Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem

by Sholom Aleichem

Short stories by the distinguished Yiddish author evoke the culture, life styles, and customs of the Jews of Russia

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Judaism, Reference, Short Stories, Classics

692 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 1858

About the author

Russian-born American humorist Sholem Aleichem or Sholom Aleichem, originally Solomon Rabinowitz, in Yiddish originally wrote stories and plays, the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof .

He wrote under the pen name, Hebrew for "peace be upon you."

From 1883, he produced more than forty volumes as a central figure in literature before 1890.

His notable narratives accurately described shtetl life with the naturalness of speech of his characters. Early critics focused on the cheerfulness of the characters, interpreted as a way of coping with adversity. Later critics saw a tragic side. Because of the similar style of the author with the pen name of Mark Twain, people often referred to Aleichem as the Jewish version of Twain. Both authors wrote for adults and children and lectured extensively in Europe and the United States.

Reviews

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 55 short stories of Tales of Sholom Aleichem illuminate the Jewish culture of pre-revolutionary Russia including Russian culture, pogroms, and clashes among them. There is dark Russian humor, and then there is a level beyond dark Russian humor: Jewish Russian humor. Sometimes it is hard to stomach for those being initiated. Yet the hope and joy found even in the midst of a hard life (and whose life among us is not hard?) is compelling to all who travel here.

Seeking the mind and experience of people of another culture and/ or another time is a tricky task. But an even greater obstacle to our joy in discovering life through the eyes of people from a different culture (and time) is the availability of their stories in the language of the reader. For this reader, and I assume you as well, that language is English. This makes translation our initial hurdle.

“Everyone knows that translation is treason and translators are unredeemed copyists. Yes, translation is an act of violence. But I say this with utter reverence: Translators are cultural heroes. They are the closest to an ideal reader a text might ever have. Yet the chance they have of being original is as thin as a slice of salami. It couldn’t be otherwise.” Ilan Stavans, “Tevye’s many daughters and other comparisons, Forward Magazine, March 4, 2009

See entire article here.
https://forward.com/culture/books/103...

My edition includes the wonderful introduction by Francis Butwin, which is a selling point of this omnibus. Once translation is accomplished, we have already lost some of Aleichem’s unique brilliance. Reading in English, we might not realize that Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, nor appreciate that he was first to do so. Aleichem also switched languages and used idiomatic expressions which gave his writing a flavor that is difficult to capture for us English monolinguists. There is this lovely story that Aleichem was called “the Jewish Mark Twain.” The men were contemporaries, who each wrote under a pen name about their homeland using natural dialogue. Also, they both traveled and lectured throughout the US and Europe. When this was mentioned to Mark Twain, he is said to have replied, “Tell him I am the American Sholem Aleichem.”

The central figure (through sheer number of stories) of Sholom Aleichem’s work is, of course, Tevye the Dairyman, who has enjoyed wider publication and translation than all of Aleichem’s other villagers. Why do we love Tevye? He is wise but foolish, educated but ignorant, joyful but full of sorrows, compassionate but indignant. Tevye lives in a world that is not as he would wish it to be. There is much about the God of Israel that he does not understand, which causes him to wrestle honestly and openly with God as to why, even while preserving his faithfulness. With mixed results, Tevye loves his family, longs to provide them security and nourishment, and hopes to launch his daughters to find the same in their adult life. He is the best and worst of each of us, enduringly and endearingly relatable. If you read a biography of Sholem Aleichem, you may also find quite a bit of his own life challenges written into Tevye.

For a brief biography, see
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...

Sholom Aleichem wrote these short stories over a period of 20 years. Though the stories are set in the fictional village of Krasrilevke and surrounds (based on his childhood home of Pereyslav out side Kyiv in modern day Ukraine), they portray Aleichem as a traveler recording his ruminations on different people/ stories that he encounters. Scattered among the 55 stories are 8 stories about Tevye and his family, all told as if Tevye has encountered Aleichem as an old friend traveling in and out of the region.

If you would like to quickly find them, they are titled as such…

1. Tevye Strikes It Rich (also translated as Tevye Wins a Fortune or The Great Windfall)
2. Tevye Blows A Small Fortune (also translated as The Roof Falls In or The Bubble Bursts)
3. Today's Children (also translated as Modern Children)
4. Hodel
5. Chava
6. Shprintze
7. Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel (also translated as Tevye Goes to Palestine or Tevye is Going to Eretz Yisroel)
8. Lekh-Lekho (also translated as Get Thee Out)

Of course, you can also journey with Tevye through the musical The Fiddler on the Roof as either a live performance or through the award winning 1871 film (see review below). These presentations do an excellent job of showing how Tevye’s daughters, and the dying breathes of Tzarist Russia, pull apart his world. As I plodded through the stories over a period of months, about midway through I was all prepared to say that you could easily find a much smaller book that contained only the Tevye stories. But then as I was writing this review, I thought to go back through the stories I had marked as particularly enjoyable and insightful…

“’I don’t know what’s to become of the child, what he’s going to grow up into. He’s like a dripping dishrag, a soggy handkerchief, like a professional mourner… A child that can’t stop crying.’ This was my mother talking to herself as she dressed me in my holiday clothes…. Alas for my poor nose when my mother decides to ‘put it in order.’ I don’t know what my nose has done to deserve such a fate. It seems to me that it’s a nose like all noses, short and blunt, slightly turned up at the end, pinkish in color, and usually dripping.” The Purim Feast, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

“The Maiers and the Schnaiers… Actually there was only one Maier and one Schnaier. They were twins and the looked so much alike that there were times when it was impossible to tell which of the two was Maier and which was Schnaier. As babies, the story goes, a queer thing happened to them. They were almost exchanged—and it is possible that they really were exchanged. This is how it happened.” The Inheritors, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

“Once I was a rabbiner. A rabbiner, not a rabbi. That is, I was called rabbi—but a rabbi of the crown. To old-country Jews I don’t have to explain what a rabbi of the crown in. They know the breed. What are his great responsibilities? He fills out birth certificates, officiates at circumcisions, performs marriages, grants divorces. He gets his share from the living and the dead.” Tit for Tat, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

“If the day before Yom Kippur were three times as long as it is, it would not be long enough for Noah-Wolf the butcher to finish his work in time for evening services. And this is his work: he has to apologize to a town full of people for his year’s misdeeds.” The Day Before Yom Kippur, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

“The last time I told you about our Straggler Special, I described the Miracle of Hashono Rabo. This time I shall tell you about another miracle in which the Straggler Special figured, how thanks to the Straggler Special the town of Heissin was saved from a terrible fate.” A Wedding without Musicians, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

“Listen to me, your worst enemy can’t do to you what you can do to yourself, especially if a woman – I mean a wife – interferes. Why do I say this? I’m thinking of my own experience. Look at me, for instance. Well, what do you see? A man, you’d say—just an average man.” Gy-Ma-Na-Sia-A, Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin, 1990.

The whole of Aleichem’s writing is greater than the parts. Even as I read those tidbits above, I am drawn back into his world. It’s a book you can never really fully walk away from, but always have some inkling to return in the future. It’s impossible to identify one story and say “THIS is him at his best!” Even the musical Fiddler on the Roof focuses on Tevye, but uses tidbits from throughout Sholom Aleichem’s Favorite Tales. For example, do you recognize “If I was a Rothschild”? Yet the Tales end darkly with a pogrom that spreads the Jewish community across the globe, an experience of which Tevye partakes in the story, Get Thee Out. There is a nostalgia, a realization that the world of Sholom Aleichem has been lost. But it did not die. Rather it was reinvented as the Jewish people entered other lands (which Fiddler choses to focus on as a brighter ending). This is an intriguing reality for the children of Israel that Judaism, which refuses to fully assimilate, nonetheless has adapted to variant cultures through the ages. While I might return to Tevye more often through a re-read or the musical, there is a richness to reading all 55 stories presented in this volume, and Francis Butwin’s introduction is also magnificent. I’m glad I read this presentation and recommend it for those wanting the full experience.

PUBLISHING NOTE: This edition Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem is an omnibus collection of two previous publications by Crown Publishers. If you have Favorite Tales, you have all the stories translated by the Butwins including those appearing in:
The Old Country: Collected Stories of Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin
AND
Tevye’s Daughters, Sholom Aleichem, trans. Butwin & Butwin,

Fiddler on the Roof
The award winning musical focus’ on the Tevye stories. I love they way the use the meter and vocabulary of The Favorite Tales in the lyrics of the musical, as well as the more obvious Russian cultural scenes and settings. Presented to adults on Broadway and to children through Fiddler, Jr. enthusiasm and revenue for this show broke records. For the Broadway version, see
Broadway website: http://fiddlermusical.com/

Fiddler Musical analysis, Chava and intermarriage
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07...

1971 Movie IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067093/
Topol as Tevye is magnificent. It reduces the daughters from 7 to 5, and has a more hopeful ending than the Tales.

[Rebecca Beyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tevye stories are fun but not the high point of the book. I took the time to read the Introduction before I started on the stories themselves and I think it helped me appreciate more fully the humor and the language in the stories, the use of (and creativity of) cursing in daily conversation and other elements which, as ignorant as I am of this rich culture, I might have misinterpreted on a first reading. I will be re-reading these stories in the future.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was primarily interested in the Tevye stories which ultimately formed the backbone of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. Oh yes, the wit is pure Sholem Aleichem. The way Tevye addresses the author directly is endearing and comical. Tevye could have been Job with all the calamities and disasters which befell him. Yet he held on to his faith, his familiarity with the texts of Jewish books, and his singular way of looking at life.

[Brian Hutzell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiddler On The Roof is one of my favorite musicals, but I’d never read the stories from which it came before. I was not disappointed! Yes, there are some differences between Aleichem’s tales and the musical, but that is to be expected. Reading this was doubly-appropriate for me since I read much of it at the art museum where I work, in the same room as a tempera painting by Ben Shahn, who also drew some illustrations for the book!

[gideon · Rating 3 out of 5]

these were so funny <3 and so jewish. so comfortable & nostalgic for me. i especially loved the last story.

[Miriam Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read most of this book with a conscious blind eye to overt sexism, willing to excuse the fault for several reasons, not the least of which is - to take its most famous character, Tevye the Dairyman, for example - that sometimes the perp himself is brought up short by his own objects. One point of interest is Tevye's fantasy about wealth - how the first of this set of stories begins and source for Fiddler on the Roof's opening number. Aleichem's Tevye dreams of repairing the synagogue roof, feeding and clothing the poor, helping impoverished scholars with tuition for university, not of lying about all day as he does in the musical version, "If I were a Rich Man." Then, there are other oft-praised qualities, most important to my mind the documentary nature of these tales. They not only present for our inspection and enlightenment a lost world, but one recorded as not-yet-distant past, in effect Aleichem's reality, warts and all, without special reverence for the dead. This is not to say that reverence for these particular dead is not necessary or merited - quite the contrary, of course; only writing about a people as they were, without the rosy lens of respect and regret, nor of anger or outrage, has a value. Also worth noting is the idea of static story - sketches of characters and situations more than of events and change. At first, I felt disappointed that there's no scholarship here, which would have enriched it for me, but there is something to be said for an innocent reading - perhaps a somewhat childish reading.

What turned it for me is one story, the only one in the collection from a woman's point of view - only not really. It's a drawn-out joke at women's expense and not even original- woman as gossip and ignorant motormouth; hence my 3-star rating. I read the stories that followed that one with less tolerance. I suppose the rationalization is the ever-heralded point of view - it's pov within pov - but I feel Aleichem can do better. He was a good enough writer he didn't need the cheap shot.

However, I enjoyed the book and am glad I read it.

[Matt Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

From one point-of-view, the Nazis won their war. One of Hitler's main objectives was elimination of Jews and their culture. If one looks in Europe today, the rich Yiddish culture of the 19th century with its literature, theater, etc is gone. Yiddish is now considered an endangered language. Sholem Aleichem is a Yiddish/Hebrew greeting meaning "Peace to you," and was the pen name of Solomon Rabinowitz, born in Ukraine in 1859. His prodigious output of plays, short stories, etc led him to be ranked as one of the great names in literature. In translation, he became known worldwide. His short stories about Tevye, the dairyman, are the basis for Fiddler on the Roof. But, reading the stories in English, I personally found them unpleasant reading. Tevye's outlook on life, shaped by his poverty and the constant threat of pogrom (anti-semitic riots and assaults) causes him to behave in ways that are totally foreign to modern thought. Why should that be surprising, you ask? He did live in an environment that is totally foreign to us, and is gone forever. Why is that different than reading about a 19th century French fugitive like Jean Valjean? My answer is that it's not different. The educational value is there. I accept the judgment of history that the literary value is substantial. I didn't like the stories or the book.

[Rod Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because I am cast as the Rabbi in a production of Fiddler On The Roof - it includes the source material for the musical. I won't be giving too much away by saying that Tevye actually had 7 daughters and Matchmakers were all males in the stories.

[Marje · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most endearing and humorous books I have ever read ... Would recommend it to anyone who needs a good read.

[Arthur Gershman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked Fiddler on the Roof" (and who hasn't seen it?) you will enjoy reading the source for these folk tales or "bubbe meises."

[Jan]

Not at library