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• 172 A Home for Yiddish Writers When someone, at some future time, writes the history of Yiddish literature in America, he will again and again have to mention the name of Dr. Yekhiel Kling. And that is because he often appears in the memoirs of Yiddish writers. His apartment was always a gathering place for writers . And most of the poets, novelists, and essayists who made a name for themselves in the past forty years repeatedly found themselves there. A group of writers felt so much at home in his apartment, warm and intimate, as if they were in their own homes. I, too, belonged to that group. And to this day, there rises in me a loving warmth when I remember those Saturday and Sunday evenings and the wonderful hours that I spent alone or with friends in his apartment. At other homes you decided beforehand to go there; at Dr. Kling’s, you simply dropped in and were always welcome. Such a home pulls you in. And I don’t know any other home that pulled one in like Dr. Kling’s. It’s no wonder it was, for so long, a home and a center for so many Yiddish writers, musicians, and painters. It is close to forty years since I crossed the threshold of his apartment for the first time. It was around this time of year: before Sukes or on one of the intermediate days. The leaves on the trees were already changing color, but the days were still hot. I also spent such a hot afternoon with David Ignatoff in his room on Washington Avenue, which was the cradle, so to speak, of Di Yunge. There, the second Literatur anthology came to an end. There, the Shriftn anthologies were born. And there, for a long time every Sunday afternoon, almost everyone who was involved with that anthology came together. I have already, on other occasions, written about those Sunday afternoons and what they meant for everyone who came of age in that wonderful springtime of our Yiddish literature. The A Home for Yiddish Writers | 173 future historian will also have to speak of them, but the afternoon that I am going to talk about was not a Sunday at all, but a humble weekday. Most of those who are today well-established writers were then beginners who lived from labor such as shop work. One wrote only in the hours that one was free from work, or that one stole from work. Only those who were still free could steal a lot. I was then already married and the father of two children. How I could have escaped from the shop in the middle of work that day, I don’t remember. I also don’t remember how Ignatoff and I spent that whole afternoon in his room. I can, however, not forget the half hour in the evening that we later spent on the hill in Claremont Park, which was not far from Ignatoff’s room, and where, when we left the park at the exit, there loomed before us two purple ash trees with their fat gray trunks like the feet of elephants and their shiny, damp, thick leaves that changed their colors three times in one season and were then quite red. And more than anything, I cannot forget how Ignatoff led me out of the park onto Bathgate Avenue and 164 Street and practically dragged me to the home of Dr. Kling. In my youth I was shy. In a strange apartment I don’t feel entirely comfortable even now, when I am old. Then, I struggled when someone wanted me to meet strangers or to take me to a home where I had not been before. So Ignatoff practically had to drag me to Dr. Kling’s that evening. But I felt so much at home when I got there, as if I was an old member of the household, even though Dr. Kling and his dear Bertha did not try to make me feel at home. And perhaps it was just because of that, because they didn’t try. Because it was natural for them to welcome new people as if they were old acquaintances. I had then certainly not published more than twenty poems and some stories. And I don’t know if Dr. Kling or his dear wife had heard of me. But the way they invited me to sit down, the way the doctor immediately...

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