Stories for Children by Sholem Aleichem: A Cycle in Transition
This study traces the evolution of Sholem Aleichem’s Stories for Jewish Children cycle, showing how tales first intended for young Jewish readers changed in form, audience, and meaning over time. At the turn of the twentieth century, within the context of educational modernization and early Zionism,...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/yod, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
| Vydáno: |
Yod
2026
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| Témata: | |
| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | This study traces the evolution of Sholem Aleichem’s Stories for Jewish Children cycle, showing how tales first intended for young Jewish readers changed in form, audience, and meaning over time. At the turn of the twentieth century, within the context of educational modernization and early Zionism, Sholem Aleichem took part in the emergence of Jewish children’s literature in Yiddish. After The Penknife (1887), he composed between 1900 and 1906 a series of thirteen “stories for children,” published mostly in Der yid and marked by moral and didactic intentions. By 1910, however, in his first Collected Works, translated into Russian, these narratives had become depictions of Jewish childhood aimed at an adult readership. The third version of the cycle, Jewish Children (1911–1913), confirmed this shift: Sholem Aleichem no longer addressed children directly but made childhood itself a central theme in his social and literary vision. After his death, his son-in-law Yitshak Dov Berkowitz issued the Folks-Fond Edition of Sholem Aleichem’s Collected Works in Yiddish (1917–1923), adding twelve unrelated stories into the cycle; this arbitrary compilation nevertheless became the international standard. In the Soviet Union, successive editions adapted or censored the cycle to fit ideological norms, removing, for example, some stories that were “excessively” filled with details of Jewish religious life. Editors and translators such as Rivke Rubin and David Volkenshtein produced collections that combined stories “for children and adults.” Finally, the major Russian edition of Sholem Aleichem’s six-volume Collected Works (1959–1961) established the Russian canonical form of the cycle under the title Stories for Children, in which the child becomes both the object and the addressee of the narrative gaze. Despite censorship, this version proved the most coherent and enduring. The editorial history of the cycle illustrates the flexibility of Yiddish literature, mirroring the cultural, linguistic, and ideological transformations |
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