Yiddish activist Bella Bryks Klein embraced the language with people of all ages
With boundless energy, Bella organized Yiddish events in Israel and promoted its use through video and lectures
Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center
By Rukhl Schaechter September 11, 2025
It’s been over a year since the beloved Yiddish activist, and a personal friend of mine, Bella Bryks Klein passed away in Petah-Tikvah, Israel at the age of 75. Those who knew her miss her warmth, dedication to mame-loshn and boundless energy.
Bella was a fixture in the Yiddish circles of Tel Aviv. For many years, she was the director of the Israeli branch of the Arbeter Ring (Worker’s Circle) and the Jewish Labor Bund in Tel Aviv, known as Kalisher, named after the street where it was located. Thanks to her, Kalisher continued to operate for another decade as a leading cultural center in Israel.
For many years, she was the Tel Aviv representative of the New York-based Forverts, the Yiddish section of the Forward newspaper, ensuring the printed issues were delivered to subscribers. When funding for distribution from the New York office ran out, she continued the work at her own expense, knowing how important it was for Holocaust survivors in Israel to receive a Yiddish newspaper.
Seeing a need among aging Yiddish-speaking Israelis, Bella created, edited and distributed the electronic newsletter Vos, Ven, Vu , providing up-to-date listings of all Yiddish-related events in Israel. She was also a board member of the Tel Aviv Yiddish cultural organization Beit Leyvik.
But Bella didn’t just promote the Yiddish language to senior citizens; she felt it was just as important to transmit it to younger Israelis. In 2017 she produced a hilarious video with the Israeli comic duo Sugar Zaza. In the clip you can see Bella’s comic flair, love of Yiddish and her ability to connect to Jews of all generations.
One goal of Bella’s that was dearest to her heart was promoting the impressive literary legacy of her father, Rachmil Bryx, who skillfully documented his harrowing experiences in the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and three other concentration camps.
For many years, her father’s literary work was known only to Yiddish readers. Finally, in 2022, a trilogy of his powerful memoirs appeared in English, thanks to translator Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. The book, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych, describes Hasidic life before the Holocaust, the chaos of the early days of war and the horrors of Nazi captivity in Auschwitz.
In an interview produced by the Yiddish Book Center, Bella described what it was like growing up as a daughter of a Yiddish writer and how the home that her father and his wife Hinda created was filled with love and commitment to promoting Yiddish literature.
In one touching clip of the video, Bella recites the ancient Yiddish prayer got fun avrom (God of Abraham), which her Transylvanian mother, grandmother and probably her great-grandmother recited as Shabbos concluded. This video is a real treasure not only because it’s a prayer, which was said by women for centuries and is at risk of being forgotten, but also because Bella sings it the way it was sung hundreds of years ago.
As another daughter of a well-known Yiddish figure, the linguist Mordkhe Schaechter, I felt a special kinship with Bella. A year before she died, she and I had lunch in New York. It was there that she gave me the devastating news that she had terminal brain cancer. With tears in her eyes, she asked me to help promote the literary legacy of her father. Now that his memoirs have been translated into English, I’m gratified that many more people will be able to read and appreciate his work.
Bella Bryx was born on November 2, 1948, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Rachmil and Hinda Bryx, both Holocaust survivors. She and her sister Miriam were raised in New York City, surrounded by the values of Judaism, the Yiddish language and the memory of the Holocaust.
When she was 18, she went to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There she met Yona Klein, decided to make aliyah and married him. Sadly, Yona passed away in 1998.
It was only after a long professional career in the pharmaceutical industry that Bella chose to dedicate her life to preserving the Yiddish language and literature. At the age of 70, she accomplished a longtime dream of hers — getting a masters degree in Yiddish, writing her thesis on her father’s books. She analyzed his works both before and after the war and, amazingly, even managed to find and uncover unpublished manuscripts that he had hidden during the war, which someone had saved and donated to a library.
Bella’s tireless work to promote the Yiddish language and culture, both openly and behind the scenes, is an inspiration for all of us involved in the almost sacred task of spreading dos yidishe vort, the Yiddish word. As we say in Yiddish, zol zi zayn a beterin far undz, may she intercede for us in heaven.
