Lisa Grunberger

Lisa Grunberger was raised in Long Island, NY, by an Israeli mother and a Viennese Father. As a Yoga teacher, a university professor and published writer, Lisa Grunberger is an entertaining and passionate public speaker. Her writings give poignant and playful literary expression to new Yiddish culture.

Her one-woman show, The Prayer Collector, which she performed at the Makor Steinhardt Center/92st Y in NYC tells the story of an old Jewish woman who collects the prayers from the Wailing Wall; it was accompanied by klezmer music, Sabbath candles and Yiddish stories.

Grunberger’s poems – narrative, lyrical, highly experimental and profoundly Jewish – have been published in a variety of print and online journals. They have appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Mudfish Nimrod, and The Drunken Boat, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. She has taught at universities such as Hofstra and Bronx Community College, SUNY at Old Westbury and Parsons: The New School of Design. She is currently an Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In her latest project, Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position (Newmarket Press 2009) Grunberger braids the yoga tradition with her Yiddish culture (like a challah bread!). This charming, deceptively simple tale of love and loss, bridges the old Yiddish world with new world Yiddish. Yiddish Yoga is an example of how her work crosses genres and generations. She has performed Yiddish Yoga at Jewish Community Centers throughout the United States – Miami, St. Louis, Houston, and New Jersey.

One reviewer’s remarks about Yiddish Yoga convey how Grunberger’s writing weaves the experimental and historical, as does all old and new world Yiddish literature: “To whom is Ruthie speaking? If it’s not a diary and she’s not speaking to someone else, then she’s writing for posterity. She’s writing for someone who isn’t alive yet; she’s writing to her grand-daughter’s daughter to come.”

Grunberger’s poetry, stories, and performances bear witness to the multiple losses and renewals of the Jewish people, their moxy, persistence, chutzpah and joy in the face of suffering.