BEL KAUFMAN

Bella "Bel" Kaufman (born May

10, 1911) is an American teacher and author, bes t

known for writing the

1965 bestselling

novel Up the Down

Staircase.

Kaufman was born in Berlin,

Germany, where her father was studying medicine.

Although born in Germany, her native

language was Russian. She was raised in Odessa and

Kiev.

In December 1923, they immigrated

to the United States with

their twelve-year-old

daughter to escape the hardships of postrevolutionary Russia.

When the family arrived in New York City, the young Kaufman did not speak a word of English. She was taken to the local public school in a first-grade class

with children half her age and felt immensely awkward. Her uneasiness was appeased by the kindness of her teacher, which had a profound effect

upon the twelve-year-old: She decided that she too wanted to be a teacher.

Aged 18 she attended Hunter College in New

York, from which she received a

Bachelor of Arts degree, then

earned a Master's degree in

literature at Columbia University.

Kaufman began work as a teacher

in various New York City high schools, along

with working part-time as a writer, including articles

for Esquire magazine, under

the name Bel Kaufman.

Up the Down Staircase was originally a short story—only three and a half pages long—

published in The Saturday Review on November 17, 1962.

Then an editor contacted Kaufman after reading it and encouraged her to extend her

fledgling story into a full-length novel

In 1965 she published the novel Up the

Down Staircase, a

novel about an idealistic young honors college graduate who becomes an

English teacher in a New York

City high school and deals with

the gritty realities of her colleagues and students; it was

based on Kaufman's own

teaching experiences.

Up the Down Staircase

became an enormous success,

remaining on the New York Times Best

Seller list for 64 weeks. In

1967, the book was

turned into a film of the

same name.

The film opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York City

and was chosen to represent the United States at the Moscow Film Festival. In June

1977, Up the Down Staircase became a play and a popular

choice for many public school

drama productions.

Kaufman’s contributions to social awareness

continued well beyond the reach of her famous book. On December 7,

1987, Kaufman accepted an invitation from the Soviet embassy to join Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev as his guest at a reception held for prominent Americans. During this same year, she participated in the Moscow International

Forum for a Nuclear-Free World at the invitation of the Soviet Union. There she delivered a speech on “The Role of Culture in Protecting Civilization

and Universal Human Values.”

In her later career, Kaufman has been involved in theatrical writing and lecturing, and is a popular public

speaker. In the 1970s, she married Sidney Gluck, who heads the Sholem Aleichem Memorial Foundation, where

she is an honorary chair. The foundation was created to

commemorate her grandfather and the world of Yiddish literature.

Bel Kaufman is the recipient of many awards, such as Bonds for Israel

plaques, the Paperback of the

Year Award, and the National School Bell

Award. Bel Kaufman’s great legacy is in the literature about

education in America and in the

propagation of Jewish culture. Her

life’s work is a poignant reminder

of the struggles and dedication

necessary in the search for

knowledge.

At 100 years old, Ms. Kaufman is still shpritzing

jokes, Jewish and otherwise, which is in her

genes.

In 2011 she became one of the

few adjunct professors in her age and taught a course on Jewish humor at Hunter College, her alma mater. One of the

jokes the class dissected:

“The Frenchman says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have wine.’ The German says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have

beer.’ The Jew says: ‘I’m tired and thirsty. I must have

diabetes.”

She now meets former students who are grandparents. Indeed,

she cannot believe that she has a son, Jonathan Goldstine, 69, who is a retired professor of computer science, and a daughter, Thea, a

psychologist, who is 67.

Now Ms. Kaufman intends to

resume her hobby — dancing

mambos and tangos at a local school.

Her determination

helps to explain how she made it

to 100, though she

does not think it is such a big deal.

Bel Kaufman: “It must have happened gradually, while I

wasn’t looking,I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a

long time, you get all this attention. Just because you

survived? Of course, I survived a lot.”