Sholem Aleichem S Wandering Star And Other Plays Of Jewish Life

In Stardust Lost, Stefan Kanfer brings the colorful Yiddish stage roaring back to life. Born of ancient traditions stretching back to the drama of the Old Testament, the Yiddish theater was a vibrant part of the immigrant experience. Kanfer invokes the energy, belief, and pure chutzpah it took to establish and run the thriving, influential theaters. He reveals the nightly drama and comedy that played out behind the scenes as well as onstage, and introduces all the players—actors, divas, playwrights, directors, and producers—who made it possible. A richly evocative chronicle of its brief but dazzling existence in America, this is both an elegy for and a tribute to Yiddish theater—lost, but not forgotten.

Part of the Jewish Encounters series The first comprehensive biography of one of the most beloved authors of all time: the creator of Tevye the Dairyman, the collection of stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a pantheon of characters who have been immortalized in books and plays, he provided readers throughout the world with a fascinating window into the world of Eastern European Jews as they began to confront the forces of cultural, political, and religious modernity that tore through the Russian Empire in the final decades of the nineteenth century. But just as compelling as the fictional lives of Tevye, Golde, Menakhem-Mendl, and Motl was Sholem Aleichem’s own life story. Born Sholem Rabinovich in Ukraine in 1859, he endured an impoverished childhood, married into fabulous wealth, and then lost it all through bad luck and worse business sense. Turning to his pen to support himself, he switched from writing in Russian and Hebrew to Yiddish, in order to create a living body of literature for the Jewish masses. He enjoyed spectacular success as both a writer and a performer of his work throughout Europe and the United States, and his death in 1916 was front-page news around the world; a New York Times editorial mourned the loss of “the Jewish Mark Twain.” But his greatest fame lay ahead of him, as the English-speaking world began to discover his work in translation and to introduce his characters to an audience that would extend beyond his wildest dreams. In Jeremy Dauber’s magnificent biography, we encounter a Sholem Aleichem for the ages. (With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations)

The first complete translation of an epic love story by the creator of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Yiddish humorist Sholem Aleichem as well as the 100th anniversary of the publication of Wandering Stars, his sprawling love story spanning ten years and two continents, and set in the colorful world of the Yiddish theater. In a Russian shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century, Reisel, daughter of a poor cantor, and Leibel, son of a rich man, fall under the spell of a traveling Yiddish acting company. Together they run off to join the theater but quickly become separated. Reisel goes on to become Rosa Spivak, concert star, and Leibel becomes Leo Rafalesko, theatrical sensation. Kept apart by their own successes and by the managers who exploit their talent, they tour the world until their wanderings bring them both to New York. An engrossing romance, a great New York story, and an anthem for the theater, Wandering Stars is a long-lost literary classic, rediscovered here in a vibrant new translation.

Finds Reisel, the daughter of a poor cantor, and Liebel, a rich man's son, falling under the spell of a traveling Yiddish acting company and separated by managers who would exploit their talents.

Sholem Aleichem, whose 150th anniversary was commemorated in March 2009, remains one of the most popular Yiddish authors. But few people today are able to read the original. Since the 1910s, however, Sholem Aleichem's works have been known to a wider international audience through numerous translations, and through film and theatre adaptations, most famouslyFiddler on the Roof. This volume examines those translations published in Europe, with the aim of investigating how the specific European contexts might have shaped translations of Yiddish literature. With the contributions: Olga Litvak- Found in Translation: Sholem Aleichem and the Myth of the Ideal Yiddish Reader Alexander Frenkel- Sholem Aleichem as a Self-Translator Eugenia Prokop-Janiec- Sholem Aleichem and the Polish-Jewish Literary Audience Gennady Estraikh- Soviet Sholem Aleichem Roland Gruschka- 'Du host zikh a denkmol af eybik geshtelt': The Sovietization and Heroization of Sholem Aleichem in the 1939 Jubilee Poems Mikhail Krutikov- A Man for All Seasons: Translating Sholem Aleichem into Soviet Ideological Idiom Gabriella Safran- Four English Pots and the Evolving Translatability of Sholem Aleichem Sabine Koller- On (Un)Translatability: Sholem Aleichem's Ayznban-geshikhtes (Railroad Stories) in German Translation Alexandra Hoffman- Laughing Matters: Translation and Irony in 'Der gliklekhster in Kodne' Kerstin Hoge- Lost in Marienbad: On the Literary Use of the Linguistic Openness of Yiddish Anna Verschik- Sholem Aleichem in Estonian: Creating a Tradition Jan Schwarz- Speaking Tevye der milkhiker in Translation: Performance, Humour, and World Literature

Jewish life in Belarus in the years after World War II was long an enigma. Officially it was held to be as being non-existent, and in the ideological atmosphere of the time research on the matter was impossible. Jewish community life had been wiped out by the Nazis, and information on its revival was suppressed by the communists. For more than half a century the truth about Jewish life during this period was sealed in inaccessible archives. The Jews of Belarus preferred to keep silent rather than expose themselves to the animosity of the authorities. Although the fate of Belarusian Jews before and during the war has now been amply studied, this book is one of the first attempts to study Jewish life in Belarus during the last decade of Stalin's rule. In addition to archival materials, the present research is based on a questionnaire submitted to former residents of Belarus in Israel, as well as information from periodicals, collections of documents, statistical reports and monographs.