Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and their various adaptations, the most famous being the 1964 stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and its 1971 film adaptation. Tevye is a pious Jewish dairyman living in the Russian Empire, the patriarch of a family including several troublesome daughters. The village of Boyberik, where the stories are set, is based on the town of Boyarka, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Boyberik is a suburb of Yehupetz, where most of Tevye's customers live.
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a Yiddish author and playwright who lived in the Russian Empire and in the United States. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Yiddishism is a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917), I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States. The movement also fluctuated throughout the 20th and 21st century because of the revival of the Hebrew language and the negative associations with the Yiddish language.
Isaac Leib Peretz, also sometimes written Yitskhok Leybush Peretz was a Polish Jewish writer and playwright writing in Yiddish. Payson R. Stevens, Charles M. Levine, and Sol Steinmetz count him with Mendele Mokher Seforim and Sholem Aleichem as one of the three great classical Yiddish writers. Sol Liptzin wrote: "Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz was the great awakener of Yiddish-speaking Jewry and Sholom Aleichem its comforter.... Peretz aroused in his readers the will for self-emancipation, the will for resistance against the many humiliations to which they were being subjected."
Avrom Ber Gotlober, also known by the pen names Abag and Mahalalel, was a Russian Maskilic writer, poet, playwright, historian, journalist and educator. His first collection was published in 1835.
Kol Mevasser was a Yiddish-language periodical that appeared from October 11, 1862 into 1872. It served as a supplement to the Hebrew weekly HaMelitz, providing scientific information in a Western style. It is considered by Sol Liptzin and others to be the most important early Yiddish-language periodical.
Israel Isidor Elyashev was a Jewish neurologist and the first Yiddish literary critic. He introduced the world to the works of the great contemporary Yiddish classical writers: Sholem Rabinovich, better known as Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, Isaac Leib Peretz and Nachum Sokolov; along with modern Hebrew writers including Chaim Nachman Bialik, and Sholem Asch, among several others.
Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature.
Aleksander Ossypovich Zederbaum was a Polish-Russian Jewish journalist who wrote primarily in Hebrew. He was founder and editor of Ha-Melitz, and other periodicals published in Yiddish and Russian.
Gershon Shaked (1929–2006) was an Israeli scholar and critic of Hebrew literature.
Ha-Tsfira was a Hebrew-language newspaper published in Poland in 1862 and 1874–1931.
Israel Aksenfeld was a Yiddish writer. Although he spoke other languages perfectly, he chose to write in Yiddish. Together with Solomon Ettinger, he was one of the first Yiddish-language writers of the 19th century and one of the most significant Yiddish writers to emerge before Mendele Mocher Sforim.
Stempenyu: A Jewish Novel is an 1888 Yiddish Language novel by Sholem Aleichem based loosely on the life of klezmer violinist Stempenyu. It his first novel and remained one of his most popular; it was reprinted multiple times and adapted into various stage and film versions, including a play with music composed by Joseph Achron and one adapted by Sholem Aleichem himself for Boris Thomashefsky's theatre.
Ken Frieden is the B.G. Rudolph Professor of Judaic Studies— and a full professor in the Departments of English, Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, and Religion — at Syracuse University. He writes about, edits, and promotes Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literature.
The Travels of Benjamin III is a satirical work from the writer Mendele Mocher Sforim. The work was published first in the year 1878 in Yiddish, and, from then, until today, it has been considered by some to be the greatest satire on exilic Jewish life. The work is modeled after the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote.
Yakov Lidski was a Warsaw-based Jewish bookseller and publisher, pioneer of Yiddish literature publishing. Founder of “Progress” publishing house, which was the first to publish modern Yiddish literature, and co-founder and owner of the important publishing syndicate “Central.”
The Itzik Manger Prize for outstanding contributions to Yiddish literature was established in 1968, shortly before Itzik Manger's death in 1969. Manger "was and remains one of the best-known twentieth-century Yiddish poets." The Prize has been described as the "most prestigious in Yiddish letters". Apparently no Manger Prizes have been awarded after 1999.
Chava Shapiro, known also by the pen name Em Kol Chai, was a Russian Jewish writer, critic, and journalist. A pioneer of Hebrew women's literature and feminist literary criticism, Shapiro was among the most prolific of the diasporic women writers of Hebrew in the early twentieth century.
Jacob Dinezon, also known as Yankev Dinezon, was a Yiddish author and editor from Lithuania. There are various spellings of Dinezon's name in both Yiddish and English transliteration. Early in his career, Yiddish publications spelled his name דינעזאהן (Dinezohn). Later publications removed the ה and spelled his name דינעזאן or דינעזאָן (Dinezon). In English, his name has been spelled Dienesohn, Dinesen, Dineson, Dinezon, Dinesohn, Dineszohn, Dinezohn, Dynesohn, and Dynezon.
Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke is a fictional shtetl introduced by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews", who met their misfortunes with humor and the ultimate belief in justice. It has become an archetype shtetl. Other famous imaginary places of Sholem Aleichem are Yehupetz and Boiberik.
