larger than the distance, say, between American and French culture.
The reader who is to find pleasure in Yiddish literature needs a mini-
mum of special information but a good deal of imaginative curiosity:
he must be willing to enter an unfamiliar world and to adjust himself
to literary modes and expectations that differ from those of his own
culture. But any literate person--even if he has never heard of the
shtetl (the little town in which most East European Jews lived and
which is the frequent setting for the stories in this anthology)--will be
able to enjoy A Treasury of Yiddish Stories.

We have tried to organize the book in a simple way. The Intro-
duction provides some historical and critical background; the Authors'
Notes include a few items of biographical information and very brief
comments on the individual stories; and finally there is a glossary of
those Yiddish words--they have been kept to a minimum--which it
seemed impossible or profitless to translate and which have therefore
been transliterated.

A Treasury of Yiddish Stories is, of course, far from being an
exhaustive selection of Yiddish prose. Anyone familiar with Yiddish
writing will be able to list names of distinguished or worthy authors
who have not been included. Nor will it be difficult to see that even
among those who are represented a number of writers appear in an in-
adequate or partial way. Some authors could not be included because
we did not wish to have certain themes repeated too frequently; some,
because we discovered that a story which reads well in Yiddish may
limp in translation; some, because their references were so special that
they could be understood only by readers deeply rooted in Yiddish cul-
ture; and some--we simply ran out of space. But our primary interest
has not been to introduce individual authors; it has been to present a
rounded sampling of Yiddish prose fiction.

We have no desire to make extravagant claims: Yiddish literature
can boast no Shakespeares, no Dantes, no Tolstois. But neither can
many other widely translated literatures. Each literature, whether it
is of the first or second rank, has its distinctive ethos, its special aroma;
and Yiddish literature, within its brief and tragic history, has brought
forth a number of remarkable figures and has been characterized by
attitudes we should look to with admiration, perhaps even yearning.

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