The Tevye Stories and Others

#360
Title: The Tevye Stories and Others
Author: Sholom Aleichem
Translators: Julius and Frances Butwin
Introduction: Frances Butwin
Year: 1965
Publisher: Pocket Books
Country: Ukraine
252 pages

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 it would help to first read Leonard Q. Ross/Leonard Rosten's classic The Education of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n and either Wex's Born to Kvetch or Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish.