When young Zalmen Itzkowitz steps off the train on a dark, dreary day at the close of the nineteenth century, the residents of Miloslavka have no idea what's in store for them. Zalmen is a freethinker who has come to the rural town to earn his living as a tutor. Yet, rather than teach Hebrew, he plans to teach his students the Russian language and other secular subjects. Residents of the town quickly become divided, with some regarding Itzkowitz as the devil's messenger and others supportive of his progressive ideas. Set during the time of the Haskalah, the great Jewish Enlightenment that was sweeping through Europe, Pioneers is a charming tale of one ambivalent young man's attempt to join the movement and a compassionate portrait of one shetl on the brink of transformation.

THE DYBBUK (BETWEEN TWO WORLDS) YIDDISH-ENGLISH EDITION x, 192 pp. Yiddish and English on facing pages. The Dybbuk, by S. An-sky (1863-1920) is the crown jewel of the Jewish theatre, the most renowned, most beloved, most translated, and most performed of all Jewish plays. It was first performed in Yiddish by the Vilna Troupe in Warsaw in 1920, and by the Habima Theatre in Moscow in 1922. It has subsequently been performed thousands of times all over the world in a score of languages. It is still being performed well into the 21st Century. As an agnostic Socialist, An-sky enigmatically wrote this play which favorably depicts a late 19th Century Hasidic community. A young maiden in love with one youth being forced to marry another is the kernel of the play around which the rest is developed: the dybbuk himself. A dybbuk is usually defined as a malevolent spirit that inhabits the body of a living person. An-sky's dybbuk is unique in that the spirit of the unsuccessful lover inhabits the body of the hapless bride. That is, the two love each other. This is the nature of the tragedy. ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR Fernando Penalosa, born in 1925 in Berkeley, California, is Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach. He has carried out research in California, Hawaii, Mexico, Guatemala, Israel, and Macedonia, and has written and published books in a number of fields. A convert to Judaism in 1965, Penalosa is selftaught in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish studies. He has published translations from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Akatek Mayan, and from and to Spanish. A more remote connection to Judaism is documented by the frequent occurrence of the surname Penalosa in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition. His family is descended from a Converso who came to Mexico with Hernan Cortes and the other Spanish invaders in 1520.

When young Zalmen Itzkowitz steps off the train on a dark, dreary day at the close of the nineteenth century, the residents of Miloslavka have no idea what's in store for them. Zalmen is a freethinker who has come to the rural town to earn his living as a tutor. Yet, rather than teach Hebrew, he plans to teach his students the Russian language and other secular subjects. Residents of the town quickly become divided, with some regarding Itzkowitz as the devil's messenger and others supportive of his progressive ideas. Set during the time of the Haskalah, the great Jewish Enlightenment that was sweeping through Europe, Pioneers is a charming tale of one ambivalent young man's attempt to join the movement and a compassionate portrait of one shetl on the brink of transformation.

Four Plays, by S. An-sky. Bilingual edition, translated by Fernando Penalosa While The Dybbuk is the best known and most beloved of An-sky's works, he wrote a number of other plays of interest and value in the early 20th Century that have been virtually forgotten. Four of them, Day and Night, Father and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather, were included in his Collected Works, and are presented here for the modern reader with Yiddish and English on facing pages. Only Father and Son has been translated into English before, and it was of a different version.These texts feature modern Yiddish spelling and very readable typography and format, as do the translations. Day and Night is a Hasidic tragedy, reminiscent of The Dybbuk in a number of ways, but more violent in its depiction of the struggle between good and evil. The play goes back and forth between reality and fantasy and the reader is not always sure of what is happening. But the action moves along very fast; it's a real page turner. The other three plays deal with the lives of revolutionaries in the tumultuous period preceding the 1905 Russian Revolution. They are not plays about demonstrations, marches, and strikes, but rather depicts how the revolutionaries' activities impact the lives of their families as they struggle against the intrusion of the Tsarist authorities. They are labelled "comedies" by the author, but in the dictionary meaning of light, often satirical pieces that may have a happy ending. They are not at all funny, although there are some humorous episodes. viii, 327 pp., introduction, notes.

The Dybbuk, regarded as the classic drama of the Yiddish stage, has long frightened yet fascinated audiences throughout the world. Based on Jewish folklore, its dark implications of mysterious, other-worldly forces at work in a quaint and simple village make for gripping, suspenseful theater. To the Chassidic Jews of eastern Europe, a dybbuk was not a legend or a myth; rather it remained a constant and portentous possibility. During that age of pervasive mysticism, when rabbis became miracle workers and the sinister arts of the Kabbala were fearsomely invoked, it was never doubted that a discontented spirit from the dead could cross the barrier between the "real" and the "other" worlds to enter a living human body. The Dybbuk is a masterful play, full of deep-rooted obsessions and dramatic suspense, fascinating for the glimpse it provides of the rich, poetic, and often tragic culture of the Chassidim. In this classic translation by Henry Alsberg and Winifred Katzin, the authentic cadences of the original Yiddish are deftly preserved.