Introduction

This is an attempt to provide a survey of the best Yiddish short stories available in English translation that can be used for studying Yiddish literature, teaching Yiddish classes and in programming for Yiddish clubs. The stories address humanistic themes: Speaking truth to power, ethical commitment, the dangers of religious fanaticism, the plight of the poor, anti-Semitism, the struggle for social justice and a more humane society, moral choices, spirituality, the parent-child relationship, the role of women, marriage and intermarriage, etc. In the same spirit, a separate section is devoted to stories relating to Jewish holidays, for adults and children alike. Much of modern Yiddish literature is a prime expression of Jewish humanism. Its creators were typically rebels against authority, both Jewish and Gentile, and proponents of universal ideals of freedom of thought, social justice and human dignity. Most Yiddish authors did not write for the educated elite, but for the average Jew. They formed a special bond with their readers, which gave Yiddish literature a popular character. Although rooted in the religious tradition, they were, with few exceptions, secular in their outlook and sympathetic to radical movements of the left. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that secular Jewish leftists have historically taken a leading role in preserving this literature and incorporating into it their concept of Jewish culture (yidishkayt). It can almost be said that Yiddish literature served as their Bible. But secular leftist Jews were not the rst American Jews to produce translations. That honor belongs to Leo Wiener, a Harvard professor and immigrant from Poland, who was so impressed with Morris Rosenfelds poetry that he translated selections and published them as Songs of the Ghetto (1898). The following year, Wieners The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century appeared, including selections from Yiddish writers and poets.
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Most other early translations of Yiddish literature into English in the US were published by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS), the oldest Jewish publisher in the US. A non-prot membership organization founded in 1888 by German Jews, the JPS recognized that without translations, the descendants of East European Jewish immigrants would lose touch with their literary traditions. This perspective was unusual for German Jews who generally considered Yiddish a crude vernacular that should disappear. It also saw Jewish literature as an excellent tool for educating the non-Jewish public about the Jewish experience in Europe and America. The JPSs earliest translations were of I.L. Peretzs Stories and Pictures (1906) and Yiddish Tales (1912), both translated by Helena Frank, a non-Jew from Great Britain. The JPS also issued two Sholem Asch novels, Kiddush Ha-Shem (1912, translated by Rufus Learsi) and Sabbatai Zevi (1930); A.S. Sachs elegy to Jewish life in Lithuania, Worlds That Passed (1928, translated by Harold Berman); and three books by Joseph Opatoshu, including the novels In Polish Woods (1938, Isaac Goldberg) and The Last Revolt (1952, Moshe Spiegel), as well as the short story collection A Day in Regensburg (1968, Joseph Sloan). In 1967, JPS published Chaim Grades The Well (Ruth Wisse); in 1969, the Anthology of Holocaust Literature, with many excerpts translated from Yiddish; in 1979, a new edition of Ruth Rubins Voices of a People: The Story of Yiddish Folksong and in 1985, a short story collection, Gifts, which includes six I.B. Singer stories. Now in its 123rd year, JPS has established a distinguished record of publishing modern Yiddish literature in translation. This record extends to pre-modern Yiddish literature as well. In 1934, JPS published the two-volume classic Maaseh (mayse) Bukh, edited by Moses Gaster, consisting of Yiddish folktales from the Middle Ages. It was not long before secular Jews took up the cause. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951), the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, rejected Judaism as a youth and became a free thinking Debsian socialist. He is best known as an editor of the popular socialist journal Appeal to Reason from his base in Girard, Kansas, hardly a bastion of yidishkayt. To make both literary classics and
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socialist tracts available to the masses in inexpensive paperback editions, he founded Little Blue Books. Among the thousands of titles he published were Aschs God of Vengeance (1918, Isaac Goldberg), Yiddish Short Stories (1923, edited and likely translated by Goldberg) and Great Yiddish Poetry (1924). Before the trauma of World War II, Yiddish-based organizations in North America were ambivalent about translating Yiddish literature into English, fearing that it would discourage younger Jews from maintaining literacy in the original and inevitably lead to assimilation. Scattered translations of poetry and prose appeared in the Jewish Frontier, the journal of the Labor Zionist movement, the Menorah Journal, a Jewish humanist journal, the Jewish Spectator, a newsletter edited by the iconoclastic Trude Weiss-Rosmarin and the Congress Weekly, the magazine of the American Jewish Congress. After the loss of so many Yiddish writers and readers in the Holocaust, occasional Yiddish translations and articles about Yiddish continued to appear in these periodicals and newer Jewish magazines notably Commentary, founded as a liberal journal in 1946 and Midstream, a Zionist magazine founded in 1955. Many of these writings were about the Holocaust or stories by the popular I.B. Singer. Then a major new player arrived on the scenepro-Soviet Jewish communists, aka the linke (left) yidn. Yiddish prose and poetry in translation became a regular feature of Jewish Life, a magazine established by the Yiddish daily, the Morgn Freiheit, in 1946 to accommodate its younger adherents who no longer read Yiddish. Translations by either Henry Goodman or Max Rosenfeld continued to be a staple of its successor, Jewish Currents established in 1958. (In more recent years, this role has been fullled by Gerald Stillman, also known for translating a number of novels by the zeyde or grandfather of modern Yiddish literature, Mendele Moykher-Sforim.) In 1947, the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order (JPFO) published a short collection of Peretz stories. The YKUF, the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (Yiddish Cultural Alliance), founded in 1937, published an enormous output of Yiddish literature before venturing
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into English translation in 1961, with the publication of The New Country, a large collection of Yiddish short stories about Jewish life in America. This was followed by a 1964 collection of Morris Rosenfelds poetry and prose, an Isaac Raboy novel, Nine Brothers (1968) and a 1974 collection of stories by Chaver Paver (Gershon Einbinder). Once again, the translators were either Henry Goodman or Max Rosenfeld. The best collection of translated Yiddish short stories for children remains Yiddish Stories For Young People (1966) edited by Yiddish scholar Itche Goldberg (translated mostly by Benjamin Efron and Henry Goodman). Goldberg, the editor of Yidishe Kultur, a rst class Yiddish literary journal until his death in 2006, was long associated with Jewish Life/Currents, YKUF, the JPFO and other institutions of the Jewish left. When Nathan Ausubel, then a linker yid, wrote his classic A Treasury of Jewish Folklore (1948), much of it from Yiddish sources, he meant it to illustrate the underground anti-elitist tradition he detected within Jewish tradition. This extraordinarily popular book is still in print over 60 years later. Ruth Rubin, another product of the old Jewish left, became the foremost collector of Yiddish folksongs, writing A Treasury of Yiddish Folksongs (1950) and Voices of a People (1963). It is sad but true that the linke Yidn embraced Soviet communism, despite its anti-Semitic practices, and only began to disavow it in 1956 after Khruschevs earthshaking denunciation of Stalin. For most linke Yidn, the nal break did not occur until 1967-68, when the Soviet Union sided with the Arab states in the Six Day War and the Polish government launched an anti-Semitic campaign under the guise of anti-Zionism. But they retained a left wing orientationnon-communist, albeit not anti-communist and a commitment to preserve Yiddish culture in various ways, including the translation project. For example, in 1967 and 1995 respectively, the Sholem Aleichem Club of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is both an educational and a cultural organization, published two volumes of Max Rosenfelds translations of Yiddish short stories about Jewish
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life in America, Pushcarts and Dreamers and New Yorkish, the latter in partnership with the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO), a network of progressive secular Jewish Sunday schools and adult societies founded in 1970, of which the Sholem Aleichem Club is a member. The CSJO, a small entity with meager resources, also published Apples and Honey: Music and Readings for a Secular Jewish Observance of the Jewish New Year Festival (1995), which includes many humanistic Yiddish poems in English translation. In 1997, it published my pamphlet, A Yiddish Short Story Sampler, a much shorter version of this guide. To the best of my knowledge, no other resource of this nature existed thenor does any resource akin to it exist at the present time. In 1989, the Zhitlovsky Foundation for Jewish Culture, led by Itche Goldberg, helped fund A Century of Yiddish Poetry, an anthology edited and translated by Aaron Kramer who made it a point to include the Proletpen poets of the communist left. In 1991, the Zhitlovsky Foundation published a bilingual collection of Peretzs stories edited and translated by Eli Katz. In Canada, the Jewish magazine Outlook, established in 1963 as Canadian Jewish Outlook, with the same roots as Jewish Currents, continues to feature Yiddish poetry and prose in translation and the original Yiddish. Other Canadian periodicals have published Yiddish translations, but none with the consistency or passion of Outlook. Jewish socialists also played a signicant role in the translation project. Irving Howe, the greatest anthologist of translated Yiddish literature, including short stories, poetry and essays, was a committed socialist, as was his collaborator, Yiddish poet Eliezer Greenberg. Together, they were responsible for the publication in 1953 of the now classic I.B.Singer story Gimpel the Fool in the liberal journal Partisan Review, translated by a young Saul Bellow and the seminal A Treasury of Yiddish Stories in the following year, as well as other anthologies. Greenberg also served as editor of Di Tsukunft, a Yiddish literary journal aligned with Jewish socialists. Joseph Leftwich, a British Jew, whose literary and scholarly anthologies from the Yiddish were published in the US, was a socialxi

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ist, too. The organized Jewish socialist movement in the US, however, was less active. The Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring did not publish much Yiddish literature in translation, apart from its noted series of four song books, by Chana and Joseph Mlotek, which included many Yiddish poems put to music. The only other translations to its credit are a collection of Sholem Aleichems plays (1967), a single play by the same author, The Jackpot (Dos Groyse Gevins) (1989), translated by Barnett Zumo, and a slender volume of Holocaust literature (1983) edited and translated by Yiddish scholar Elias Schulman. Individual members of the Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring, however, have been Yiddish translators in other venues. Four-time Workmens Circle President Barnett Zumo has done numerous translations including Jacob Glatsteins Holocaust Poems, I Keep Recalling (1993 Ktav), Songs to a Moonstruck Lady: Yiddish Poems by and about Women (2005, Tsar Publications), two collections of short stories by Tsvi Eisenman (2001, 2008, Ktav) and most recently Yiddish Literature in America (2009, Ktav) an anthology of essays, short stories, essays and poetry. Marvin Zuckerman, a Workmens Circle leader and Yiddish educator from Southern California, has translated Mendele, Peretz and Sholem Aleichem. In 2005 the Workmens Circle became the publisher of Jewish Currents, the culmination of a grand reconciliation between the former pro-communist and social democratic branches of the Jewish left. Since 2004, Jewish Currents has included a regular bilingual Yiddish poetry column, Mameloshn, conducted by Zumo, and has published numerous articles about Yiddish. Its unique contribution to Yiddish literature in translation was the 2007 publication in pamphlet form of a new translation of a Sholem Aleichem story, Pity for Living Creatures, translated by Gerald Stillman, to accompany a Sholem Aleichem bobble-head doll. This story also appeared in the March/April 2009 issue. For nancial reasons, Workmens Circle has stopped publishing Jewish Currents. Jewish Currents re-emerged as an independent magazine with its May/June 2009 issue, its devotion to yidishkayt intact.
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YIVO, the Yiddish Research Institute, founded in Vilna, Poland in 1925 and re-located to New York in 1940, has published outstanding scholarship in Yiddish and English, but only two translations of Yiddish ction: a bi-lingual collection of Peretz stories (1947, Sol Liptzin) and Yiddish Folktales (in collaboration with Pantheon Books, 1988, Leonard Wolf.). Its longtime leader, Max Weinreich (1894-1969), the teacher of a generation of new Yiddish speakers and writers in the US, was a Bundist in his youth, and remained the model of a secular Jew. In Europe YIVO had ties with the Bund, but for many decades, it has been non-political. One of the greatest proponents of Yiddish literature in translation today is the National Yiddish Book Center (NYBC), which has been non-political from its beginnings in 1980. Every issue of its quarterly journal Pakn Treger includes a bilingual short story. In 1995, in collaboration with a public radio station in California, the NYBC produced Jewish Short Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond, nine cassette tapes (since converted into CDs) consisting of 31 short stories, 20 of them from the Yiddish. Other projects of this nature have followed, including an English CD of Sholem Aleichems Mottel the Cantors Son. However, in his superb book Outwitting History, NYBC founder Aaron Lansky reveals that most of the Centers major zamlers (book collectors) and supporters, in its formative years, were secular leftist Jews. He aptly describes Yiddish literature as a counter culture that presents a challenge to mainstream values. Of course, many Jews not identied with the secular Jewish left have produced major translations of Yiddish literature into English. (Maurice Samuel, Curt Leviant, Hillel Halkin, Ruth Wisse just to name a few). Not to be overlooked, Midstream devoted its entire July/August 2002 issue to Yiddish Culture, Language and Literature, and has since included Yiddish-related material, including literary translations, in every July/August issue. Among commercial publishers in the US, the pioneer was Alfred A. Knopf, the son of German Jewish immigrants. In 1920, he published the very rst translation of Sholem Aleichem stories in the U.S., Jewish Children (1920, Hannah Berman), and
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all of I.J. Singers translated novels, beginning with The Brothers Ashkenazi (1936, Maurice Samuel). Knopf published the rst I.B. Singer novel that appeared in English, The Family Moskat (1950, A.H. Gross). During the 1980s, it published hardcover editions of Chaim Grades My Mothers Sabbath Days (Chana Kleinerman Goldstein and Inna Hecker Grade) and Rabbis and Wives (Harold Rabinowitz and Inna Hecker Grade). Thomas Yoselo, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, left a bigger impression. He published a signicant number of Yiddish translations under multiple imprints, including Peretz (1958 and 1959, translated by Moshe Spiegel and Joseph Leftwich, respectively), Sholem Aleichem (1959, Curt Leviant), and three Mendele novels: The Nag (1955, Moshe Spiegel) The Parasite (1956, Gerald Stillman), and Fishke the Lame (1960, Gerald Stillman). Yoselo also published the original 1963 edition of Ruth Rubins Voices of a People, and an updated version of The Golden Peacock (1961), Joseph Leftwichs famous Yiddish poetry anthology, as well as others of Leftwichs contributions to Yiddish literature and scholarship.In the pre-modern realm, Thomas Yoselo published a translation (by Beth-Zion Abrahams, 1963) of Glckel of Hamelns memoirs, The Life of Glckel of Hameln. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, another Jewish-owned literary house, published nearly the entirety of I.B. Singers works, while Crown, founded by Nat Wartels, also Jewish, published Sholem Aleichems The Old Country (1946, Julius and Frances Butwin), Tevyes Daughters (1949, Frances Butwin), and Wandering Stars (1952, Frances Butwin), as well as Nathan Ausubels A Treasury of Jewish Folklore. Between 1991 and 1996, Joseph Simon/Pangloss Press, a small Jewish publisher from California, produced a multi-volume series, The Three Great Classic Writers of Modern Yiddish Literature, consisting of Selected Works of Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Marvin Zuckerman, Gerald Stillman, Marion Herbst), Sholem Aleichems Tevye the Dairyman (Miriam Katz, Marvin Zuckerman), and Selected Works of I.L. Peretz (Marvin Zuckerman, Marion Herbst). A non-Jewish publisher, G.P.Putnams Sons, released nearly all
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of Sholem Aschs novels and short story collections (the translators included Willa and Edwin Muir, Elsa Krauch, A.H. Gross, and Maurice Samuel) and six volumes of Sholem Aleichems novels and short stories, from 1969 to 1985, including The Adventures of Menahem-Mendel (Tamara Kahan), Old Country Tales (Curt Leviant), and In the Storm (Aliza Shevrin). As a publisher of Yiddish literature in English, Schocken Books was, until the turn of the 21st century, in a class by itself. Founded by Zalman Schocken (1877-1959), a secular liberal Zionist, its sole mission has been to promote Jewish studies. With Inside Kasrilevke (1948, Isidor Goldstick), Shocken became the third commercial publisher to translate Sholem Aleichem. A year later, it published Mendeles The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third (Moishe Spiegel). Yiddish folksongs were well represented in Ruth Rubins A Treasury of Jewish Folksongs (1950), and Yiddish folktales in Louis Newmans Hasidic Anthology (1963). Schocken also published I.J. Singers Family Carnovsky (1969, Joseph Singer), and nearly all of Howe and Greenbergs translations of Yiddish literature in either hardcover or softcover editions, including the rst paperback edition of the seminal A Treasury of Yiddish Short Stories (1973). In 1977, it published a soft cover edition of the Yiddish classic, The Memoirs of Glckel of Hameln (rst translated in 1932 by Marvin Lowenthal). Schocken also produced the soft cover edition of Lucy Dawidowiczs indispensable The Golden Tradition, Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (1967). In 1987, Schocken published softcover versions of Grades My Mothers Sabbath Days (Chana Kleinerman Goldstein and Inna Hecker Grade) and Rabbis and Wives (Harold Rabinowiz and Inna Hecker Grade). In the same year, it inaugurated its Library of Jewish Classics with the issuance of Sholem Aleichems Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (Hillel Halkin), followed by The I.L. Peretz Reader (1990, Ruth Wisse) and Anskys The Dybbuk and Other Writings (1992, translated mostly by Golda Werman). In 1996, Schocken issued Mendeles Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler (Dan Miron and Ted Gorelick). The New Yiddish Library of Yale University has also issued edixv

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tions of the same Peretz and Ansky titles published by Schocken, as well as Sholem Aleichems Letters of Menakhem Mendel and Motl the Cantors Son (2002, Hillel Halkin) and The World According to ItsikSelected Poetry and Prose of Itsik Manger (2002, Leonard Wolf). In 2007, it published a novel, Everyday Jews by Yehoshue Perle (Maier Deshell and Margaret Birstein), and stories by Lamed Shapiro. Both Yales New Yiddish Library and Schockens Library of Jewish Classics series are joint projects of the National Yiddish Book Center and the Fund for the Translation of Yiddish Literature, which has received nancial support from Felix Posen, a British Jewish philanthropist who endows universities to teach courses in secular Judaism. Among university presses, Syracuse University has been most active at Yiddish translation, thanks in large part to Ken Frieden, a progressive secular Jew and professor, who is the editor of its Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music and Arts series and a translator in his own right. It has published works by Mendele, The Wishing Ring (2003, Michael Wex) and Sholem Aleichem (Nineteen to the Dozen: Monologues and Bits and Bobs of Other Things, (1998, Ted Gorelick); and The Further Adventures of Menachem Mendel, (2001, Aliza Shevrin). Peretz was added to the mix in Friedens 2004 anthology, Classic Yiddish Stories (Ken Frieden, Ted Gorelick, and Michael Wex). Syracuse has also published works by S. Ansky (2000, Joachim Neugroschel), Dovid Bergelson (1996, Golda Werman) and Kadya Molodowsky (2006, Leah Schoolnik) and two novels by Chava Rosenfarb, Bociany and Lodz and Love (2000, both translated by the author). In 2001, Syracuse published an abridged edition of The New Country: Stories from the Yiddish About Life in America (originally published by YKUF), and in 2003, a bilingual edition of The Jewish Book of Fables: The Selected Works of Eliezer Shtaynbarg (Curt Leviant). Yiddish continues to attract Jewish rebels and outsiders. Feminist, gay and lesbian Jews, for example, are among todays most passionate advocates for Yiddish culture. Irena Klepsz, a Yiddish poet and translator, is the daughter of a Bundist who fell in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She is a graduate of Workmens Circle/
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Arbeter Ring shuln (Yiddish schools), studied under Max Weinreich and received a degree in Yiddish from City College. A feminist and a lesbian, she provided the introduction and some of the translations for the rst anthology of Yiddish women writers, Found Treasures (1994) and in 1995, she coordinated a conference entitled Di Froyen (The Women): Women and Yiddish. Frieda Forman, the lead editor of Found Treasures, the rst anthology of Yiddish women writers, although not secular, considers herself a progressive Jewish feminist. Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal founded in 1989, has as its Yiddish editor Faith Jones, a gay feminist and secular Jew, who has translated Yiddish poetry into English. She is also a regular contributor to Outlook, Canadas secular Jewish progressive magazine. Rhea Tregebov, editor of the second anthology of Yiddish ction by women, Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers (2007), is a progressive secular Jewish feminist from Canada. The Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture, named after the leftist Jewish poet of the same name, collaborated with the University of Wisconsin Press in the publication of Proletpen: Americas Rebel Yiddish Poets (Amelia Glaser, 2005), an anthology of leftwing poets that includes Teitelboim. It also nurtured the publication of twelve other translations, mainly poetry collections including Teitelboims, All My Yesterdays Were Steps (KTAV, 1995, Aaron Kramer) and Songs to a Moonstruck Lady (Tsar Publications, 2006, Barnett Zumo) as well as Inheritance (Yerushe) by Peretz Markish (Tsar Publications, 2007, Mary Shulman). Working with the Syracuse University Press, the Center shepherded the publication of The Last Buttery (1998) consisting of Holocaust poetry translated by Aaron Kramer, The Jewish Book of Fables: The Selected Works of Eliezer Shtaynbarg (2003, Curt Leviant) and a prose collectionan abridged edition of The New Country: Stories About Jewish Life in America (2001). A number of these poetry collections appear in bi-lingual editions. Notably, David Weintraub, the Executive Director of the Center and a co-editor of both Proletpen and the Markish collection, identies as a secular progressive Jew. It is clear that these Jews consider Yiddish as a counter culture.
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So do the editors of the three of the most recent anthologies of Yiddish literature in translation, Beautiful As the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories (2003), edited by Martha Bark; Prophets & Dreamers: A Selection of Great Yiddish Literature (2002), edited by Miriam Weinstein; and No Star Too Beautiful: Yiddish Stories from 1382 to the Present (2002), edited by Joachim Neugroschel, a gay man, who has edited three related anthologies as well. The latest anthology, Yiddish in America 1870-2000 (Ktav, 2009) consists mainly of poetry and essays, with a few short stories. Its editor, Emanuel Goldsmith, is a Reconstructionist rabbi; its translator the aforementioned Barnett Zumo, a leader in the secular progressive Jewish world for decades. Although literacy in Yiddish is diminishing, there is still considerable interest in reading the original among academics, college students and Yiddish book clubs/reading circles (leyen krayzn). The International Association of Yiddish Clubs, made up of older Jews who read and speak Yiddish at various levels of prociency, still thrives and pockets of younger Jews have been attracted to mameloshnthe mother tongue of their ancestors. Di Tsukunft (The Future), Afn Shvel (On the Threshhold) and Yugntruf (The Call of Youth) survive as Yiddish literary journals and have recently been joined by Gilgulim (Reincarnated Souls). How accessible is Yiddish literature to North American Jews? For the overwhelming majority that do not read Yiddish and the few that do, Yiddish Stories For Young People is a great resource to introduce children to the joys of Yiddish literature in translation, but it is out of print. The childrens stories of the two most popular Yiddish writers, Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer, are available in translation, but outside of the relatively small number of secular Jewish Sunday school programs, they are probably not used much. In religious Sunday or day schools, Yiddish literature in any form is generally neglected, because their curriculum is based on Hebrew, Israel and religious instruction. For adults, it is all well and good to send someone to the library for a book by a translated Yiddish author, and it is true that a
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number of excellent collections of Yiddish stories in translation are available, especially Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenbergs classic A Treasury of Yiddish Stories (1954). However, it remains a daunting task for interested readers, burdened by a heavy load of work, family, communal and other responsibilities, to gain an appreciation for Yiddish literature without specic guidance. Students studying Yiddish literature in translation in universities no doubt receive guidance from their professors, but they too could benet a systematic treatment of the subject. At a minimum, it is my hope that this guide prompts Jews interested in Yiddish literature, including teachers, students and Yiddish clubs, to study these stories in the original or in translation and use them in academic courses and adult education programs. With a little creativity, they can nd their way into holiday or life cycle celebrations. Strange as it may sound, this is the only resource of its kind in existence. For those who read Yiddish or are learning Yiddish, this guide provides the Yiddish title and source for all the stories. There is one bilingual collection listed in the bibliography and others referenced in this introduction. So where can most Yiddish books be found? Those living in metropolitan New York have it easiest. YIVOs library is the mother lode (212-246-6080) but the New York Public Librarys Dorot Jewish Division (212-930-0971) also has an extensive Yiddish collection. Other repositories of Yiddish literature include the Library of Congress in Washington D.C, the Klau Library (Hebrew Union College) in Cincinnati and various large university libraries. In Canada, McGill University in Montreal and the University of Torontos Robarts Library have the best Yiddish collections. And there is always the internet, especially the Mendele website at www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele A brave new world in Yiddish has emerged since the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA digitized its entire collection of 1.5 million Yiddish books so that they can be reprinted and purchased on demand. Eleven thousand of these titles can also be read for free on line. (Go to www.bikher.org).
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There are 135 stories summarized in this guide and they are organized by topic and by holiday. Most of the stories themselves do not exceed 15 pages or so. It is safe to assume that shorter stories are more likely to be readand used. My criteria for selecting certain stories over others may be questioned by some, but readers should expect to nd summaries of a solid core of the best Yiddish short stories, as recognized by literary critics and scholars in the eld, as well as lesser known stories of genuine interest. A special eort was made to reference stories by and about women. Finally, I took the liberty of including some chapters of novels and excerpts from memoirs.

Sources for introduction

The Canadian Jewish Outlook Anthology. Rosenthal, Henry and Berson, S. Cathy, eds. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1988. Commentary ReaderTwo Decades of Articles and Stories. Norman Podhoretz, ed. New York: Atheneum, 1967. Jewish Currents Reader, 1956-1966. New York: Jewish Currents, 1966. A Ten Year HarvestThird Decennial Reader, 1966-1976. Harap, Louis, ed. New York: Jewish Currents, 1977. Jewish Currents Reader 4, 1976-1986. Harap, Louis, ed. New York: Jewish Currents, 1987. Jewish Frontier Anthology, 1935-1945. New York: Jewish Frontier Association, 1945. Jewish Frontier Anthology, 1945-1967. New York: Jewish Frontier Association, 1967. Jewish Life Anthology, 1946-1956. New York: Jewish Life, 1956. The Menorah TreasuryHarvest of Half a Century, Schwarz, Leo, ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964. Midstream Reader, Katz, Shlomo, ed.. New York: Thomas Yosel-

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o, 1960. Abramowicz, Dina. Yiddish Literature in English Translation: List of Books in Print. New York: YIVO, 1968, 1969, 1976. Ausubel, Nathan. Jewish Culture in America: Weapon for Jewish Survival and Progress. New York: New Century Publishers, 1948. Buhle, Paul; Buhle, Mari Jo; Georgakas, Dan. Encyclopedia of the American Left. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1992 (various articles on the Yiddish left). Denman, Hugh. Anthologies of Yiddish Literature, Mendele Review (on-line journal), Vol. 08.008, July 29, 2004. Glaser, Amelia and Weintraub, David. Proletpen: Americas Rebel Yiddish Poets. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Katz, Dovid. Words on Fire: The Unnished Story of Yiddish. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Lansky, Aaron. Outwitting HistoryThe Amazing Adventures of the Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 2005. Parker, Sandra, An Educational Assessment of the Yiddish Secular School Movements in the United States, p.295-312 in Fishman, Joshua A, Never Say DieA Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters, The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1980. Roback, A. A. The Story of Yiddish Literature. New York: YIVO, 1940. Sachar, Howard. A History of the Jews in America. New York: Vintage, 1993 . Shandler, Jerey, Anthologizing the Vernacular: Collections of Yiddish Literature in English Translation, p.304-323 in Stern, David, The Anthology in Yiddish Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. e-mail correspondence and/or phone interviews with Frieda Forman, Ken Frieden, Troim Katz Handler, Rhea Tregebov, David Weintraub and Marvin Zuckerman.
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