Mendele Mocher Sforim

In 1854, Mendele settled in Kamianets-Podilskyi, where he got to know writer and poet Avrom Ber Gotlober, who helped him to understand secular culture, philosophy, literature, history, Russian and other languages.

This satiric tendency continued in Di Klatshe (The Nag, 1873) about a prince, a stand-in for the Jewish people, who is bewitched and becomes a much put-upon beast of burden, but maintains his moral superiority throughout his sufferings (a theme evidently influenced by Apuleius's classical picaresque novel The Golden Ass).

His later work became more humane and less satiric, starting with פישקע דער קרומער, Fishke der Krumer[5] (Fishke the Lame; written 1868-1888) – which was adapted as a film of the same title in 1939 (known in English as The Light Ahead[6]) – and continuing with the unfinished The Travels of Benjamin III (מסעות בנימין השלישי, Masoes Benyomin Hashlishi, 1878), something of a Jewish Don Quixote.

In 1938, this work was adapted by Hermann Sinsheimer [de] as a play for the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Germany, and performed there shortly after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), in November of that year.

[citation needed] As with Fishke, Mendele worked on and off for decades on his long novel Dos Vinshfingeril (The Wishing Ring, 1865–1889), with at least two versions preceding the final one.