The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl, Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl. the Cantor's Son

A translation of two comic novels by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916). "The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl" portrays a tumultuous marriage through letters exchanged between the title character, an itinerant bumbler seeking his fortune in the cities of Russia before departing alone for the New World, and his scolding wife who becomes increasingly fearful, jealous and mystified. "Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son" is the first-person narrative of a mischievous and keenly observant boy who emigrates with his family from Russia to America. The final third of the story takes place in New York, making this Sholem Aleichem's only major work to be set in the United States. Motl and Menakhem-Mendl are in one sense opposites - the one a clear-eyed child and the other a pathetically deluded adult. Yet both are ideal conveyors of the comic disparity of perception on which humour depends. If Motl sees more than do others around him, Menakhem-Mendl has an almost infinite capacity for seeing less. Sholem Aleichem endows each character with an individual comic voice to tell in his own way the story of the collapse of traditional Jewish life in modern industrial society as we