Only the Jews...

From our synagogue's perpetual library sale, I acquired a book of Yiddish short stories (in translation, of course).

I've read a lot of short story collections. Never before have I read one which had a seventy-page introduction apologizing for its existence.

"One could not say of Yiddish literature, as the critic Chernyshevsky has said of the Russian, that it 'constitutes the sum total of our intellectual life', but one can say that the Yiddish writers came before their audience, as did the Russian writers of the nineteenh century, with an instinctive conviction that their purpose was something other than merely to entertain and amuse. The achievements of Russian literature are obviously greater than that of the Yiddish, but both share the assumption that the one subject truly worthy of serious writers is the problem of collective destiny, the fate of a people. " (30)

"Only if they took the myth of the Chosen People with the utmost seriousness, yet simultaneously mocked their pretensions to being anything but the most wretched people on earth, could the Jews survive. " (26)

(From A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, eds. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg)

Yes of course, the introduction is more than an apologia. I know very little of Yiddish, and what I know of life in the shtetl comes mostly from Fiddler on the Roof, so it's very educational. Every time I read about an aspect of Judaism, I'm reminded how very much I don't know. Baby steps, baby steps.