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When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw: And Other Stories

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Isaac Bashevis Singer provides an intoxicating brew whether it is for adults or for children. When my kids wonder why I might spend so much time unravelling print, I can reach for this book and share with them some of the delights of the realms of the imagination. Books such as this remind us that there is little that television can add to our lives and it really won't matter how good the computer graphics get because Singer lets us laugh and wonder with magic that words alone can conjure. A great treat, and one worth sharing and committing to memory for long journeys.

there were things I was supposed to know. That the sky is blue, that my family loved me, and that reading would expand my world. I was sickly, so I read. I read a lot. I read about the little girl who lived with her grandfather and tended goats. I read about the hobbit who found a ring. I read about the land of OZ. And I also read stories like the ones a grandfather would tell. I didn't have a living grandfather. But Issac Singer told me stories just like Papa Harry would have. That is the magic of this book. The stories are sometimes silly, sometimes mystical, but all just like the ones a grandma or grandpa would tell. And I am a better person for it.

"In our time, when literature is losing its address and the telling of stories is becoming a forgotten art, children are the best readers," Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in the three paragraph preface to this 1968 volume. No question, children make fine listeners as well, particularly to these eight stories, which include several Singer originals, as well as some he heard from his mother, who heard them from her mother and grandmother.

Whatever their etymology, the stories all exhibit the themes that run throughout Singer's body of work--spirit, life and the supernatural--all encased in an amazingly agile use of language and humor that glints at the edges.

The book opens with the tale of "Shrewd Todie and Lyzer the Miser." The former had a wife Shaindel and seven children and never earned enough to feed them. He had such poor luck working at trades that he decided if he should make candles, the sun would never set. During an especially cold winter, Shaindel told Todie that if he could not get something to eat, she would go to the Rabbi and get a divorce. "And what will you do with it," he asked her. "Eat it?"

Lyzer, meanwhile, was so stingy that he let his wife bake bread only once every four weeks because stale bread was eaten more slowly than fresh. Rather than feed his goats, he let them feast on the thatched roofs of his neighbors. He preferred to eat his dry bread and borscht on a box so that his upholstered chairs would not wear out. He was not a man to make a loan, preferring to keep his money in his strongbox.

But one day Todie asked to Lyzer to borrow a silver spoon, giving his holy word that he would return it the next day. Not one to doubt holy words, Lyzer loaned the spoon and was pleased the next day when Todie returned it, plus a silver teaspoon, explaining that the spoon had given birth. As Todie was honest, he had to return both. He repeated the exercise twice more.

At last, he came to Lyzer to borrow some silver candlesticks for Shabbat. Lyzer gladly loaned them. Todie sold the candlesticks, bought his wife and seven children a feast and on Sunday, returned to Lyzer to say that his candlesticks had died. "You fool! How can candlesticks die," Lyzer screamed, dragging Todie to the Rabbi. "Did you expect candlesticks to give birth?" the Rabbi asked. "If you accept nonsense that brings you profit, you must also accept nonsense when it brings you loss."

Others stories are less silly. We meet Peziza the imp and her friend Tsirtsur the cricket, who lived together in an old stove and shared stories gay, devilish, frightening, and delightful for telling on long winter nights.

And Rabbi Leib, who managed to escape the evil works of Cunegunde, a witch whose son Bolvan robbed the merchants on the roads and hoarded his stolen goods in a cave rendered invisible by his mother's evil magic.

Still others are sillier. These, not surprisingly, hail from that province of silliness, Chelm. In Singer's Chelm, like all renditions of the town, lived fools. Here, even their monikers are funny--names like Gronam Ox, Dopey Lekisch, Zeinvel Ninny, Shmendrick Numskull and Feyvel Thickwit.

Now Shlemiel of the title also lived in Chelm, and was a businessman, such as it were. He married Mrs. Shlemiel, whose father gave him a dowry, with which he bought a goat in Lublin. But on the way home, he left the goat tethered to a tree while he went into an inn for some brandy, chopped liver and onions and a plate of chicken soup and noodles. The innkeeper (not surprisingly) switched his old blind billy goat for Shlemiel's milking goat. Lots more fun and some Chelmnick wisdom followed.

Each good tale wags another. Poverty grew larger, and naturally her feet grew larger too. Menash had a dream, and yes, Shlemiel finally went to Warsaw. To discover the sense in this nonsense, get this book, and share it with your children, be they young or old.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen