Forgotten novel by Sholom Aleichem published in English for first time

• Author: PENNY SCHWARTZ/ JTA
• Published date: 07 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The recent publication of "Moshkele the Thief: A Rediscovered Novel" (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press), translated from the original Yiddish and with an introduction by Curt Leviant, marks the first ever English-language translation of the novella by perhaps the most popular and most widely read Yiddish writer.

Sholom Aleichem, the pen name of Shalom Rabinowitz (1859-1916), was a masterful storyteller whose keen eye, wit and humor earned him the reputation as the Jewish Mark Twain. He left a legacy of novels, plays, essays and stories that have been translated into dozens of languages. His fictional stories of Tevye, the everyman's philosopher of Jewish life, family and faith in a shtetl village in Czarist Russia, inspired the musical "Fiddler on the Roof."

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But even though Aleichem could write about flawed characters and the grittier side of shtetl life, Moshkele is a far cry from Tevye. The all-but-forgotten tale, first serialized in Yiddish in a Warsaw newspaper in 1903 — a year before Rabinowitz would leave Kyiv for New York City, and three years before his death at 57 — explores the underside of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The novella brims with the doings of horse thieves, cheats, swindlers and a pious tavern keeper who doesn't hesitate to show off his comely daughters to sell a few more bottles of vermouth.

The book also captures relations between Jews and non-Jews, another rarity in popular Yiddish writing of the day.

It took the astute eye of Leviant, a seasoned translator and scholar of Sholom Aleichem's work, to spot references to "Moshkele the Thief" ("Moshkele Ganev" in Yiddish) while doing research at the Hebrew University Library in Jerusalem. A retired Rutgers University professor of Hebrew literature and the author or translator of more than 25 books (including the forthcoming novel, "Me, Mo, Mu, Ma & Mod"), Leviant was thumbing through old copies of the Yiddish quarterly "Di Goldene Keyt" when he noticed a brief mention of the title. "Moshkele" is not included in the 28-volume "The Complete Works of Sholom Aleichem," published after his death.

"I felt I was at the edge of a gold mine," Leviant wrote in an email.

Back at home in New York, his query to the National Yiddish Book Center turned up copies of the three Yiddish editions of "Moshkeleh Ganev," dating from 1913 (Warsaw)...