What Is Letters From Rifka About

[Eustacio Gadit]

Lookingback, Smith students remind me a lot of Rifka. At Smith, I was able to speak confidently, make mistakes and learn from them, and pursue what I was truly passionate about. I spent my college years immersed in Jewish Studies, reading Abraham Sutzkever and Dara Horn, learning new languages (another similarity to Rifka), and traveling around the world to dig deeper into Jewish history and identity. After graduating, I began working at Jewish Book Council (JBC), a nonprofit focused on promoting and uplifting Jewish literature. My first Jewish book led me to a life of Jewish books, a life of learning and grappling through reading and writing.

Letters from Rifka is a historical fiction novel about a family who is leaving Russia and trying to get to America. Rifka is the youngest member of the immigrant family. She is diagnosed with ringworm and forced to separate from her family until she is healthy. Even though this book is written in the present tense, at the end of each chapter, Rifka signs it as a letter to her cousin Tovah. Rifka admires and looks up to Tovah, who is still in Russia. She is writing these letters in old Russian books, but plans to figure out how to send them to Tovah when she gets to America.I found this book difficult to get into at first, but once I reached around page 20, the action and events started to pick up. I enjoyed how Rifka was so impressed by new ideas such as chocolate and ice cream. I also liked how she used her mother's locket as a way of being connected to her. In general, this is an interesting book about how one girl can be so brave. Hang in there for those first 20 pages, because after that, I'm sure it will catch your attention!

last year i had to read this book for school. i don't remember it so much, but i remember liking it. i remember sorta (hehe) judging it by its cover and blurb, so i was like saying to my friends, "this book must be so boring. its just about a girl who writes letters to her cousin" my friends thought the same thing. when we started reading it, then we all really liked it and from now on, none of us will judge a book by its cover or blurb again. great book!

Billie Jo has a great deal to forgive: Her father for causing the accident that killed her mother; her mother for leaving when Billie Jo needed her most; and herself for being the cause of her own sorrow. Daddy's too wrung out to help her, and there's no one else to care. So at 14, Billie Jo must heal herself - even if it means tearing up her roots and leaving behind everything she's ever known.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.

In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

Strong-hearted and determined, Rifka must endure a great deal: humiliating examinations by doctors and soldiers, deadly typhus, separation from all she has ever known and loved, murderous storms at sea, detainment on Ellis Island - and is if this is not enough, the loss of her glorious golden hair.

The Gulag was a monstrous network of labor camps that held and killed millions of prisoners from the 1930s to the 1950s. More than half a century after the end of Stalinist terror, the geography of the Gulag has been barely sketched and the number of its victims remains unknown. Has the Gulag been forgotten? Writer Masha Gessen and photographer Misha Friedman set out across Russia in search of the memory of the Gulag.

From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America.

"America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?"

I was silent for a little time.

"I will do everything there," I answered.

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

Strong-hearted and determined, Rifka must endure a great deal: humiliating examinations by doctors and soldiers, deadly typhus, separation from all she has ever known and loved, murderous storms at sea, detainment on Ellis Island--and is if this is not enough, the loss of her glorious golden hair.

Based on a true story from the author's family, Letters from Rifka presents a real-life heroine with an uncommon courage and unsinkable spirit.

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We made it! If it had not been for your father, though, I think my family would all be dead now: Mama, Papa, Nathan, Saul, and me. At the very best we would be in that filthy prison in Berdichev, not rolling west through Ukraine on a freight train bound for Poland.

At the train station, Papa and Mama hid behind bales of hay in boxcars to my right. My two giant brothers, Nathan and Saul, crouched in separate cars to my left. Papa said that we should hide in different cars. If the guards discovered only one of us, perhaps the others might still escape.

As Papa expected, not long after he and Mama and the boys had hidden themselves, two guards emerged from a wooden shelter. They thundered down the platform in their heavy boots, climbing in and out of the cars, making their search.

They did not notice me at first. Saul says I am too little for anyone to notice, but you know Saul. He never has a nice word to say to me. And I am small for a girl of twelve. Still, my size did not keep the guards from noticing me. I think the guards missed seeing me at first because they were so busy in their search of the train. They were searching for Nathan.

You know as well as I, Tovah, that when a Jewish boy deserts the Russian Army, the army tries hard to find him. They bring him back and kill him in front of his regiment as a warning to the others. Those who have helped him, they also die.

Hearing the guards speak this morning, I understood his precaution. It was dangerous enough for you to know we were leaving. We could not risk telling you the details of our escape in case the soldiers came to question you.

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