Although written from a child's perspective, this is not a kids book but a series of funny, poignant, and sometimes disturbing stories about life in a late 19th-century Russian-Jewish village -- the world of my grandparents. Sholem Rabinovich (1859-1916) was born in Pereiaslav, Ukraine and later immigrated to New York. His short stories about Tevye and his daughters were freely adapted into the musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. Rabinovich's will contained the following injunction: "Let my name be recalled with laughter or not at all." His translator, Hannah Berman, was Irish of Lithuanian descent.

Some of these stories may be too intense for younger children.

By : שלום עליכם Sholem Aleichem, translated by Hannah Berman (1883 - 1955)

Sholem Aleichem (Hebrew and Yiddish: שלום־עליכם; Russian and Ukrainian: Шолом-Алейхем) (March 2 [O.S. February 18] 1859 – May 13, 1916) was the pen name of Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, a leading Yiddish author and playwright. The musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on his stories about Tevye the Milkman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.