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A peasant was transporting a large cart of hay. He had to pass through a low gateway, but the cart couldn’t pass under it. People advised the peasant to wear glasses with magnifying lenses, so that…
Almost before she was out of the cradle, Sonechka was a bookworm. As Efrem, elder brother and family satirist, never tired of repeating, “All that reading has given Sonechka a butt like a chair and a…
A moon full of shimmering honey,
Exuding joy.
What bird beats in my heart?
Fly away—away, but not alone.
What am I shy? What?
Thick empyrean wine.
I’ll take a wicker bottle,
To the cemetery alone…
From Kiev I took a wagon heading for Zhitomir. Few of my readers will still remember the long coach wagons in which the past generation traveled before the railroads…
Shlof, shlof, shlof,
Der tateh vet kumen in dorf,
Vet er brengn an epeleh,
Vet zayn gezunt dos kepele.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
Daddy is traveling to the village,
He will bring back a little apple,
So…
Zion my innocent one, Zion my desired,
To thee my soul yearns from far away;
May I forget my right hand should I forget thee, my beauty,
Until my grave is sealed upon me . . .
May my tongue cleave…
In the province of Mollive, there is an old woman who is known for her shtetl wisdom, her old sayings, and her folktales. I met her quite by chance. Her…
“Miss Duncan? The dancer? What is that—ballet?” No, it is not ballet. Missing here are the two predominant elements that make up modern ballet: there is neither dance technique nor women wearing…
The train pulls up to the platform, steaming and boiling like a samovar.
Lazar is standing on the platform—short, glowing, joyful—waving his dirty handkerchief at the cars.
The train is on its way to…
The heder was in the basement. It was a dark, damp room with a low ceiling. There were two windows on the ground level. In the middle of the room, there was a long wooden table covered with books, two…