"Selecting the entries was nearly as large a task as translating them, and in some respects more daunting. Which texts would gain new life in English now, and which would be left to flicker on in their digitized, but readerless lives - at least for the moment? With my choices I have implicitly proposed a canon, although by no means an authoritative one.

I hope that readers will not only delight in the stories and poems I have included, but also question what I left out and perhaps some readers will even be moved to go find out for themselves. I made my choices as a scholar, a mother and a rabbi, selecting works that I thought might speak to my own children and that would enrich my Jewish community as well as our understanding of Ashkenazi Jewish modernity.

It seems to be working. The other night my son confided a back-to-school jitters dream. I reached for the book and read him Moyshe Shirfris’s The Alphabet Gets Angry, a story about a boy’s jitters on the eve of the first day of school. 'Is it too babyish or do you like it?' I asked. 'It’s a little young for me,' he said (he’s in middle school and its more an elementary-level story), 'but it’s really fun and I like it a lot.'”   

Yiddish translations are on the rise. They also go out of print at an alarming rate. Detour Books: Found in Translation is devoted to tracking these titles, writers and translators and keeping their books in the hands of readers. Stay tuned...