The reason this new exile is different from other exiles, is that historically and religiously the Jewish Diaspora in Europe itself was considered to be an exile. Due to the Haskalah movement, a new and vibrant secular Jewish culture began to emerge. One goal of this movement was to empower Jews living in the Diaspora, and therefore redefine what it means to be in exile. Through creating a Jewish culture that was uniquely secular th

ey were transforming the Diaspora to work for them instead of against them. This struggle to forget the past and move on, and the role of memory in exile are treated in the poetry of Irena Klepfisz, especially those poems dealing with displacement and the Yiddish language. Cynthia Ozick also explores similar motifs through characters in her short story Envy; Or, Yiddish in America.

The disappearance of Yiddish as a secular Jewish language is all but a fact nowadays. The socialist movement is dead, and the only place where this rich language is kept alive is at universities and in scholarly societies. Yet Klepfisz is not content with the reality that faces Judaism in the Diaspora and the Yiddish language. She still believes in the socialist movement and in the revival of Yiddish as a means for Jewish expression. As she states in the same interview, "...the Yiddish language becomes a critical connection to 'home,' not to Diaspora. So this movement towards Yiddish is not just mere sentiment." (249) This must make the current situation all the more difficult to deal with, but Klepfisz somehow manages to keep a positive attitude. Certainly she does this by going against the common Jewish conventions of Diaspora and homeland.

Irena Klepfiz as a refugee had a unique experience during the wartime years that has left a great impression on her work. Unlike the vast majority of victims who were simply killed or fled, her family was destroyed in a more psychologically damaging way. Her father, as part of the Jewish resistance within the Warsaw Ghetto, was killed when fighting broke out between the Nazi's and the ghetto fighters. Furthermore, when it was time for Irena and her mother to flee, they had to pass as gentiles. Her mother speaking fluent Polish made this possible, and it was in this change that Klepfiz finds the crux of her crisis with the loss of her culture and her displacement in this world. These feelings of displacement are especially apparent in the powerful poem Searching for My Father's Body. This poem is a narrative that shows a semblance of rhythm and it describes her quest and inability to come to terms with her father's violent death. The beginning describes her search for her father's name among death records hoping that it will bring some closure to her uncertainty. "I smell again / the burning bodies see the flames, / wade through sewers in a last desperate effort, / till some present distraction, / like hunger or cold, draws / me back and I begin closing windows / and preparing dinner." (30)

This particular part vividly shows her switching between worlds. On one hand she desperately wants to gain a sense of closure about her fathers death, which pulls her into the past. Yet, this is hindered by every day things that are representative of the new life she has come to live in America. This recognition and inability to forget the past is a very strong tendency in Klepfisz's other poems as well. At this point it is interesting to note that Klepfisz was only two

Some common words found in the essay are:
Father's Body, Diaspora Yiddish, Furthermore Edelshtein, , Yiddish Ostrover, Israelis Arabs, Europe Holocaust, Oh Hebron, Fradel Schtok, Due Haskalah, yiddish language, jewish culture, yiddish writers, cynthia ozick, world yiddish, envy yiddish america, jews living, secular jewish, inability generation, socialist movement, feelings displacement,
Approximate Word count = 2041
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)