Maș Enta

About

Enta Mash (1922-2013) was an Israeli Yiddish writer, originally from Bessarabia, who dedicated her literary career to documenting the experience of Jews from this region and their lives marked by historical injustices. Born in the Jewish colony of Zgurita in Soroca county, Bessarabia, she graduated from Hebrew and Romanian gymnasiums, as well as the first year of the Pedagogical Institute in Chisinau. At the age of nineteen, in 1941, she was deported to Siberia along with her mother by the Soviet authorities, a traumatic experience that lasted nine years and from which she was only freed in 1948. After returning to Moldova, she settled in Chisinau, where she worked as an accountant and maintained close contacts with Jewish literary circles, forming friendships with important writers such as Ihil Shraibman and Yankl Yakir. Enta Mash's literary career began late, after her emigration to Israel in 1977, when she was already over fifty years old. Her stories were published in prestigious Yiddish-language magazines in Israel, the United States, and other countries, such as Yerusholaimer Almanach, Di Goldane Keith from Tel Aviv, and Forverts from New York. Her literary work was compiled into four volumes published by IL Peretz Farlag in Tel Aviv: "Tif in der taige" (Deep in the Taiga, 1990), "Meshane mokem" (Changing Places, 1993), "Bessaraber motivn" (Bessarabian Motifs, 1998), and "Der Letster hakofe" (In the Last Round, 2007), books that were praised by critics for their narrative clarity and the distinctive flavor of Southern female discourse. Enta Mash was recognized on the international literary scene through numerous prestigious awards, including the Itsik Manger Prize in 1999, the