I just finished The Tevye Stories and Others by Sholom Aleichem. First off it is a great book and a true classic. The stories in the book were the kernel behind the Broadway show "Fiddler on the Roof." The foil for many of the stories is Tevye, a luckless dairyman. In the first story, The Bubble, Tevye is conned into investing what little savings he has with a self-promoting swindler, who asks him to imagine life being wealthy. This gives rise to the famous song from the show, "If I Were a Rich Man." Some of the other stories similarly relate to scenes or songs from the show.

The setting for both the stories and the show is the collapse of Czarist Russia and the even swifter implosion of Russian Jewish life. At one time this was the capital of world Jewry. During the period roughly from the early 1880's on, millions of Russian Jews escaped, most to New York City and some to Palestine. This book attempts to detail the world before and during the early days of the destruction of a great culture. This was a world inhabited by "rebbes" and other Jewish notables. The combination of ocean transit and the inhabitants' brutality pushed out first the brightest and most motivated, and then with the particularly shocking pogroms many more.

Returning to the book, the short stories are almost all heartbreaking. There are few happy endings. This was true of the book, the Broadway show and ultimately Jewish life in Europe. ( )

Ukraine.

This collection organizes Tevye the Milkman stories from Aleichem's oeuvre in more-or-less chronological order. They are interspersed with non-Tevye stories to effectively create the sense of the passage of time. Readers who know Tevye only from Fiddler on the Roof will recognize some anecdotes, and Tevye's essential character, while also seeing how Aleichem's material was adapted for stage and what was omitted.

While there is an enduring humor to Tevye's absurdity, and some family and community dysfunction is universal, I'm not sure how funny some of this material is for people who grew up with no Yiddishkeit. So much of what is entertaining about Tevye is his approach to the world, a heavily syncretic blend of Eastern European Jewish culture, Tanakhic and Talmudic misquotes, and self-serving rhetoric. Without some experience sorting out one's Uncle Morty's use and abuse of received wisdom, I don't know how well this would translate culturally. Perhaps first reading Leonard Ross/Leonard Rosten's classic [b:The Education of Hyman Kaplan|823651|The Education of Hyman Kaplan|Leo Rosten|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223635286s/823651.jpg|117215] and either Wex's [b:Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods|54836|Born to Kvetch Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (P.S.)|Michael Wex|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170443865s/54836.jpg|53443] or Rosten's [b:The Joys of Yiddish|103442|The Joys of Yiddish|Leo Rosten|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171497793s/103442.jpg|1123935]. ( )