Yiddish Folktales

“Sheer enchantment—a wonderful collection of stories, jokes, legends, parables, and fairy tales full of wit and cleverness, certain to delight both those to whom it recalls an immediate past and those to whom it introduces an unfamiliar world.”
—Irving Howe

“As host of the National Public Radio series Jewish Short Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond, I had the opportunity to rediscover the joys of Yiddish literature. Many of the translations that we used were taken from Schocken’s excellent Library of Yiddish Classics–a series that brings together a body of work that is very much alive and continues to dazzle us with its brilliance, wit, and humanity.”
—Leonard Nimoy

“Filled with homey Eastern European Yiddish truths refracted through the colorful prism of fantasy and fancy, Yiddish Folktales evokes the vitality of a distant yet immediate realm, and thus re-creates it.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“This gem of a collections open a breathtaking vista upon a vibrant world now lost to us.”
—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University