Literatureריקודה פוטש

Rikuda Potash

Rikuda Potash was a Yiddish poet and short story writer who lived in Jerusalem and ran the library of the Bezalel museum.

1906 to 1965Yiddish poetry about JerusalemRunning the Bezalel museum libraryStories of Jerusalem neighborhoods

Died: 15 May 1965, Jerusalem
Occupation: writer, poet, librarian

Rikuda Potash was born in 1906 in Skała

Rikuda Potash was born in 1906 in Skała, in Galicia. Her father, Yekutiel Potash, wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Unzer Lebn. Her brother Mordekhai Narkiss later directed the Bezalel Museum.

She first wrote in Polish but turned to Yiddish after the Lwów pogrom of 1918. From 1922 she published poems, short stories, children's stories and translations from Polish. In 1924 she moved to Łódź, where she married the poet Khayim-Leyb Fuks, and their daughter Avivit was born.

Four of her poems appeared in a 1928 anthology of Yiddish women poets. Her first poetry collection, Vint oyf klavishn, came out in Łódź in 1934. That year she divorced Fuks and moved with her daughter to Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem she ran the library of the Bezalel museum. She wrote about Jerusalem, its people and the changes in Jewish life. Her collection Fun Kidron Tol appeared in 1952, and Moled iber Timma in 1959.

She died in Jerusalem on 15 May 1965 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot. A volume of poems appeared in 1967, and her stories about Jerusalem life were published in 1968.