Yiddish Tales

In Pumpian, riches are a curse—but when Reb Nochumtzi’s own family goes hungry, the poor rabbi begins to wonder whether poverty is a misfortune too.

Fifty or sixty years ago, in a quiet Jewish town in Lithuania, the world beyond the Polish Road feels almost impossibly far away. Reb Nochumtzi has learned about wealth from sacred books; now threadbare clothes, empty cupboards and six hungry children force him to think about poverty from experience. If both are misfortunes, he reasons, perhaps there is a way to relieve one by sharing the other. This wry, tender opening tale begins a collection of forty-eight translated stories, drawing readers into the lives and questions of Jewish communities in Russian lands. What solution can a learned man of Pumpian devise?

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