In a small shtetl in Bessarabia in the early twentieth century, a traveling Yiddish acting company comes to town. The townspeople react in unison: 'What is this? Actor-types? Comedians? Who needs them'? But for Reisel, daughter of a poor cantor, and Leibel, son of a rich man, the theatre is magic, and they immediately fall under its spell. Fleeing their small town, they run off together with the acting company but soon become separated from each other. Reisel goes on to become a star on the concert stage, and Leibel a sensation on the theatrical stage. They take new names - Reisel becoming Rosa Spivak, and Leibel becoming Leo Rafalesko - and repeatedly try to meet, but they are kept apart by their aspirations and successes, and by the interventions of a motley cast of impresarios, who exploit them for their own enrichment. They are wandering stars, shooting from stage to stage, from city to city, touring all the major European capitals and eventually reaching New York, a city of dreams shattered and fulfilled, of romance thwarted and consummated. It is the journey of a lifetime, a journey played out in every generation, and within every life, and Sholem Aleichem captures it with uncommon poignancy and richness, and with the humor, whimsy, and wistfulness that are his hallmarks.

This first English translation of Sholom Aleichem's rediscovered novel, Moshkeleh the Thief, has a riveting plot, an unusual love story, and a keenly observed portrayal of an underclass Jew replete with characters never before been seen in Yiddish literature. The eponymous hero, Moshkeleh, is a robust chap and horse thief. When Tsireleh, daughter of a tavern keeper, flees to a monastery with the man she loves-a non-Jew she met at the tavern-the humiliated tavern keeper's family turns to Moshkeleh for help, not knowing he too is in love with her. For some unknown reason, this innovative novel does not appear in the standard twenty-eight-volume edition of Sholom Aleichem's collected works, published after his death. Strikingly, Moshkeleh the Thief shows Jews interacting with non-Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement-a groundbreaking theme in modern Yiddish literature. This novel is also important for Sholom Aleichem's approach to his material. Yiddish literature had long maintained a tradition of edelkeyt, refinement. Authors eschewed violence, the darker side of life, and people on the fringe of respectability. Moshkeleh thus enters a Jewish arena not hitherto explored in a novel.

The adventures of Mottel, the cantor's son, are written in both English and Yiddish.