Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories

Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations.

And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the “Railroad Stories,” twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.Contents

Tevye the Dairyman
Tevye Strikes It Rich
Tevye blows a Small Fortune
Today's Children
Hodl
Chava
Shprintze
Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel
Lekh-Lekho

The Railroad Stories
To the Reader
Competitors
The Happiest Man in All Kodny
Baranovich Station
Eighteen from Pereshchepena
The Man from Beunos Aires
Elul
The Slowpoke Express
The Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah
The Wedding that Came without Its Band
The Tallis Koton
A Game of Sixty-Six
High School
The Automatic Exemption
It Doesn't Pay to Be Good
Burned Out
Hard Luck
Fated for Misfortune
Go Climb a Tree If You Don't Like It
The Tenth Man
Third Class“This fresh translation is likely to serve as the indispensable Sholem Aleichem for some time to come.” —Cynthia Ozick

“The editor and translator have done brilliantly.” —Saul Bellow

“A body of work that is very much alive and that continues to dazzle us with its brilliance, wit, and humanity.” —Leonard NimoyHillel Halkin is an award-winning translator and a writer whose most recent work is Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel.Translated and with an introduction by Hillel Halkin