Treasury Yiddish Strs

This anthology contains the work of the most well- known of Yiddish storytellers from Shalom Aleichem to I.B. Singer. Among those whose work is included are I.L. Peretz, Opatoshu, Zalman Schneour, Israel Singer, Chaim Grade, Sholem Asch, Moishe Kulbak, et.al. Naturally the center is the shtetl of Eastern Europe, the world of disasters of the 'Shoah'. But there are also stories which touch upon the New World. The collection contains what in my opinion is one of the finest stories in any language, I.B. Singer's " The Little Shoemakers" Among the translators are Saul Bellow and Alfred Kazin.

The tragedy of Yiddish poetry is that the greatest part of its audience was murdered by the Nazis. Translations can do a fair job, but the real poetry is in knowing and hearing the intimacies and intracies , the music of the language. And few can do that today. Great names like Sutzkever, Glatstein, Levick, M.L.Halpern, Molodowsky,Moshe Kulbak, Aaron Zeitlin, Reuben Iceland, Zisha Landau,Itzik Manger, Mani Leib,Melech Ravitch, J. Adler,Chaim Grade, have far fewer readers than they merit.