Excerpt from The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century In London the British Museum furnished me with a few modern works which are now difficult to procure, especially the periodical Kolmewasser and Warschauer Judisehe Zeitung. Unfortunately my time was limited, and I was unable to make thorough bibliographical notes from these rare publications; besides, I then hoped to be able to discover sets of them in Russia. In this I was disappointed - hence the meagreness of my references to them. The Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam and the Imperial Library in Berlin added nothing material to my information. Warsaw was my first objective point as regards facts and books. The latter I obtained in large numbers by rummaging the bookstores of Scheinfinkel and Morgenstern. In a dark and damp cellar, in which Morgenstern kept part of his store, many rare books were picked up. In Warsaw I received many valuable data from Perez, Dienesohn, Spektor, Freid, Levinsohn, both as to the activity which they themselves have developed and as to what they knew of some of their confreres. In Bialystok I called on the venerable poet, Gottlober; he is very advanced in years, being above ninety, is blind, and no longer in possession of his mental faculties, but his daughter gave me some interesting information about her father. Wilna presented nothing noteworthy, except that in a store a few early prints were found. In St. Petersburg I had hoped to spend usefully a week investigating the rich collections of Judeo-German in the Asiatic Museum and the Imperial Library. The museum was, however, closed for the summer, and the restrictions placed on the investigator in the library made it impossible to inspect even one-tenth of the three or four thousand books contained there. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

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 book examines representations of modernity in Yiddish literature between the Russian revolution of 1905 and the First World War. Within Jewish society, modernity was often experienced as a series of incursions and threats to traditional Jewish life. Writers explored these perceived crises in their work, in the process reconsidering the role and function of Yiddish literature itself.

Two novellas by S. Y. Abramovitsh open this collection of the best short works by three influential nineteenth-century Jewish authors. Abra- movitsh’s alter ego—Mendele the Book Peddler—introduces himself and narrates both The Little Man and Fishke the Lame. His cast of characters includes Isaac Abraham as tailor’s apprentice, choirboy, and corrupt businessman; Mendele’s friend Wine ’n’ Candles Alter; and Fishke, who travels through the Ukraine with a caravan of beggars. Sholem Aleichem’s lively stories reintroduce us to Tevye, the gregarious dairyman, as he describes the pleasures of raising his independent-minded daughters. These are followed by short monologues in which Aleichem gives voice to unforgettable characters from Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side. Finally, I. L. Peretz’s neo-hasidic tales draw on hasidic traditions in the service of modern literature. These stories provide an unsentimental look back at Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Although nostalgia occasionally colors their prose, the writers were social critics who understood the shortcomings of shtetl life. For the general reader, these translations breathe new life into the extraordinary worlds of Yiddish literature. The introduction, glossary, and biographical essays contemporaneous to each author put those worlds into context, making the book indispensable to students and scholars of Yiddish culture.