contributed to:
the bilingual (Yiddish-English) anthology of contemporary Yiddish poetry, Trot bay Trot (Step by Step) (Macerata: Verbarium/Quodlibet, 2009), 233 pp.;
A Ring, di Antologye fun der Yidisher Poezye inem Nokhn-Khurbn-Dor (A Circle, Anthology of Yiddish Poetry in the Post-Holocaust Generation) (Tel Aviv, 2017), 169 pp.; and
the anthology of Yiddish women poets in Polish translation, Mayn Vilde Tsig (My Wild Goat) (Kraków, 2023).
She compiled (together with Paul Glasser [Hershl Glezer]) the monumental
Arumnemendik English-Yidish Verterbukh (Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary), based on the lexical research of Mordkhe Schaechter (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2016), 826 pp.; 2nd edition 2021, 864 pp.
This dictionary is also online, where it's updated continuously.
She is the chair of the executive board of the Yidish-Lige (Yiddish League).
She lives in Teaneck, New Jersey (2025).
Her poetry collection is entitled:
Plutsemdiker Regn (Sudden Rain), with a parallel English translation (Tel Aviv: Yisroel-Bukh, 2003), 93 pp.