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Rebbe Levi YitskhokTsine, his wifeKhayim, their sonGnendl, their daughterTaybele, their daughterHenekh Yoel, gabbaiOyzer, butcherZavl, butcherItsheMordkheMoysheKhveder, shabes-goyPave…
Ai, the troubles of a greenhorn! A scholar in the subject of cloakmaking, as I am today, I had not yet become. And if in those days you had “unioned” me till you were blue in the face, I still would…
The Jews held cattle dealers in contempt. They considered them illiterate louts in no way different from peasants. My grandfather never let a cattle dealer into his house. Into the barn yes, but never…
Rabbi Levi Yitskhok’s drayman—the one who wore
tales and tfiln as he smeared the wheels
of his wagon with tar—
turns up in the shape of a bunch of Jews
hanging around their houses,
washing the car
(w…
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…
Joyous, free, the bird will sing,
Trembles on his throne the king,
Trembling is not good for me—
Like a bird I sing so free,
As winds prance,
In a trance,
Wild and blind, I roam and dance,
One street…
The exterior of Tevye’s house. A Fiddler is seated on the roof, playing. Tevye is outside the house.Tevye:A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you…
…I remember a woman
who sat on the pot where the apples cooked in the cold
basement, her face black from smoke. And here, near this brick
building with a red tile roof, is one of our family, Mausha
V…
The shtetl, lost here among Polish fields and groves, might be called Turek or Przasnysz, Konin or Maków, yet what one remembers is not the name but the old marketplace reeking of tar and dung where a…
Modern Yiddish literature focuses upon the shtetl during its last tremor of self-awareness, the historical moment when it is still coherent and self-contained but already…