<b>Even the most pious Jew need not shed so many tears over the destruction of Jerusalem as the women were in the habit of shedding when Stempenyu was playing.</b><br><br>The first work of Sholom Aleichem&rsquo;s to be translated into English&mdash;this long out-of-print translation is the only one ever done under Aleichem&rsquo;s personal supervision&mdash;Stempenyu is a prime example of the author&rsquo; s hallmark traits: his antic and often sardonic sense of humor, his whip-smart dialogue, his workaday mysticism, and his historic documentation of shtetl life.<br> <br> Held recently by scholars to be the story that inspired Marc Chagall&rsquo;s &ldquo;Fiddler on the Roof&rdquo; painting (which in turn inspired the play that was subsequently based on Aleichem&rsquo;s Tevye stories, not this novella), Stempenyu is the hysterical story of a young village girl who falls for a wildly popular klezmer fiddler&mdash;a character based upon an actual Yiddish musician whose fame set off a kind of pop hysteria in the shtetl. Thus the story, in this contemporaneous &ldquo;authorized&rdquo; translation, is a wonderful introduction to Aleichem&rsquo;s work as he wanted it read, not to mention to the unique palaver of a nineteenth-century Yiddish rock star.