A presente tese aborda o primeiro livro escrito em ídiche por Mêndele Môikher1 Sfórim, Dos Kleine Mêntshele (O Pequeno Homenzinho) através de várias leituras do mesmo, em mais de uma versão, às quais sucedeu-se uma traduçãocuidadosa para o português. Faz considerações e referências sobre vida e obra do autor, cognominado jocosamente, por Shólem Aleikhem, de o avô da moderna literatura ídiche. Ele foi também um dos precursores do ressurgimento da língua hebraica. Shólem Yákov Abramovitsh, seu verdadeiro nome, foi um dos importantes intelectuais conscientes do momento histórico e do processo linguístico de seu povo, no final do século XIX, no leste europeu, ao qual propunha auto respeito, profissionalização e não renegação do judaísmo. A escolha de seu pseudônimo, Mêndele, o vendedor de livros, serve de pretexto para a sua participação como personagem das histórias, dada a importância e atuação de tal profissional na sociedade retratada. O texto ídiche é permeado de frases e citações em hebraico que foram trazidas para o português no mesmo padrão de linguagem do texto original. / This dissertation studies Dos Kleine Mentshele The Little Man the first book ever written in yiddish by the writer Mendele Moikher Sforim through many readings of it in more that one version, followed by careful translation into Portuguese. It makes considerations and references about Mendeles life and work. He was nicknamed by Sholem Aleikhem the grandfather of the Modern Yiddish Literature. He was one of the precursors of the revival of the Hebrew language. Sholem Yakov Abramovitch, his real name, was one of the most important intellectuals aware of the historical moment and of the linguistic process of his people at the end of the 19th century in Eastern Europe, and suggested self respect, professionalization and no Jewish denial for the historical moment and the linguistic process. The choice of his pen name, Mendele, the book peddler, allows his participation as personage of his stories because the significance and acting od such professional in the described society. The Yiddish text is permeated by Hebrew sentences and quotations brought to Portuguese at the same linguistic level.

This dissertation explores the history of the translation of world literature into Yiddish through a series of interconnected case studies, stretching from the “founding” decade of modern Yiddish literature through its interwar acme. It features diachronic studies of single translator-authors (Sh. Y. Abramovitsh; Der Nister; Isaac Bashevis Singer) which consider the relationship between translations and original writing; synchronic views of transformative moments in Yiddish literary (translational) history across its multiple centers (1903; 1910; New York, Warsaw, Moscow); and “distant” readings of periodicals and anthologies with an eye to their particular explicit and implicit translation theories and practices as well as to the role of editors and publishers (Sholem Aleichem; Avrom Reyzen) in shaping both real and imagined literary markets. Throughout, it mobilizes the chronically-neglected genre of homegrown Yiddish literary criticism and theory (I.L. Peretz, Chaim Zhitlowsky, Moyshe Litvakov) in the hopes of understanding the shifting stakes and meanings of translation on the terms of translators, authors, critics, and readers themselves. By attending to the ways in which translations functioned as both sources of livelihood and engines of literary growth, this dissertation examines the desired and intermittently realized modernization and “normalization” of Yiddish literature on the world stage.