This issue of the magazine includes:

• Sholem Aleichem Forever: A Passover Story from the Early Twentieth Century

The magazine features a translation of Sholem Aleichem’s feuilleton “Arbe-koyses” (“Four Goblets”). Written in 1900, it has never been published in Russian before. The text is an experiment on the writer’s part, vital for understanding the way Sholem Aleichem’s art evolved. In the brief piece, he melds the motifs of very different works, those he had already written and those he would go on to write. We see here the sentiments of his Zionist brochures, the sarcasm of his anti-assimilationist feuilletons, the irony of his Kasrilevke tales, and the lyricism of his children’s stories.

• History: The Irony of Avrom Abchuk’s Life and Death

Writer and literary historian Avrom Abchuk (1897–1937) was one of the first victims of Stalin’s Great Terror among prominent Soviet Yiddish cultural figures. He was executed in Kiev on October 10, 1937. The article about his tragic life is based on recently discovered archival documents from the writer’s NKVD criminal case file.

• Names: I Am a Writer, I Write about Human Beings

Aharon Appelfeld (born 1932) is one of Israel’s foremost living Hebrew-language authors, despite the fact that he did not learn the language until he was a teenager. The review article summarizes his works available in Russian translation, including the major novels The Age of Wonders, Katerina, and Blooms of Darkness.

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: May–June 2017