"Tevye the Milkman" gained not only literary but also stage fame—just remember Solomon Mikhoels’s production, the American musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” a TV staging with Mikhail Ulyanov, and “Kaddish” with Yevgeny Leonov in the role of Tevye. The interweaving of tragic and funny, the author’s gentle irony, and the famous aphorisms of the main character move the hearts of readers and viewers.
“Motl the Little Boy” is a touching story of a Jewish family from a shtetl who, searching for a better fate, moves to America. About this book Maxim Gorky wrote: “I read it, laughed, and cried.”
The cycle of novella-letters “Menahem-Mendl” is one of Sholom-Aleichem’s most striking works. His hero, Menahem-Mendl, a poor Jewish man from a shtetl who is frantically trying to escape need and hopes to find his happiness in a big city. A trusting, impractical, and narrow-minded man, he is constantly the victim of deception and suffers failures. About every new attempt he tells his wife in letters—first enthusiastic, then desperate. Her answers, full of sobriety and common sense, do not affect his decisions in any way. This correspondence is like a dialogue between deaf people, where each person says what he wants.