Ikhl Shraibman
Khaval al d'avdin. What we have lost!

This Yiddish miniaturist, essayist, and writer of short stories based on Biblical characters was also an important figure among Jews in contemporary Kishinev, Moldova. He died on December 9th. [See the obituary in the Forward for more on his life and work.]

A Writer's Credo
[Shrayberisher ani-maymen; From the collection "Creation and Love", 2000. ]

My philosophy, from the first day I started to write until today: People should be good, and everything should be good for people.

Two little things. But a whole world could be founded on them, a new world where people would embrace each other and live in love and joy.

Would people be pleased with a world like that? Wouldn't they be bored? Wouldn't they even start dreaming about another world? I don't know. It's really hard to say and will never be possible to try out. Because -- a world like that will never be established.

But let's dream, at the very least, about a world like that.

Dreaming is also quite a fine thing of people's.

Never to this very day have people possessed such a fine thing as dreaming.

What else is a writer in this world, if not the most beautiful, the longest, the strongest dreamer?

1998