Jewish Mark Twain

THE GREAT FAIR (306 pp.)--Sholom Aleichem--Noonday ($3.75).

This is an appealing little autobiographical sketch, now published in English, by a writer who was as close to the folk stream of East European Jewish life as blintzes and borsch. In countless stories (The Old Country, Adventures of Mattel) he humorously chronicled the bittersweet life of the late 19th-century eastern ghettos--pious, self-contained, but poised on the brink of a new Diaspora to Western Europe and America. Born Solomon Rabinowitz, and raised in the little village of Voronko, Russia, the hero of The Great Fair is a "pretty boy with fat red cheeks," who can convulse his playmates by mimicking the rabbi's manner of taking snuff, or bring a glint of pride to his bearded father's eyes by citing chapter and verse in a Bible exam. Since he is more prankster than scholar, Sholom's boyhood sometimes seems like a parade of cuffs, slaps and beatings. As one observer has pointed out, "the Jews of Eastern Europe considered childhood a phase to be got over as quickly as possible, a sort of malignant disease, the curing of which justified the use of any means." But before he is cured, Sholom pals around with a scampish set of Jewish Huckleberry Finns: Shmulik the Orphan, Gergeleh the Thief, and Feivel the Lip. The boys glory in three maxims: 1) "Always disobey your parents," 2) "Be sure to hate your teacher," 3) "Never fear the Lord." His death in 1916 prevented Author Aleichem from carrying his boyhood story over the threshold of manhood, but even as it stands, The Great Fair is a charmingly apt epitaph for the Yiddish Mark Twain.

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