White Challah

Lamed Shapiro

1919

1

One day a neighbor broke the leg of a stray dog with a heavy stone, and when Vasil saw the sharp edge of the bone piercing the skin he cried. The tears streamed from his eyes, his mouth, and his nose; the towhead on his short neck shrank deeper between his shoulders; his entire face became distorted and shriveled, and he did not utter a sound. He…

Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Lamed Shapiro

1878–1948

The Yiddish writer Lamed Shapiro was born in a Ukrainian shtetl forty miles south of Kiev. Much of his life was peripatetic, as he struggled to earn a living, first in Poland and Ukraine, and later in the United States—in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where he died a penniless alcoholic in 1948. Depressed and at times suicidal, he tried his hand at writing for the Yiddish press, running restaurants, and inventing a method for producing color film. His dark and troubling short stories and novellas were groundbreaking in Yiddish literature. Psychologically complex, they are riven with violence and extremes of human behavior, including murder, rape, and sadism.

You may also like

The Cross

We were too late. The pogrom erupted that very night, suddenly, like an exploding mine, and in my own neighborhood. The first screams came to me confused, in a hazy dream. Then it dawned on me what…
View Source

The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition

[ . . . ] That the status of the Jews in Europe has been not only that of an oppressed people but also of what Max Weber has called a “pariah people” is a fact most clearly appreciated by those who…
View Source

Murder

Boy’s house. Boy. Three soldiers. The Boy is wounded all over. Twitches. Finally falls silent.Pale Soldier:He dead or just—?Flushed Soldier:Dead.Pale Soldier:’Cause if he’s not dead—Flushed…
View Source