Yiddish With
Yiddishkeit

Local writer publishes book in his mama loshen.

JULIE WIENER STAFF WRITER

aim Rozental's Oak Park
apartment doubles as a
Yiddish archive.
The 78-year-old immi-
grant from Ukraine has been writ-
ing for more than 50 years, and he
has the papers to prove it. The
shelves and cabinets overflow with
his newspaper and magazine clips
from Yiddish publications all over
the world. Plus, as a writer who
has never touched a computer,
Rozental has a lot of old notebooks
lying around.
One of those notebooks, its pa-
per worn thin and the ink faded,
dates back to 1942, when the
Nazis occupied the Ukraine and
Rozental was confined to the
Kupaygarot Ghetto. Rozental's
writing from that period appears
in a section called "Ghetto and
Holocaust" in his
Haim Rozental:
recently
self-
Wants to
spread interest published book,

in Yiddish
culture.

YiddishWithYid-
dishkeit.

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•
In addition to pieces from
Rozental's life in the Ukraine, the
book includes more recent works
inspired by Jewish life and the
players in Rozental's Oak Park
shul, a congregation of immi-
grants from the Soviet Union who
worship together in space rented
from the Jewish Community Cen-
ter.
Many of these friends — along
with others from the community
— helped Rozental raise the
$2,500 necessary to have his book
published. Mordechai Mishulovin,
the brother of Rozental's rabbi,
helped out with countless hours
of typing Rozental's handwritten
manuscripts into the computer. A
Brooklyn publishing company af-
filiated with the Lubavitch move-
ment printed and bound 300
copies of the book, which Rozen-
tal is selling for $10 and distrib-
uting to libraries around the
country.
But it's not Rozental's first pub-

lication, nor will it be his last. His
articles and columns have ap-
peared in the Yiddish Forward,
the Algemeiner Journal and Yid-
dish newspapers in Poland and
Israel. While in Ukraine, he trans-
lated a book of Yiddish literature
into Russian, co-authored anoth-
er book and was a regular con-
tributor to Yiddish papers and
magazines in the former Soviet
Union. He still tries to write every
day — "as long as my health al-
lows" — and he is already plan-
ning a second volume of Yiddish

With Yiddishkeit.

An Orthodox Jew, Rozental
views the late Lubavitch Rebbe
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
as his personal mentor and draws
much of his inspiration from Ju-
daism. He says he been religious
all his life, despite the fact that the
Soviet government outlawed reli-
gion and forced most practicing
Jews into hiding.
"I observed as much as I could,"
said Rozental, adding that he of-
ten served as cantor. His town —
which had 18 synagogues in pre-
revolutionary Russia — had only
one synagogue in Rozental's time,
which he says the government al-
lowed as "a front."
Despite his impressive literary
output, Rozental says his writing
has never paid the bills, so in
Ukraine he and his wife of 51

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