Memories and Scenes: Shtetl, Childhood, Writers is the first English translation of eleven autobiographical short stories by the 19th century Eastern European Yiddish writer, Jacob Dinezon (1852-1919). A beloved and successful Jewish novelist who championed Yiddish as a literary language, Dinezon befriended and mentored almost every major literary figure of his day, including the three classic writers of modern Yiddish literature, Sholem Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), Sholem Aleichem, and Isaac Leybush Peretz. Though Dinezon's place in the development of Yiddish literature has been...

YOSELE, Jacob Dinezons short novel published in 1899, exposed in stark detail the outmoded and cruel teaching methods prevalent in the traditional cheders (Jewish elementary schools) of the late 1800s. Writing in Yiddish to reach the broadest Jewish audience, Dinezon described with all the pathos of Charles Dickens, the sad, poverty-stricken life of a bright and gentle school boy whose violent treatment at the hands of his teacher, parents, and society is shocking and painfully heartrending. The outrage that resulted from the storys initial publication produced an urgent call for reform and...