A Trade Is a Kingdom

Yekhiel Shraybman

1973

Ay, a lifetime buzzed away . . . what is it, all in all? A dream, a short Friday in winter. . . .

Most people start to philosophize after a savory pot roast and a shot of liquor. Reb Nakhmen the carpenter, in his old age, eats like a bird. A drop of brandy or even a glass of wine would be poison for his sick stomach. He, on the contrary, gets…

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Creator Bio

Yekhiel Shraybman

1913–2005

Yekhiel Shraybman was born in Vad-Rashkev, Bessarabia. He studied at heder and the Czernowitz Hebrew Teacher’s Seminary before being expelled for his activity with the Komsomol youth movement. Shraybman moved to Bucharest, was active in underground socialist circles while employed at a Yiddish theater, and worked on a collective farm in Uzbekistan during World War II, which he chronicled in Dray zumers (1946). In the wake of the Khrushchev thaw, Shraybman joined the editorial board of the newly established Yiddish monthly, Sovetish heymland. His autobiographical and idiosyncratic short stories were very popular and regularly translated into Moldavian and Russian.

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