Lamed Shapiro (born 1878 in the Ukraine, died 1948 in Los Angeles, California) is best now know for his short stories dealing with the violence and cruelty of anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine. I have previously posted on the most famous of Shapiro's pogrom stories, "The Cross" and on two other of his short stories, "At Sea" and "New Yorkish". This morning I read another of his pogrom stories, "The Kiss" (translated by Jeremy Dauber).
As this story opens Reb Shakhne has just left his store, not even locking it up, to run home to check on his family as a pogrom had just begun. His wife and children are not there, he prays they have found a safe place to hide.
A group of young toughs charges into his house and begin to smash up everything they don't want to steal. Among them is the son of one of his old employees. Shakhne pleads for mercy but the son initiates terrible violence on him. The thug tells him if he will remove his shoes and kiss his feet he will call off the attack. Shakhne instead savagely bites the man's foot. The resulting violence is horrific and graphically described.
They depart smashing every thing in the house they don't want to take with them.
"The Kiss" is a harsh, vivid account of the terrible cruelty toward Jewish people in the Ukraine in the first decade of the 20th century.
I offer my thanks to Yale University Press for a very generous gift of books. Yiddish literature is a world class literary treasure of the highest level.
There is some background information on Shapiro and Yiddish literature in my prior posts on his work.
Please share your experience with Yiddish literature with us.
Mel u
1 comment:
This one is so rough I did not even try to describe it when I wrote about Shapiro. I just vaguely waved at it. So brutal.
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