From the Jewish Provinces showcases a brilliant and nearly forgotten voice in Yiddish letters. Fradl Shtok composed stories that describe the travails of young women looking for love and desire in a world that spurns them. The stories were originally published in Yiddish and are translated to English. They are all are very short, just a few pages each.

Fradl Shtok, a forgotten and neglected Yiddish woman writer whose time has finally come, if the quality of this collection of her stories is anything to go by. Original and insightful, the stories chronicle the lives of Jewish women in the shtetls of Galicia and the Lower East Side of New York City. Whether in Europe or America these women are constrained by patriarchal and traditional customs and edicts that repress and hamper their self-expression. The European stories in particular focus on women’s’ dreams and unfulfilled desires, while the new York ones focus more on the immigrant experience in the New World, as both men and women struggle to make new lives for themselves. The stories are more like vignettes than fully rounded out stories, but none the less powerful for that. Often inconclusive and unresolved, they explore women’s inner lives to great effect, and vividly capture everyday life, an everyday life that so many of the girls and women long to escape. I really enjoyed this collection and for a while felt myself immersed in these women’s lives, and shared in the understanding and compassion the author obviously felt for them. A great re-discovery.

I cannot read Jiddish, so I can't really say if I like the original, but the english translation is stellar. My family lived around Russia around that period, and what a beautiful treat to read short stories set around that time.

The stories are short but very fleshed out, and considering they're about 100 years old, still very relevant and easy to read.

Interesting collection of short stories from a Jewish woman author mostly forgotten for many years with the exception of one story. Very interesting, you feel like you are in her time as you stories, and her own story of her life is also included and fascinating.

The collaboration between the National Yiddish Book Center and The Forward, reassured me that the texts were authentic and worth a read. This is a collaborative project with stellar partners in the Jewish literary and cultural world.
The purpose of this publication is to restore women to the canon of Yiddish stories and literature. The author successfully explores "the new spaces of American Jewish life."
Much has yet to be translated when it comes to women, as we have seen in the recent book on the women in the Jewish resistance in Poland during the Warsaw Uprising. Some of the author's material had been lying in the British Library since WWII.
Great selection of diverse stories from Europe and, later, the U.S. Themes of the tensions and insecurities of mean and women of the shtetls, and later on the Lower East Side.
The stories' narrative voices "draw attention to the social discourse that limits women's lives."
Each story is different, in terms of the character and desires of the women. There are no stereotypes.
In the Modernist tradition, many of the stories describe the interior lives of young, eager Jewish women.
Themes include:
"In the Village"--the complexity of women's interior dreams and sexuality
"The Daredevil--dreams of moving beyond the shtetl via men who travel to the shtetl, many of them Gentiles
"By the Mill"--Great story! The sensuality and sexual awakening of Rukkl, with the images of bathing in a local stream"
"A Glass"--nuanced story about a young student who wants to help a teacher in trouble for his beliefs
"The Archbishop"--relations between Jew and Gentile in the shtetl towns
"Viburnum"--the longing for flavor and sensuality in a sometimes mundane world
"The Pear Tree"--infertility of humans and plants
"Shorn Hair"--the complex feelings of a woman who cuts her hair and uses it in her wig
"White Furs"--"be careful what you wish for"
"The First Patient"--immigrant pride in their successful son

I don't read a lot of short stories so I'm not sure I appreciate or understand them. I enjoyed reading this collection of stories but I just don't really 'get' them. They offer tiny snippets of Jewish life over the years but I didn't really garner anything from them.

I think I'm more geared towards novels which have more development. I like to 'get to an ending' I guess.

That said, it's always good to try something new every now and again. Short story afficienados I think would appreciate this book more than me.

**Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review**

I wanted to love this collection of stories, I really did. It's rare to find literature translated from Yiddish and even rarer to get women's Yiddish writing translated into English. With the majority of these short stories set in eastern Europe, with a handful set among Jewish immigrants in the U.S. in the early 1900s, reflecting the author's own life, I was hoping for a peek into the life of my grandparents and great-grandparents. And really that is the only thing I can commend about these stories, and the fact that they focus on the lives of women and girls. I did not find much to appreciate about their writing style or narrative value. Most of them were very short with a straightforward writing style and didn't say much. I'm disappointed.

While I grew up reading and hearing about male Yiddish authors, I can't, to the best of my memory, recall ever hearing about any female Yiddish authors. So I was curious and intrigued to read the works of Fradl Shtok.

Her works are quite different from what I'm used to - much of them are centered around the experiences of women, both in shtetls in Eastern Europe as well as in America, although there are some stories that have males as the main characters. Many of them feature young women, who are just coming of age, and are struggling with their changing roles, both in the family and in society at large.

The stories often feel unfinished, although this seems to be a feature in the Yiddish writing that I've read. Shtok's characters typically struggle with their desires and decision-making, leaving the reader to infer their own conclusions about the ending of the story. We're thrown directly into the story, allowing us to see the characters in their daily life, right in the midst of their struggle, whether it is with their sexual desires, their frustrations, their financial troubles, or how they relate to others. In some cases, they have difficulty submitting to social mores or religious restrictions.

The story that stuck out to me the most was Shorn Hair - it's written through the lens of a specific sect of Judaism that requires married Jewish women to cut off all their hair after marriage (the vast majority of Jewish women aren't required to do this, and religious women typically just cover their own hair with a scarf or wig). The woman in the story is widowed shortly after her wedding, and is very upset over the loss of her hair, pulling her own hair out as it grows in and weaving it into her wig. When someone notices, she is scolded and shamed. I can't imagine how difficult it must be, but in the space of just a few pages, I was able to put myself into the shoes of this woman across space and time and get a taste of how she felt.

It's intriguing how the tradition of Yiddish literature is carried on both so similarly and differently by a female writer, and I'm thrilled to see it being revived in modern day circles. There was an extensive introduction providing background into Fradl Shtok's life, and how her later years were overlooked. Hopefully, more female Yiddish writers will be translated soon.

This collection of stories by a new-to-me Yiddish author, Fradl Shtok, was delightful. Shtok came to the US as a teenager in 1907, and started getting her stories published not that many years afterwards. Most of the stories are set in the titular Jewish provinces, the area which has been described as the Austro-Hungarian borderlands, now Ukraine. This area is sometimes referred to as Galicia (Some of my forebears are from this very region). Some of the stories are set in New York City’s Lower East Side. She writes about the inner lives of women (and some men) while going about their everyday lives. Like the Iranian poet, Forugh Farrokhzhad, who I read about recently, Shtok’s work was often overlooked mainly because she was a woman in a male-dominated publishing world. As the editors state in their introduction, “despite a recent surge of translation, many Yiddish women writers remain untranslated and thus unknown to American audiences.” That’s a real shame.

Thank you to NetGalley and Northwestern University Press for the opportunity to read an advance readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Very fine ststorytelling. Glimpses of village life, Jewish traditions, and community. A well-translated version.

Fradl Shtok is a keen observer of a community long gone. But also a keen observer of human interactions, of emotions at times at odds to what is acceptable in a religious community with strict rules. But in particular she does a great job of portraying the inner lives of girls, at times overlooked/ignored, full of prohibited sentiments and desires. Much tenderness and humour has been women in the fabric of this stories, inevitably tugging at one's heartstrings.

It was such a pleasure to read this stories, i felt like i had come across some unfound treasure amongst yiddish literature. These short stories felt wholly familiar and not at all unimaginable. I felt like i knew the people amongst these pages, experiencing shabbos, passover, shavuos, like i do too. I cant wait to read more yiddish literature by the likes of the many authors mentioned in the introduction.

“That ‘ahhh’ of yours, a Jewish woman will always be a Jewish woman”.

The translated collection of 23 short stories capture every-day life for Jews - mainly female Jews, in Europe and the US. The introduction offers analysis and explanation to Fradl Shtok's unusual collection, before launching into them. If you aren’t familiar with Judaism or the Yiddish language, don’t be shy to use Google.

Much writing by female Yiddish authors remain untranslated in unknown to international audiences. Whilst the writing style at times felt unfinished, I believe this reflects how little Yiddish translation I’ve read in the past. It also highlighted why so many common grievances of Jewish women are unknown to the public - areas covered in the book, including the rather brutal ‘agune’ status and the previous unpopularity of Zionism.

Reading the short stories was like eating my mothers chicken soup as a child. It left me feeling warm and content. Just as many of my friends will confidently declare their mother’s chicken soup the best, without clear explanation of why, I believe my love of the stories follow the same logic. It’s the sense of familiarity. It’s the stories I heard growing up and from older relatives of life as a Jewish woman growing up.

The light prose and thoughtful dialogue offered little overt resolution or moral to the reader, but a lot of delightful quick wit and hidden meaning. I believe the stories were written with the intention of reflection and rereading, with the responsibility of understanding placed on the reader.

4.5 /5

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

With thanks to NetGalley who gave me a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

These stories, originally published in Yiddish, are snapshots of a particular life: Eastern European Jews in the early years of the 20th century. Most take place in a shtetel in Skala, in what’s now Ukraine. A smaller collection is set in a Jewish enclave in New York City. The characters are mostly young women, depicted feeling torn between their ties to their community and culture on the one hand, and the possibility of excitement that might exist in a world outside of those things. Surrounded by rules, gossiping neighbours and afraid that their own thoughts and desires might be transgressive, some of these characters pull away from expectations, and some don’t. The ambivalence, however, remains. Many of the stories close with the character making a choice that will define her future, either breaking away from her community or drawing herself more tightly into it. It is up to the reader to make their own conclusions about whether or not she made the right choice.

The stories set in New York have more mixed themes, and a wider range of characters including some men. There’s a funny story about a newly-qualified dentist, being helicopter-parented as he sees his first patient. That said, the best stories in this collection are the Skala ones.

Shtok was primarily renowned as a poet, whereas her prose got a mixed reception. I can understand why. You won’t find the usual conventions of the short story form here: there’s no quick plot establishment smashing into a conclusion with a slight twist. They aren’t “what if this happened?” but rather “this did happen, to someone like this.” The setting is right in the middle of ordinary life, with people discussing the price of basic commodities, everyday events and the intricacies of their religious observance. The plot moves forward in the minds of the characters, many of whom are so conflicted that they themselves don’t know what they want or think. The clever part (and it is definitely there) is in the use of subtlety and symbolism. Shtok shows that you can swoop right into the thoughts of one person who seems to be living the most banal existence, and you can show there is a whole world inside them that others may know nothing of.

She writes short stories like a poet. If that sounds like your thing, you might dig this book. Even if it doesn’t sound like your thing, you might still dig this book. I did.

Thank you, NetGalley, for letting me read this book.
This is a book of short stories, mainly set in a Jewish community in a village in the Ukraine in the early 20th century. The same characters recur and develop in the stories, so it gives a real feel of being part of a village - maybe picking up gossip in the grocer's, maybe hearing stories from a friend who lives there. There's a great sense of time and place. It's beautifully written - the translators must take a lot of credit for that - thank you to them. I would really recommend this one.

As an Australian, I didn’t not grow up with any Jewish people or people who practiced the religion.

What a beautifully written collection or stories; the imagery portrayed is clear but does not go into so much detail to bore.

I do believe that it could have been left with just the European stories, as I didn’t feel as connected to the American ones.