Considered to be the founder of modern Yiddish literature, Mendele Moykher Sforim sculpted what was then primarily a language of home and marketplace into a subtle instrument of satire and comedy. Di Kliatshe (The Mare) tells the story of Israel, a young man trying to "get out of the Pale of Settlement and become a doctor. On his way to the University he encounters an old beaten nag who draws Israel into a magical and traumatic history of the nag's hardships throughout her life. A fierce satire pitting the "Enlightened" Jew against Jewish history and making both battling camps look foolish