Haunted by Sholem Aleichem’s Tailor: Gallery talk by Prof. David Roskies

Folksy writers often turn out to be consummate craftsmen and comedians are invariably the most deadly serious people. The folksiest, silliest and most maddeningly repetitive story that Sholem Aleichem ever wrote was “The Haunted Tailor,” and madness is actually its hidden theme.

With the help of artist Anatoly Kaplan and David G. Roskies, a lifelong student and teacher of modern Yiddish literature, find out why Shimen-Elye (Hear-Our-Voice), a hapless patchwork tailor from the town of Zlodievke, was fated to go mad, and what this has to tell us about the human condition.