Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish classics)

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.