Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler: "Fishke the Lame" and "Benjamin the Third" (Yiddish Classics Series)
Dan Miron, a professor of Hebrew at both Columbia University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, explains in a scholarly 70-page introduction that Mendele, the book peddler, was not so much a pseudonym used by Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh as an alternative identity. Abramovitsh, already an established writer of sophisticated Hebrew criticism and short stories, created the character of Mendele in 1863 to allow him to write in vernacular Yiddish, which at that time was considered a barrier to modernity by intellectual cosmopolitan Jews. Later, Mendele's hilarious, digressive, and compassionate tales were recognized as classics of the language. Presented here are marvelous translations of the exploits of Benjamin the Third, a Jewish Don Quixote; and Fishke the Lame, a long-suffering beggar.