A Treasury of Yiddish Stories: Revised and Updated Edition

by Editors Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg

Book Overview

Fifty-two Yiddish short stories describe life in the shetl and other aspects of the Jewish experience, and include works produced by Jewish writers during the last two centuries. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140144196
• ISBN13: 9780140144192
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 688 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.2" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

A bissel glick- a bit of joy in reading these stories

This anthology contains the work of the most well- known of Yiddish storytellers from Shalom Aleichem to I.B. Singer. Among those whose work is included are I.L. Peretz, Opatoshu, Zalman Schneour, Israel Singer, Chaim Grade, Sholem Asch, Moishe Kulbak, et.al. Naturally the center is the shtetl of Eastern Europe, the world of disasters of the 'Shoah'. But there are also stories which touch upon the New World. The collection contains what in my opinion is one of the finest stories in any language, I.B. Singer's " The Little Shoemakers" Among the translators are Saul Bellow and Alfred Kazin.

The tragedy of Yiddish poetry

The tragedy of Yiddish poetry is that the greatest part of its audience was murdered by the Nazis. Translations can do a fair job, but the real poetry is in knowing and hearing the intimacies and intracies , the music of the language. And few can do that today. Great names like Sutzkever, Glatstein, Levick, M.L.Halpern, Molodowsky,Moshe Kulbak, Aaron Zeitlin, Reuben Iceland, Zisha Landau,Itzik Manger, Mani Leib,Melech Ravitch, J. Adler,Chaim Grade, have far fewer readers than they merit.