Jewish Children.
[Judaica]. Aleichem, Shalom. Jewish Children. Translated from the Yiddish of “Shalom Aleichem” by Hannah Berman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
8vo.; brown cloth; title label on spine, lightly browned and nicked.
First edition in English, translated by Hannah Berman. Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz (1859-1916)—Shalom and Sholom are acceptable variants—began writing in Russian and Hebrew in his late teens, but by his mid-twenties he had committed to writing in Yiddish, and produced over 40 novels, collections of stories, and plays in that language before his death. He also devoted two years, and a good deal of the fortune into which he married, in editing Die Yiddishe Folksbibliotek (1888-89); encouraging the work of other writers in Yiddish was a lifelong pursuit. The first writer to compose in Yiddish for children, Aleichem lectured in Europe and the United States where he became known in the United States as the “Jewish Mark Twain,” and was widely translated. His fourteen volume Verk was published in English between 1908 and 1914, and included Berman’s Jewish Children. Other notable titles are The Old Country, translated by Julius and Frances Butwin, and Adventures of Mottle, the Cantor’s Son, translated by Tamara Kahana. “Adaptations of his work were important in the founding of the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York, and the libretto of the musical comedy Fiddler on the Roof (1964) was adapted from a group of his short stories.”
(#3904)
Print Inquire
