Sholem Aleichem – författare

In a small shtetl in Bessarabia in the early twentieth century, a traveling Yiddish acting company comes to town. The townspeople react in unison: 'What is this? Actor-types? Comedians? Who needs them'? But for Reisel, daughter of a poor cantor, and Leibel, son of a rich man, the theatre is magic, and they immediately fall under its spell. Fleeing their small town, they run off together with the acting company but soon become separated from each other. Reisel goes on to become a star on the concert stage, and Leibel a sensation on the theatrical stage. They take new names - Reisel becoming Rosa Spivak, and Leibel becoming Leo Rafalesko - and repeatedly try to meet, but they are kept apart by their aspirations and successes, and by the interventions of a motley cast of impresarios, who exploit them for their own enrichment. They are wandering stars, shooting from stage to stage, from city to city, touring all the major European capitals and eventually reaching New York, a city of dreams shattered and fulfilled, of romance thwarted and consummated.It is the journey of a lifetime, a journey played out in every generation, and within every life, and Sholem Aleichem captures it with uncommon poignancy and richness, and with the humor, whimsy, and wistfulness that are his hallmarks.

The author of Yiddish novels and short stories, Sholem Aleichem, 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.

 

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.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The first complete translation of an epic love story by the creator of Tevye in Fiddler on the RoofNext year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Yiddish humorist Sholem Aleichem as well as the 100th anniversary of the publication of Wandering Stars, his sprawling love story spanning ten years and two continents, and set in the colorful world of the Yiddish theater. In a Russian shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century, Reisel, daughter of a poor cantor, and Leibel, son of a rich man, fall under the spell of a traveling Yiddish acting company. Together they run off to join the theater but quickly become separated. Reisel goes on to become Rosa Spivak, concert star, and Leibel becomes Leo Rafalesko, theatrical sensation. Kept apart by their own successes and by the managers who exploit their talent, they tour the world until their wanderings bring them both to New York. An engrossing romance, a great New York story, and an anthem for the theater, Wandering Stars is a long-lost literary classic, rediscovered here in a vibrant new translation.

Tevye is the compassionate, lovable, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, and Tevye the Dairyman is a heartwarming and poignant account of life in turn-of-the-century Russia. Through the workaday world of a rural dairyman, his grit, wit, and heart, his daughters' courtships and marriages, and the eventual menace of the pogroms, Sholem Aleichem reveals the fabric of a now-vanished world.Motl is the clear-eyed, spirited, mischievous boy who narrates Motl the Cantor's Son, a comic novel about his emigration with his family from Russia to America. It is a journey that mirrors a larger exodus, telling the story of the disintegration of traditional Jewish life and the beginning of a new chapter of Jewish history in America.