Dan Miron is one of the greatest living critics of Yiddish and Jewish-American literature today. His books on these bodies of literature have won him critical claim. What interests me most is how Miron would approach a schlemiel like Motl (the main character of Sholem Aleichem’s Motl the Cantor’s Son: Writings of an Orphan Boy. […]
In classic Yiddish literature, we don’t often learn much about the parents of the schlemiel character (whether in the Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third, “Bontshe Shvayg,” or I.B. Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool”. Shalom Aliechem comes close when he tells us that his Motl character (Motl, the Cantor’s Son) was an orphan and that […]
I come from a few generations of New York Jews. My father went to Brooklyn Tech and Columbia University. He was born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan. My mothers parents moved from the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, to Queens, and then to Long Island. But we were the first in the family […]
Most films I have seen on Hasidim – save for the film Ushpizin (2004) – are utterly serious and often tragic. Think, for instance, of The Jazz Singer (1927, 1980), The Chosen (1981) or Amos Gitai’s Kadosh (1999). We rarely see comic films on or about Hasidim. (Woody Allen’s little quips in Bananas (1971) or […]
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the schlemiel character is usually located on the edge of the world. Her place is something people overlook. S/he stands at the limit. Whether it is Mendel Mocher Sforim’s Sendrl, Sholem Aleichem’s Motl or Menachem Mendel, I.B. Singer’s Gimpel, Saul Bellow’s Moses Herzog, […]
Books give me ideas. I love to be between one book and another. It’s like being between one place and another. I’m always walking – it seems – from one idea to another. I like to retrace my steps because I might stumble – like a schlemiel – across something. Wandering around New York […]
Why would anyone be interested in the schlemiel? In a moment of auto-biographical reflection, I find myself wondering about my own interest. What do I have invested in this character? After all, one takes interest in an investment. The question, however, is not whether I invest it or not (as if it were a matter […]
Motl the Cantor’s Son is Sholem Aleichem’s last novel. Though unfinished,it is substantial. It tells the story of Motl – the orphan of a Cantor who died back in Europe (in fact, on the same day as the Baal Shem Tov was said to have tied – the second day of Shavuot) – and his […]
The comic strips, graphic novels, and story-images of Ben Katchor are one of a kind. Many of his strips manage to touch on something particular to being Jewish and American. Michael Chabon – the well-known Jewish American novelist – said that Katchor is the “creator of the last great comic strip.” Because he […]
At the outset of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, there is a letter – dated 1895 – addressed from Tevye to Sholem Aleichem, the author. At the top of the page is an expression that is used by Jacob to describe himself: “Kotonti – I am Unworthy.” The English translation of the word, Kotonti as […]
Schlemiel Theory 