20 selections, all lovingly translated from the Yiddish, include among others "Progress in Kasrilevke," "Summer Romances," "Birth," "There's No Dead," "Three Widows," "Homesick," "On America," and "A Home Away from Home.
Finds Reisel, the daughter of a poor cantor, and Liebel, a rich man's son, falling under the spell of a traveling Yiddish acting company and separated by managers who would exploit their talents.
Jewish Children Translated from the yiddish of Shalom Aleichem by Hannah Berman A curious noise comes from the town, a roaring, a rushing, a tumult. In a moment the face of the world is changed for me. Our farm is a courtyard, our house is a palace. I am a prince, Busie a princess. The logs of wood that lie at our door are the cedars and firs of the "Song of Songs." The cat that is warming herself in the sun near the door is a roe, or a young hart; and the hill on the other side of the synagogue is the mountain of Lebanon. The women and the girls who are washing and scrubbing and making everything clean for the Passover are the daughters of Jerusalem. Everything, everything is from the "Song of Songs." I walk about with my hands in my pockets. The nuts shake and rattle. Busie walks beside me, step by step. I cannot go slowly. I am carried along. I want to fly, to soar through the air like an eagle. I let myself go. Busie follows me. I jump from one log of wood to the other. Busie jumps after me. I am up; she is up. I am down; she is down. Who will tire first? "How long is this to last?" asks Busie. And I answer her in the words of the "Song of Songs" "'Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.' Ba! Ba! Ba! You are tired, and I am not." Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem was a leading Yiddish author and playwright from Ukraine. The musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Seven childrens' tales, from one of the world's greatest writers of Yiddish stories. Centering around the Jewish holidays, stories include "Benny's Luck," about the amazing good fortune of a young boy and his dreydl, and "Really a Sukkah!" a glimpse of a busy holiday celebration that ends less happily than it began.
This volume presents an outstanding new translation of two favorite comic novels by the preeminent Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). The Letters of Menakhem Mendl and Sheyne Sheyndl portrays a tumultuous marriage through letters exchanged between the title character, an itinerant bumbler seeking his fortune in the cities of Russia before departing alone for the New World, and his scolding wife, who becomes increasingly fearful, jealous, and mystified. Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son is the first-person narrative of a mischievous and keenly observant boy who emigrates with his family from Russia to America. The final third of the story takes place in New York, making this Aleichem’s only major work to be set in the United States. Motl and Menakhem Mendl are in one sense opposites: the one a clear-eyed child and the other a pathetically deluded adult. Yet both are ideal conveyors of the comic disparity of perception on which humor depends. If Motl sees more than do others around him, Menakhem Mendl has an almost infinite capacity for seeing less. Aleichem endows each character with an individual comic voice to tell in his own way the story of the collapse of traditional Jewish life in modern industrial society as well as the journey to America, where a new chapter of Jewish history begins. This volume includes a biographical and critical introduction as well as a useful glossary for English language readers.
For the 150th anniversary of the birth of the "Jewish Mark Twain,"a new translation of his most famous works Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son are the most celebrated characters in all of Jewish fiction. Tevye is the lovable, Bible-quoting father of seven daughters, a modern Job whose wisdom, humor, and resilience inspired the lead character in Fiddler on the Roof. And Motl is the spirited and mischievous nine-year-old boy who accompanies his family on a journey from their Russian shtetl to New York, and whose comical, poignant, and clear-eyed observations capture with remarkable insight the struggles and hopes and triumphs of Jewish immigrants to America at the turn of the twentieth century. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
This first English translation of Sholom Aleichem's rediscovered novel, Moshkeleh the Thief, has a riveting plot, an unusual love story, and a keenly observed portrayal of an underclass Jew replete with characters never before been seen in Yiddish literature. The eponymous hero, Moshkeleh, is a robust chap and horse thief. When Tsireleh, daughter of a tavern keeper, flees to a monastery with the man she loves--a non-Jew she met at the tavern--the humiliated tavern keeper's family turns to Moshkeleh for help, not knowing he too is in love with her. For some unknown reason, this innovative novel does not appear in the standard twenty-eight-volume edition of Sholom Aleichem's collected works, published after his death. Strikingly, Moshkeleh the Thief shows Jews interacting with non-Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement--a groundbreaking theme in modern Yiddish literature. This novel is also important for Sholom Aleichem's approach to his material. Yiddish literature had long maintained a tradition of edelkeyt, refinement. Authors eschewed violence, the darker side of life, and people on the fringe of respectability. Moshkeleh thus enters a Jewish arena not hitherto explored in a novel.
“An uproarious, sprawling masterpiece by a grand Yiddish storyteller.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Translated in full for the first time, one hundred years after its original publication, the acclaimed epic love story set in the colorful world of the Yiddish theater. Wandering Stars spans ten years and two continents, relating the adventures of Reizel and Leibel, young shtetl dwellers in late nineteenth-century Russia who fall under the spell of a traveling acting company. Together they run away from home to become entertainers themselves, and then tour separately around Europe, ultimately reuniting in New York. Wandering Stars is an engrossing romance, a great New York story, and an anthem for the magic of the theater.
Menachem-Mendl is one of Sholem Aleichem's most delightful literary creations, a dreamy optimist who travels to New York and across Eastern Europe in search of an elusive fortune at the approach of World War I. His wife, Sheyne-Sheyndl, and children are left behind in the shtetl of Kasrilevka. Written in 1913 and previously unpublished in the United States, The Further Adventures of Menachem-Mendl consists of Menachem-Mendl's letters home and his wife's often tart replies. Working for Yiddish newspapers, Menachem-Mendl writes his opinions of world events and Jewish problems. Through the eyes of this shrewd smalltown Jew we see events leading to a cataclysmic war, which include his uncannily familiar treatment of conflicts in the Balkans. Menachem-Mendl describes the Zionist Congress in Vienna with Aleichem's inimitable humor, exaggeration, and realism. In her replies to her husband, Sheyne-Sheyndl reminds him that his family grapples with crushing poverty and persecution. Aliza Shevrin's fluid translation captures the idiomatic richness of the original Yiddish and brings Aleichem's vanished culture to vibrant life.
For the 150th anniversary of the birth of the "Jewish Mark Twain,"a new translation of his most famous works Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son are the most celebrated characters in all of Jewish fiction. Tevye is the lovable, Bible-quoting father of seven daughters, a modern Job whose wisdom, humor, and resilience inspired the lead character in Fiddler on the Roof. And Motl is the spirited and mischievous nine-year-old boy who accompanies his family on a journey from their Russian shtetl to New York, and whose comical, poignant, and clear-eyed observations capture with remarkable insight the struggles and hopes and triumphs of Jewish immigrants to America at the turn of the twentieth century. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The author of classic Yiddish novels and short stories, Sholem Aleichem—best known for having inspired the popular play, Fiddler on the Roof, evokes the voices of Yiddish speakers in these monologues written between 1901 and 1916. In each piece, a man or a woman comes forward to tell the story. The implied listeners—a rabbi, a doctor, or the author himself—says virtually nothing. Aleichem pretends to have transcribed these private performances for the reader's benefit.
This first English translation of Sholom Aleichem's rediscovered novel, Moshkeleh the Thief, has a riveting plot, an unusual love story, and a keenly observed portrayal of an underclass Jew replete with characters never before been seen in Yiddish literature. The eponymous hero, Moshkeleh, is a robust chap and horse thief. When Tsireleh, daughter of a tavern keeper, flees to a monastery with the man she loves--a non-Jew she met at the tavern--the humiliated tavern keeper's family turns to Moshkeleh for help, not knowing he too is in love with her. For some unknown reason, this innovative novel does not appear in the standard twenty-eight-volume edition of Sholom Aleichem's collected works, published after his death. Strikingly, Moshkeleh the Thief shows Jews interacting with non-Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement--a groundbreaking theme in modern Yiddish literature. This novel is also important for Sholom Aleichem's approach to his material. Yiddish literature had long maintained a tradition of edelkeyt, refinement. Authors eschewed violence, the darker side of life, and people on the fringe of respectability. Moshkeleh thus enters a Jewish arena not hitherto explored in a novel.
This volume presents an outstanding new translation of two favorite comic novels by the preeminent Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). The Letters of Menakhem Mendl and Sheyne Sheyndl portrays a tumultuous marriage through letters exchanged between the title character, an itinerant bumbler seeking his fortune in the cities of Russia before departing alone for the New World, and his scolding wife, who becomes increasingly fearful, jealous, and mystified. Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son is the first-person narrative of a mischievous and keenly observant boy who emigrates with his family from Russia to America. The final third of the story takes place in New York, making this Aleichem’s only major work to be set in the United States. Motl and Menakhem Mendl are in one sense opposites: the one a clear-eyed child and the other a pathetically deluded adult. Yet both are ideal conveyors of the comic disparity of perception on which humor depends. If Motl sees more than do others around him, Menakhem Mendl has an almost infinite capacity for seeing less. Aleichem endows each character with an individual comic voice to tell in his own way the story of the collapse of traditional Jewish life in modern industrial society as well as the journey to America, where a new chapter of Jewish history begins. This volume includes a biographical and critical introduction as well as a useful glossary for English language readers.
Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations. And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the “Railroad Stories,” twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.
20 selections, all lovingly translated from the Yiddish, include among others "Progress in Kasrilevke," "Summer Romances," "Birth," "There's No Dead," "Three Widows," "Homesick," "On America," and "A Home Away from Home.
Even the most pious Jew need not shed so many tears over the destruction of Jerusalem as the women were in the habit of shedding when Stempenyu was playing. The first work of Sholom Aleichem’s to be translated into English—this long out-of-print translation is the only one ever done under Aleichem’s personal supervision—Stempenyu is a prime example of the author’ s hallmark traits: his antic and often sardonic sense of humor, his whip-smart dialogue, his workaday mysticism, and his historic documentation of shtetl life. Held recently by scholars to be the story that inspired Marc Chagall’s “Fiddler on the Roof” painting (which in turn inspired the play that was subsequently based on Aleichem’s Tevye stories, not this novella), Stempenyu is the hysterical story of a young village girl who falls for a wildly popular klezmer fiddler—a character based upon an actual Yiddish musician whose fame set off a kind of pop hysteria in the shtetl. Thus the story, in this contemporaneous “authorized” translation, is a wonderful introduction to Aleichem’s work as he wanted it read, not to mention to the unique palaver of a nineteenth-century Yiddish rock star.
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