ABSTRACT
Once called the 'most untranslatable of writers', Sholem Aleichem has, nevertheless, been read by more people in more languages than had ever read him in the original. Shandler argues that the translator of Sholem Aleichem enters into the role of self-appointed agent of Jewish continuity. Imbued with a sense of personal responsibility for the preservation of Yiddishkayt against historical odds, interpreters of Sholem Aleichem's legacy are rather more frequently inclined to treat the cultural effects of translation with ambivalence, and even a kind of moral suspicion. In the early 1880s, when Sholem Aleichem initially embarked on a career in modern Jewish literature, the concept had little resonance among the vast majority of Eastern European Jewish readers. On the eve of Russia's first revolution, Sholem Aleichem's reputation rested largely on his position as the in-house vernacular voice of Russian-Jewish educated society.
