Yiddish literature
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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 E
First edition of the Bovo-Bukh of 1507–1508, printed in 1541, the first non-religious Yiddish book. As the most popular chivalric romance in Yiddish, its name later passed into popular phrase as "bubbe meise"-"grandmother's tale"
Non-Orthodox Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) was the first to publicise Hasidism to the wider non-Jewish world. His influential focus on its stories was criticised by Gershom Scholem for leaving aside its scholarship and adapting it to his Neo-Hasidic existentialism
Nachman of Breslov saw sparks of holiness mixed up in the tales of the world. Lurianic Kabbalah describes the purpose of Creation as the redemption of sparks of the Shechinah. In Hasidism each person is guided to elevate their particular share. This is compared to the tale of a princess who agrees to be freed from imprisonment only by a particular prince.
2009 Ukrainian stamp of Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). Together with Mendele Mocher Sforim and I. L. Peretz, the three "classic" Yiddish writers, he helped found the latter 19th-century cultural and artistic Yiddish Renaissance movement of Eastern Europe.
Sholem Aleichem
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Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a Jewish author and playwright who wrote in Yiddish and lived in the Russian Empire and in the United States. The 196
Sholem Aleichem in 1907
Sholem Aleichem in 1910
A volume of Sholem Aleichem stories in Yiddish, with the author's portrait and signature
Monument to Sholem Aleichem in Bohuslav, Ukraine