Classic Yiddish Stories of S. Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz

Cloth $19.95   |   0-8156-0760-1   |   2004

Runner-up in the 2005 National Jewish Book Award in the Anthologies and Collections category.

A comprehensive collection of best short fiction by the three classic Yiddish authors.

Reviews
"This is a book for every collectionuniversity, synagogue, yeshiva, and public libraryand is highly recommended for your personal library. The editor, who has a scholar's knowledge of the subject and the milieu, has carefully culled the most outstanding and representative fiction. He has chosen from the masters of the genre, found experts in translation and provides annotations to references, quotations, or idioms that might be lost on the average reader. Stories express the classic irony found in Yiddish proverbs. Some unflinchingly portray lives of poverty, and all introduce fully-rounded characters, with all their foibles. Sholem Aleichem and I.L. Peretz are familiar to us, but Abramovitsh's "Fishke the Lame" deserves a wide audience. These stories, which range from 6 to 29 pages, are nicely complemented with substantial biographical essays by contemporaries who knew the writers. Classic Yiddish Stories puts this fiction in its religious and cultural context, presents stories of great power and misfortune by authors who are the equal of any, and underscoresyet againwhat the Shoah destroyed. And all this for $19.95 in hardcover. The only caveat is that these are not children's stories; there is no romanticizing shtetl life, and no contrived happy endings. But for teens who are mature and compassionate enough to appreciate where their ancestors came from, it will be an encounter with memorable characters and with the giants of Jewish fiction. As for me, I am eagerly awaiting a sequel."
AJL Newsletter

"Frieden's choice to focus on Abramovitsh's early materialhis first novel The Little Man (1864-65) and his original, unexpanded version of Fishke the Lame (1869, and never previously translated in this form)shows us a young writer filled with the critical sensibility and reformist urges of the Jewish Enlightenment, and fleshes out this side of the writer for the uninitiated."
Literary Quarterly

"Numerous volumes of Yiddish stories have appeared in English…and now Ken Frieden has produced yet another: a collection of fresh translations of the great troika of Yiddish storytellers published by Syracuse University, where he is a professor of Jewish studies. His efforts will likely please anyone with an interest, literary or purely nostalgic, in Eastern European Jewish culture."
The Jerusalem Report

"Ken Frieden has the ear of a poet and busts open the door to a whole new range of Yiddish literature in this collection. Terrific bookshould be required reading."
Mary Karr

"Ken Frieden, our contemporary authority on Yiddish literature, enriches us again with this volume of Classic Yiddish Stories, a collection that should be read alongside his critique, Classic Yiddish Fiction. . . . Fishke the Lame, Sholem Aleichem's Tevye tales, and Peretz's Hasidic Stories have never been so well rendered into English as they are here."
Harold Bloom

"Classic Yiddish Stories is a gem. . . . It brings back into circulation the triumvirate of the Yiddish classical writers . . . who were not sentimental recorders of reality but great masters of language and subtle magicians of fictional worlds."
Benjamin Harshav

"Essential reading for anyone who loves the short story. The work of Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretzfunny, satirical, pureextends, via paths direct and indirect, to Babel, Malamud, Paley, Roth, Salinger, and from there to countless contemporary writers. In this way, these early masters created the mold from which contemporary literary meaning is made."
George Saunders

Description
Two early works by S.Y. Abramovitsh introduce the reader to Abramovitsh's alter ego Mendele the Book Peddler. Mendele narrates both The Little Man and Fishke the Lame. In different voices, he also presents a diverse cast of characters including Isaac Abraham as tailor's apprentice, choirboy, and corrupt businessman. Reb Alter tells of his matchmaking mishap and Fishke relates his travels through the Ukraine with a caravan of beggars.

Sholem Aleichem's Tevye reemerges from new translations of "Hodel" and "Chava" in all of his comic splendor. Notes enable students to follow Tevye's uneven steps through Bible quotations. Four of Sholem Aleichem's other eloquent monologists come back to haunt us in scintillating translations.

The selections from Peretz include his finest stories about the hasidim, such as "Kabbalists," "Teachings of the Hasidim," and the ironic tale "The Rebbe's Pipe." A fresh rendering of Peretz's masterpiece "Between Two Mountains" represents the meeting of an inspirational rebbe and an awe-inspiring rabbi.

Following the translations are three biographical essays about these giants of modern Yiddish literature.

Editor
Ken Frieden is the B. G. Rudolph Professor and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at Syracuse University.

Professor Frieden has published numerous books and essays on Yiddish and Hebrew literature. His acclaimed study Classic Yiddish Fiction is the companion volume to the anthology Classic Yiddish Stories.

Frieden received his doctorate in comparative literature at Yale University.. He has taught at Syracuse University and Emory University and has been a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, Heidelberg University, and the University of California Davis. He has also received major fellowships for research at Harvard University, Oxford University, the Free University of Berlin, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Frieden's previous work as an editor resulted in the anthologies Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler and Sholem Aleichem's Nineteen to the Dozen: Monologues and Bits and Bobs of Other Things. He edits the Syracuse University Press series, Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art.

61/8 x 91/2, xviii, 286 pages, glossary, bibliography

View other books in this series