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Why Jews loved Charles Dickens — and even Fagin

JL;DR SUMMARY Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Charles Dickens was an influential figure within Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities, despite his controversial portrayal of the Jewish character Fagin in "Oliver Twist." A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish CultureYiddish LiteratureHistorical ContextTranslationSholem AleichemYiddish RevivalCharles DickensLiterary InfluenceFagin

Places mentioned

Warsaw, Mazovia, Poland
"Were Amfiteatrov to spend even a short time in Warsaw and learn something about the source of our literature, see our trivial penny papers, our writers who grovel for a small advance, he would look only for financial motives in my writing rather than compare me to Dickens."
Ukraine
"Even though some of the earliest translations arrived during a time of anti-Semitic pogroms in Ukraine, Morgentaler writes that Fagins Jewishness becomes muted when every other character is speaking Yiddish."
Russian Federation
"When Sholem Aleichems stories were translated into Russian, renowned critic Alexander Amfiteatrov likened him to Charles Dickens."
London, United Kingdom
"In 2018, after months of serialization, Barry Goldstein published a Yiddish translation of The Pickwick Papers (Di pikvik papirn), thus reviving a long dormant trend that was stalled in 1939 by a world war that eradicated much of the worlds Yiddish speakers."

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Retrieved 2026-01-31 05:31:30 UTC
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