Helen Mintz is a translator (Yiddish to English), writer, solo performance artist, storyteller, teacher, and weaver based in Vancouver British Columbia.
Helen’s translation from Yiddish to English of Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz, garnered three literary awards. Her translation of Janusz Korczak: Teacher and Child Advocate by Zalmen Wassertzug is under consideration by the University of Poznan Press (Poland). A 2014 Yiddish Book Centre Translation Fellow, her translations have appeared in In Geveb, Jewishfiction.net, and Pakn Treger and her writings about translation in Words without Borders and BC Studies.
Helen explores the history of Canadian and American Ashkenazi Jews from the former Russian empire, building bridges with the citizens of the post-Soviet Eastern European countries Her article, How we, as Canadian Jews, Can Heal our Relationship with Ukraine and Ukrainians was delivered as a d’var torah at Or Shalom synagogue and published in the Jewish Independent. She shared one of her Karpinowitz translations at a Holocaust memorial organized by Lithuanians of British Columbia.
Helen began storytelling to share Eastern European Jewish experience, telling family stories she learned as a child. Her performance bring voice to eastern European Jewish women’s experience, past and present. She has revised traditional Jewish stories, focusing on the Chassidic storytelling tradition, bringing women into the foreground. The stories she shares include memoirs of the Holocaust, and stories about the movement for justice and human rights in Israel and Palestine and about the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Her stories have been published, recorded, and are told my many other tellers.
Helen’s career as a solo performer was launched in a “cupboard” when she performed in the 1993 Vancouver Women in View festival. There she was “discovered” by Barbara Crook, the Vancouver Sun theatre critic. Crook wrote, Helen Mintz’ solo show is a beautifully written tribute to human survival in general and to the strength of women in particular. Mintz blends moments of humour with images of unity and empowerment.
Helen has toured her one-woman storytelling performances in Canada, the United States, Lithuania, and Germany. She performed in New York at the historic 1995 conference on Women in Yiddish; at the 11th annual Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Seattle; and at the British Columbia annual provincial restorative justice conference at Ferndale Correctional Institution. She has been a featured artist at numerous storytelling festivals in Vancouver, Toronto, Sechelt, and Seattle and enjoyed three different runs at the Vancouver Women in View festival where she played to sold-out audiences and standing ovations. Helen’s work has been broadcast on radio and television both in Canada and the United States.
Helen has taught storytelling to countless adults, youth, and children in schools, colleges, and at conferences and festivals.
Helen weaves representations of the natural world of the Coast Salish people, on whose land she gratefully lives, works, and plays.