Yiddish Folktales

(Paperback)

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Description

This wonderful addition presents nearly 200 marvellous tales from the vivid world of East European Jewry. Drawn from the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and superbly translated, these funny, pious, moralistic, and magical tales, peopled by rabbis and fools, prophets and princesses, form the most complete record to date of a vital folkloric tradition.

Reviews

"Sheer enchantmenta wonderful collection of stories, jokes, legends, parables, and fairy tales full of wit and cleverness, certain to delight both those to whom it recalls an immediate past and those to whom it introduces an unfamiliar world."
Irving Howe

"As host of the National Public Radio series Jewish Short Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond, I had the opportunity to rediscover the joys of Yiddish literature. Many of the translations that we used were taken from Schocken's excellent Library of Yiddish Classics--a series that brings together a body of work that is very much alive and continues to dazzle us with its brilliance, wit, and humanity."
Leonard Nimoy

"Filled with homey Eastern European Yiddish truths refracted through the colorful prism of fantasy and fancy, Yiddish Folktales evokes the vitality of a distant yet immediate realm, and thus re-creates it."
The New York Times Book Review

"This gem of a collections open a breathtaking vista upon a vibrant world now lost to us."
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University

Author Bio

Editor BEATRICE SILVERMAN WEINREICH (1928-2008) was for many years a research associate at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and coeditor of the journal Yiidisher Folklor. She published many articles in academic journals on Yiddish culture and folklore. Translator LEONARD WOLF is the author of the novels The Glass Mountainand The False Messiah, and of Bluebeard- The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais. Among his translations from Yiddish are The Certificateby Isaac Bashevis Singer and The Family Mashber by Der Nister.