This image is the cover for the book Dance of the Demons

Dance of the Demons

A semi-autobiographical portrait of the original Yentl and “an important contribution to the vastly neglected genre of feminist Yiddish literature” (Booklist).

In this autobiographical novel—originally published in Yiddish as Der Sheydim Tanz in 1936—Esther Kreitman lovingly depicts a world replete with rabbis, yeshiva students, beggars, farmers, gangsters, seamstresses, and socialists as seen through the eyes of the girl who served as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s inspiration for the story “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy.”

Barred from the studies at which her idealistic rabbi father and precocious brother excel, Deborah revels in the books she hides behind the kitchen stove, her brief forays outside the household, and her clandestine attraction to a young Warsaw rebel. But her family confines and blunts her dreams, as they navigate the constraints of Jewish life in a world that tolerates, but does not approve, their presence.

Forced into an arranged marriage, Deborah runs away on the eve of World War into a world that would offer more than she ever dreamed . . .

This edition includes memorial pieces by Kreitman’s son and granddaughter.

Esther Singer Kreitman, Maurice Carr, Ilan Stavans

Esther Kreitman (1891-1954) was born in Bilgoray, Poland, and is the sister of renowned Yiddish writers Israel Joshua and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Raised in Warsaw and married in Antwerp, Kreitman and her family fled to London at the start of World War I. She is the author of two novels and a collection of short stories. Essayist, translator, and critic Maurice Carr (also known as Martin Lea) was born Morris Kreitman (1914-2003), son of Esther Singer Kreitman, in Antwerp, Belgium. He is best known for his much-anthologized collection Jewish Short Stories of Today, his translations of his family's writing, and his writing on his mother and uncle, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American and Latino cultures at Amherst College. From 2001 to 2006, he was the host of the syndicated PBS show Conversations with Ilan Stavans. His edited collections include Isaac Bashevis Singer and The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories. He is the author of On Borrowed Words and Resurrecting Hebrew. Anita Norich is an associate professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She teaches, lectures, and publishes on Yiddish language and literature, Jewish-American literature, and Holocaust literature. She is the author of The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer.

Feminist Press at CUNY