Sholom Aleichem,Hannah Berman
Even the most pious Jew need not shed so many tears over the destruction of Jerusalem as the women were in the habit of shedding when Stempenyu was playing.,The first work of Sholom Aleichemâ€™s to be translated into Englishâ€”this long out-of-print translation is the only one ever done under Aleichemâ€™s personal supervisionâ€”Stempenyu is a prime example of the authorâ€™ s hallmark traits: his antic and often sardonic sense of humor, his whip-smart dialogue, his workaday mysticism, and his historic documentation of shtetl life., Held recently by scholars to be the story that inspired Marc Chagallâ€™s â€œFiddler on the Roofâ€ painting (which in turn inspired the play that was subsequently based on Aleichemâ€™s Tevye stories, not this novella), Stempenyu is the hysterical story of a young village girl who falls for a wildly popular klezmer fiddlerâ€”a character based upon an actual Yiddish musician whose fame set off a kind of pop hysteria in the shtetl. Thus the story, in this contemporaneous â€œauthorizedâ€ translation, is a wonderful introduction to Aleichemâ€™s work as he wanted it read, not to mention to the unique palaver of a nineteenth-century Yiddish rock star.
Fiction,Classics,Novella,Religion,Judaism,Literature,Jewish,Novels,Literature
Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance