Moshkeleh the Thief - A Novela by Sholom Aleichem - 1913- translated from the Yiddish with an Introduction by Curt Leviant- 2021 - 61 pages

Moshkeleh the Thief - A Novel by Sholom Aleichem - 1913- translated from the Yiddish  with an Introduction by Curt Leviant- 2021 - 61 pages 

“This almost-forgotten novel by one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time is revelatory, vividly depicting an all-too-rarely-seen side of Yiddish literature and Jewish life; its rendering here, by one of Jewish literature’s greatest translators, provides a crackling energy befitting its material. Don’t start it too late in the evening; you won’t be able to put it down.” —Jeremy Dauber, Columbia University professor and author of The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem 

a very informative conversation with Curt Leviant on Moshkeleh The Thief

This was The first work of Yiddish literature focused on criminals.

Sholem Aleichem

1859 Born in The Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire

1916 Dies in New York City.  His funeral is attended by 250,000

To most people, certainly me a few years ago, Yiddish writers were divided into two categories, Sholom Aleichem and a bunch of authors I have never heard about whom I would never have read were it not for Yale University Press giving me a full set of The Yale Yiddish Library.  These nine volumes, introduced by top authorities in Yiddish Studies, include some of the great classics.

Among the works were two totally marvelous novels  by Sholom Aleichem.  All of the works were pre-Holocaust, written in Eastern Europe and Russia.  All were by men.  As Yiddish speakers left Europe, mostly to NYC then Toronto and Montréal women writers like Blume Lempel and Chava Rosenfarb began publishing in Yiddish.  I have talked a bit about the history of Yiddish Literature (running from around 1875 to maybe 2004 with the passing of the last of the emigrated writers) in prior posts.  My perception is most seriously into Yiddish Literature, a huge treasure trove of Short Stories, are “heritage readers” seeking ties with the world of their ancestors in Eastern Europe.  Behind it is also a powerful message to those who would destroy Jewish Culture, you lose, we win.  I read in this area because it is an incredibly wonderful literature.  The stories range from heart breaking to funnier than a Mel Brooks movie.  Yiddish scholarship has very strong support and thanks to the internet, and maybe especially The Yiddish Book Center, interest is  growing.  YouTube has lots of good videos and readings of stories.

Sholom Aleichem is by far now most known Yiddish writer.  He is most famous from the movie Fiddler on the Roof based on his Tevye Cycle, centering on a Russian dairyman and his relationship with his daughters. 

Moshkeleh the Thief, set in a small mixed community, centers on a famous horse thief.  Moshkeleh came from a respectable Jewish family.  He was sent to traditional schools to study the Torah but instead he met accomplished thieves.. We learn about the various kind of thieves. There were pick pockets, House burglers, strong arm robbers, kidnappers, informers for hire, experts at bribing officials and horse thieves.  Thieves have their own argot. 

The work was first published as a serial in a popular journal, Moshkeleh Ganev, Warsaw. so there are lots of exciting events to draw readers to buy the next issue. Moshkeleh wanted to get married.  Marriages were mostly arranged and no decent Family wanted him for a son in law.  He became  

 enamored with a teenage girl, following her around until he realized it was futile.

In an interesting subplot, a Young Jewish woman runs away from her home to marry a Gentile.  Her parents hire Moshkeleh to kidnap her.

The introduction by Curt Leviant

details the publication history of the work.

Curt Leviant is the prize-winning author or translator of more than twenty-five books. Besides Sholom Aleichem, other Yiddish writers he has translated include Chaim Grade, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Avraham Reisen.

Moshkeleh the Thief is a very valuable edition to translated Yiddish.

Mel Ulm

 

An Exchange of Letters Between America and the Old Country - A Short Story by Sholem Aleichem (Story probably written 1910) Translated by Curt Leviant from Yiddish

An Exchange of Letters Between America and the Old Country - A Short Story by Sholem Aleichem (Story probably written 1910)

Translated by Curt Leviant from Yiddish

You can read the story here.

Published Summer 2019 in Pakn Treger, The Magazine of the Yiddish Book Center

Sholem Aleichem

1859 Born in The Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire

1916 Dies in New York City, then part of The U.S.A.  His funeral is attended by 250,000

To most people, certainly me a few years ago, Yiddish writers were divided into two categories, Sholom Aleichem and a bunch of authors I have never heard about that I would never have read were it not for Yale University Press giving me a full set of The Yale Yiddish Library.  These nine volumes, introduced by top authorities in Yiddish Studies, include some of the great classics.

Among the works were two totally marvelous novels  by Sholom Aleichem.  All of the works were pre-Holocaust, written in Eastern Europe and Russia.  All were by men.  As Yiddish speakers left Europe, mostly to NYC then Toronto and Montréal women writers like Blume Lempel and Chava Rosenfarb began publishing in Yiddish.  I have talked a bit about the history of Yiddish Literature (running from around 1875 to maybe 2004 with the passing of the last of the emigrated writers) in prior posts.  My perception is most seriously into Yiddish Literature, a huge treasure trove of Short Stories, are “heritage readers” seeking ties with the world of their ancestors in Eastern Europe.  Behind it is also a powerful message to those who would destroy Jewish Culture, you lose, we win.  I read in this area because it is an incredibly wonderful literature.  The stories range from heart breaking to funnier than a Mel Brooks movie.  Yiddish scholarship has very strong support and thanks to the internet, and maybe especially The Yiddish Book Center, interest is rapidly growing.  YouTube has lots of good videos and readings of stories.

Anyway Sholom Aleichem is by far now most known Yiddish writer.  He is most famous from the movie Fiddler on the Roof based on his Tevye Cycle, centering on a Russian dairyman and his relationship with his daughters.  

Letters between America and "back home" were a very important part of  the emotional support systems for Yiddish speaking immigrants to America.  Of course most immigrants paint a glowing picture of America.

The story is told through two letters, one sent from New York City by Jacob (formerly Yenkl, the Americanizing of his name is a very big matter) to his close friend Yisrulik back in the "old country" and his friend's answer. His friend lives in Russia.. The time period of the letters is in 1905.  Sholem Achleim's first readers would have known this from the events described by Yisrulik.  (In his very well done introduction Curt Leviant provides us with the background we need.)

Here is the start of the letter from America, notice the American slang expressions such as "blue funk" and "eating our hearts out".   "Mr. Krushevan, that damned anti-Semite and president of the Fourth Duma" referred to was a journalist responsible for widely circulating the codicils of the elders of Zion and inciting anti - Jewish violence.  He was not in fact ever executed.

"To my dear friend Yisrulik, may you and your wife and children be inscribed for a year of health and happiness, and may God’s blessings come upon all Israel, amen.

We’ve been worried stiff because you haven’t written us any letters. We’ve been walking around in a blue funk ever since that period of revolution, constitution, and pogroms began back home in the old country. We’re literally eating our hearts out. If the papers here in America aren’t bluffing, then those revolutionaries have probably made mincemeat of half the world already.

Every day we get wind of another sensational event. Last night I read a cable that they strung up Mr. Krushevan, that damned anti-Semite and president of the Fourth Duma. Let me know if that isn’t a lot of hot air. And write me about your business. Are you still working for someone or are you on your own? And how’s Khane-Rikl? What’s Hershel doing? And how is my cousin Lipa? And how about Yosl, Henikh’s boy! And Bentsi and Rokhl? Zlatke? Motl? And the rest of the tailors? Are you thinking of coming to America? Fill me in on all the details in your next letter.

Of course he relays the news of his family:

"The only thing we miss is . . . home. We’re homesick something awful. My wife, Jennie (we don’t call her Blume anymore), doesn’t leave me alone for a minute. She keeps nagging me to take a trip back to Russia and visit our beloved, dear ones in the cemetery. You’d never recognize Jennie. She’s a regular lady, rigged out in hat, gloves, and all the trimmings. I’m en­closing a snapshot of her and the rest of the family. What do you say to my oldest boy? That’s Motl. Now he’s called Mike. He’s an “alrightnik.” He works in a factory and earns ten, twelve dollars a week. If only he wouldn’t gamble, he’d be a topnotch alrightnik.

My other boy, Jack, used to work in a factory too. He managed to pick up a bit of English and is now a bookkeeper in a barbershop. My third rascal, Benjamin, is a barroom waiter. He doesn’t get wages, but he brings home between six and eight dollars a week in tips. My fourth boy, the one in the picture wearing a cap, is a loafer. He doesn’t want to go to school but hangs around outside on the street day and night playing ball.

The girls are okay too. They work in shops and have some cash in the bank. The only trouble is that I see neither hide nor hair of them. They step out whenever they like, go wherever they like, and with whomever they like.

America’s a free country. You’re perfectly free to keep opinions to yourself. You can’t even tell your own daughter who to marry".

The letter from the old country is written in a classic fashion readers  of Sholem Aleichem will recognize.  Start with humour, then relay in a matter of fact way some terrible events, deaths, murders in pograms and then close with humour.

His friend says America sounds like a place he wants nothing to do with.

"An Exchange of Letters Between America and the Old Country" is a miniature master work, readable in under five minutes.  It would make a good first work by Sholem Aleichem.

Mel u

“The Yom Kippur Cantor—Someone to Envy” - A Short Story by Sholem Aleichem - translated from Yiddish by Curt Leviant

Click Here to Read The Story


The Official Sholem Aleichem Website - Your First Resource


Sholem Aleichem on The Reading  Life 

In October of 2012 Yale University Press very generously gave me a complete set of The Yale Yiddish Library, nine volumes of the consensus greatest works of Yiddish literature, novels, plays, poems, essays and lots of short stories.  My first reaction, aside from delight and gratitude, was “where do I start?”

One of first works I read was an epistolary novel by Sholem Aleichem, The Letters of Menalham Mendi and Sheyne Sheyndi (ok not catchiest title but they did not have marketing departments in publishing houses in 1905).  This turned out to be a great delight, hilarious, realistic and the characters ring true. Here are parts of my thoughts from October 22, 2012:

“The letters that make up the novel are between a man and wife in early 20th century Ukraine.   It is just so funny I laughed out loud as I read it.   The man has left home to make money to send home for the support of his long 

suffering wife and their many children.   The woman is a conservative stay at home grounded in folk wisdom and the family wife and mother where the husband is bolder and though he probably loves his wife, finds his home life a bit boring.  He ,tries six different occupations from stock broker, writer,real estate sales, loan factoring and insurance sales man to match maker.  He starts each new occupation with a letter to his wife saying how he was cheated in his previous occupation but the new venture he had undertaken will bring the family riches. His wife writes back, with each letter starting with a loving greeting, and tells him how terrible things are at home, how her mother tells her she married a fool, and how he is an idiot with a bloated ego.  As I read this I could not help but see myself getting letters like this had this been me and my wife.  I felt it  when she kept calling him "your highness".  I found the ending terribly sad.”

Today’s story takes place on Yom Kippur Day, The Day of Atonement in the Jewish Liturgical Calender.  We are at a synagogue.  A highly talented cantor is preforming the closing prayer.  Sadly,he dies in mid-preformance.  Of 

course his wife is in shock as is everyone else.  We then learn that anyone who dies on  Yom Kippur days is given, at the expense of the community, a first class funeral all envy.

A simple story that I enjoyed reading.  

Sholom Aleichem is by far the most now known Yiddish writer.  Most identify him as the creator of the characters on which Fiddler on The Roof is based.

“Happy New Year” by Sholem Aleichem - A Short Story 1906- translated from Yiddish by Curt Levmet

“Imagine, every single one of them up to Mr. Big; yes, the czar himself takes bribes. Don’t be shocked—Mr. Big accepts them too, if he gets an offer. What’s that? You don’t believe me? You’re all laughing, eh? Well, have fun . . . Ready now? Have you all laughed yourself dry? Now gather round me, brother Jews, and listen to a story that happened a long time ago to my grandfather, may he rest in peace. It happened in the good old days when Czar Nich was boss....”

Sholem  Aleichem’s work is the heart and soul of Yiddish literature.  To most he is the genius behind Fiddler on the Roof.  He is a great writer, his stories, mostly about Eastern European Jews are wise, delightful, often hilarious and very wise.  Mark Twain on meeting Aleichem told him people often call him “The American Sholem Aleichem”

“Happy New Year” is set on a Russian train, as are numerous of his stories.  Many of the stories are structured as one person telling others on the train a story, maybe a bit apocryphal but anchored in real life events.  Jews could talk freely as the Goyim on the train could not understand Yiddish.

Our narrator is repeating a story his grandfather told.  It seems a New Czarist official had taken over the area in which the family lived.  To everyone’s shock, he won’t take a bribe!  Unheard of, even “The Big Man”, the Tsar takes bribes, it is how things are done.  His grandfather went to a highly regarded Rabbi for advise.  I don’t want to spoil the delightful plot but the grandfather ends up smoking a cigar and having tea with the Tsar and a new bribery friendly official is soon put in place.

Sholem Aleichem, the pseudonym of a Russified Jewish intellectual named Solomon Rabinovitz (1859–1916), created many of the most enduring works of modern Yiddish fiction. Born in Pereyaslav, Ukraine, he received a traditional education and lived in Kiev and Odessa before immigrating to New York City. Upon his death in 1916, the New York Times published a front-page obituary, memorializing him as “the Jewish Mark Twain.” More than 100,000 people attended his funeral procession, making it the largest New York City had ever seen. His humorous representations of the rhythms of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewish life have had a lasting influence on modern Jewish literary traditions.

Curt Leviant is the translator of Sholem Aleichem, Chaim Grade, I. B. Singer, and Avrom Reisen, and the author of ten critically acclaimed works of fiction, the most recent of which are King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son. His novels have been translated into seven European languages and into Hebrew and Turkish. But not yet into Yiddish.

I read this in the 2018 Pakn Treger Translation Issue, published by the Yiddish Book Center. 

I really enjoyed this story and I thank Curt Leviant for this elegant translation.

Mel u

Souls Are Flying - A Collection of Jewish Stories collected and retold by Scott Davis

My brief non-scholarly reflections on the origins of the Yiddish Short Story as a culture entity

My Posts spotlights the story "If I Were Rothchild" based on the work of Sholem Aleichem

Home Page of The Jacob Dinezon Project

My introduction to Yiddish literature came when i was given by the publisher the ten volume Yale University Digital Yiddish Library.  This is a superb collection with very well done highly learned introductions.   I soon learned Yiddish literature is a subject of intense scholarly interest.  This left in my mind a literature not especially suitable for "light reading" and certainly not something for children.  I also learned Yiddish literature was a genre largely with only male authors.  I found it a subject of intense study worldwide. The original stories were often published in small circulation elite literary journals, just like the short stories first published in the Philippines, Japan,  Ireland, America and Australia.  The authors were deeply learned.  Now that I have the introduction of Scott Davis to his Souls are Flying - A Celebration of Jewish Stories I know that stories by the classic Yiddish writers, especially the briefer ones, were often read aloud by teachers to children in a culture where books were expensive.  

  I was fascinated to learn of traveling rental libraries of Yiddish books that would make routes in Eastern Europe stopping at shtetls. On the Sabbath the library owners were prohibited from moving on by religious strictures.  So they rented out books of short stories that could be read in a brief period of time and returned the same day  thus reducing the rental fees.  Short budgets made it hard if not impossible for most to rent a long novel let alone buy one.  Stories were assessable to everyone, just as in outback Australia the genre of the "Bush Story" arose consisting of brief fiction that a person could read in their limited leisure time.   Pushing this a bit more, in Ireland scholars have concluded there was not a large enough audience with the education or leisure time to read novels as there was in 19th century England so the short story became a dominant genre.  Like Ireland of the early 19th century, Yiddish culture very much had a tradition of traveling story tellers, helping to keep the culture alive.  Story tellers often relied on works by famous writers but felt at liberty to alter them to make them more accessible and enjoyable to audiences not highly educated.  

Scott Davis, in my mind,Is in the tradition of the traveling story teller, whose love and intimate acquaintance with Yiddish literature gives him the ability and right  to with complete respect adopt classic short stories for modern audiences including young adults and children.   He wants to restore the tradition of reading Yiddish short stories aloud, to present the literature in a fashion that does not conjure up images of works that can be enjoyed or understood only by people of deep erudition in Yiddish culture.

  

Today I want to talk briefly about a very interesting totally enjoyable story "If I Were Rothchild", based on a story by Sholem Aleichem, on whose stories Fiddler on the Roof is based.  Very recently I read and posted on a story about Rothchild by Jacob Dinezon, "Apocalypse".  (This is included in 

Memories and Scenes, Shtetl, Childhood, Writers- Jewish Stories by Jacob Dinezon edited and introduced by Scott Davis.)  Rothchild was a larger than life figure in Yiddish society, many thought he did not really exist while others saw him with wealth and power far surpassing historical reality.  I think when pressed for money by spouses and children many annoyed  men would say "I am not Rothchild".   

"If I were Rothchild" is presented as if it a man telling an ever expanding story about what he would do if he were Rothchild.  He starts by saying he would make sure wives always have a few rubles for the Sabbath so they don't have to ask their husbands for money.  He begins with things he would do to improve conditions in the town the live in, building schools and better prayer rooms.  By the time the five page story is over he  is explaining how the world works and how he would bring about world peace and happiness if he were Rothchild. His ideas are actually quite good.  The story of the all powerful Rothchild banking family became fodder for anti-Semites but that is another story.

Souls are Flying - A Celebration of Jewish Stories also has short stories based on the work of I. L. Peretz and Jacob Dinezon.  I shall return to this collection.  

I strongly endorse this collection for anyone wanting a way into the amazing world of Yiddish literature or seeking to introduce children and young adults to this area.  

Scott Hilton Davis is a storyteller, playwright, and collector of Russian and Eastern European Jewish short stories from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Convinced of the historical, cultural, and ethical significance of stories by Sholem Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and the lesser-known writer, Jacob Dinezon, Scott now uses storytelling and playwriting to bring works by these beloved Jewish writers to new audiences. He is the author of Souls Are Flying! A Celebration of Jewish Stories and Half A Hanukkah: Four Stories for the Festival of Lights. Scott is a former public television executive with more than thirty-five years of experience writing, producing, and directing documentaries and dramas. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina."

Mel u

Motl, the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem (1907, translated by Hillel Hinkin)

Sholem Aleichem (1859 to 1916, Ukraine) is, through his creation of the character Trevor the Dairyman on whom Fiddler's Roof is based, by far the best known of writes from the Yiddish literary tradition.  I loved his epistolary novel The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl.  These letters between husband and wife are just flat out hilarious and provide a wonderful look at life in Eastern Europe and Yiddish culture.  Included with this work by Yale University Press is a first person account coming of age story of a young man, Motl, The Cantor's Son, the son of a recently deceased cantor (a singer of traditional songs) and his family.  It starts in the Ukraine and ends in New York City after the family passes through what the narrator keeps calling "Ella's Island".  

Aleichem starts with a child's view of Yiddish life.  We see the families struggle to survive, their relationships with their neighbors, Jewish and Christian, the family relationships, the growing maturity of the narrator, and have a lot of fun along the way.  About half way through, the family begins preparations to go to the promised land, America.  We see their difficulties in securing tickets (there were also sorts of scammers ready to prey on those hopeful to move to America) and we are along on the ten day voyage to the holiest of cities where the streets are paved with gold, no one goes hungry, and there are no Cossacks or secret police.  Everyone knows of someone who went to America with nothing and now is rich.  The biggest fear the family has is that the mother will not pass the physical at Ellis Island.  

Once in America, the younger family members soon master street English, play stick ball and are experts in dealing with the new challenges and opportunities New York City provides.  Aleichem lets us see the development of a hybrid argot combining  the slang of the tenements of New York City and Yiddish.  You can see the narrator is forgetting to a large extent his Yiddish heritage as he becomes more and more Americanized. 

This book was a great pleasure to read.  

I thank Yale University Press for a very generous gift of books.

The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by Sholem Aleichem (1905)

Sholem Aleichem (1859 to 1916, Ukraine) is by far, based on my limited knowledge, the most known to the wider world of Yiddish language writers.  His work is the basis for one of the most popular movies of all time Fiddler on the Roof.  I wish he would have lived to become hugely rich from the movie's success.  

The Letters of Menakhem - Mendel & Sheyne - Sheyndl , an epistolary novel, is my first exposure to the work of Sholem Aleichem.  The letters that make up the novel are between a man and wife in early 20th century Ukraine.   It is just so funny I laughed out loud as I read it.   The man has left home to make money to send home for the support of his long suffering wife and their many children.   The woman is a conservative stay at home grounded in folk wisdom and the family wife and mother where the husband is bolder and though he probably loves his wife, finds his home life a bit boring.  He ,tries six different occupations from stock broker, writer,real estate sales, loan factoring and insurance sales man to match maker.  He starts each new occupation with a letter to his wife saying how he was cheated in his previous occupation but the new venture he had undertaken will bring the family riches. His wife writes back, with each letter starting with a loving greeting, and tells him how terrible things are at home, how her mother tells her she married a fool, and how he is an idiot with a bloated ego.  As I read this I could not help but see myself getting letters like this had this been me and my wife.  I felt it  when she kept calling him "your highness".  I found the ending terribly sad.  

The Letters of Menakhem - Mendel & Sheyne - Sheyndl is only about 100 pages.  In addition to being Mel Brooks funny it gives a brilliant portrait of a marriage and a look at Jewish life in the Ukraine.  I am looking forward to reading soon Motl, The Cantor's Son, a much longer work.  The volume contains a very good introduction. 

Mel u