by Jordan Kutzik
The Clever Little Tailor by Solomon Simon
Translator: David Forman
Illustrator: Yehuda Blum
Publisher: Kinder-Loshn Publications
Bilingual English/Yiddish edition
ISBN: 1949217019
Publication year: 2021
Purchase: From the publisher, here, or from Amazon.com, here.
Jordan Kutzik, publisher – Kinder-Loshn Publications
In a small Jewish town in Poland, at a time when giants still roam the earth, yet people are just the same as they are today, there lives a poor tailor. When robbers attack coachmen on the road to his town, the tailor volunteers to drive a merchant’s wagon and soon finds himself embarking upon a series of adventures that will take him far from home. With his keen wit, he solves mysteries, defeats all types of evildoers, and becomes known throughout the land as “The Clever Little Tailor.”
When I set out to launch Kinder-Loshn Publications, a children’s book publishing house that releases new English translations of classic Yiddish children’s literature in parallel-text Yiddish/English editions, several people urged me to select Solomon Simon’s The Clever Little Tailor as our first title. I read the book and was blown away by its humor and its universal humanism expressed within a specifically Yiddish way of seeing the world. The Clever Little Tailor is written for a young audience but does not shy away from dark moments. At the same time, it shows how cleverness, decency, and a willingness for adventure can overcome all manner of evil.
In a twist of fate of the kind which in Yiddish we call “bashert,” i.e., predestined, I soon learned that Simon’s grandson, David Forman, had already finished a second draft of a translation of The Clever Little Tailor. As Forman told me, what captivated him about his grandfather’s stories when he was a child was Simon’s ability to treat his young audience with respect. Simon never spoke down to his readers or wrote in a way that expected less of their ability to follow the story. Although Forman was still a child himself, he vowed upon his grandfather’s death to learn Yiddish to translate his grandfather’s stories. Decades would pass but Forman kept his promise. It has been my honor to help share Forman’s translation with the world, and it has been a pleasure to hear from parents about the joy that The Clever Little Tailor has brought to young readers of both English and Yiddish.
The original Yiddish text was serialized in the children’s magazine Kinder-Zhurnal in 1933 and appeared that same year as a book published by Farlag Matones. The Yiddish text and English translation in Kinder-Loshn’s edition restores the original ending as it appeared in Kinder-Zhurnal.
Just as this edition of The Clever Little Tailor is bilingual, its stunning illustrations by the artist Yehuda Blum merge the visual languages of Eastern-European Jewish folk art and contemporary American children’s book art. You can view a short video about the historical and cultural influences present in Blum’s illustrations here.
***
Solomon Simon: Born in Belarus in 1895, Solomon Simon came to the US as a teenager. A dedicated educator, Simon served as the president of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute and was also an editor of the organization’s children’s magazine, the Kinder Zhurnal, where The Clever Little Tailor first appeared as a serial. Simon is best remembered as a children’s author; his treatment of the Chelm stories brought these stories into the homes of generations of American Jewish children. Simon died in 1970.
David Forman: The grandson of Yiddish author Solomon Simon, Dr. Forman’s poetry has been published online, in anthologies, and in literary journals such as Cimarron Review. Dr. Forman began studying Yiddish in his fifties to fulfill a lifelong vow to read and translate his grandfather’s work. He lives in Ithaca, NY, where he teaches a beginning Yiddish class at Cornell and catalogs Yiddish manuscripts for Cornell University Library.
Yehuda Blum: A freelance illustrator, Mr. Blum was the staff illustrator at the Yiddish Forward from 2015–2019, where his diverse artistic styles gave the paper its distinctive look. Blum is a fluent Yiddish speaker who is continuing the family tradition of working in Yiddish publishing; his grandfather was a typesetter for the Yiddish Forward.
LINKS:
Translator David Forman’s website: https://www.davidrforman.com/
A short video in which David Forman discusses his journey to translating The Clever Little Tailor.
A short video in which Yehuda Blum discusses the historical and cultural influences upon his illustrations.
Kinder-Loshn Publications: https://kinderloshn.org/
An interview with Kinder-Loshn’s publisher Jordan Kutzik in In Geveb.
An interview with translator David Forman in Jewish Books for Kids https://jewishbooksforkids.com/2021/12/15/interview-with-david-forman-author-of-the-clever-little-tailor/
A feature on Solomon Simon from the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/wexler-oral-history-project-films-features-news/wexler-oral-history-project-presents/solomon-simon-yiddish-writer-and
The original 1933 Farlag Matones’ edition of The Clever Little Tailor: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc201113/simon-solomon-friedlender-dos-kluge-shnayderl
Solomon Simon’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Simon
The website of Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish, the organization that runs Kinder-Loshn Publications https://yugntruf.org/
REVIEWS:
The Forward: https://forward.com/culture/474150/solomon-simon-yiddish-book-wise-men-helm-clever-little-tailor/
#YiddishLitMonth is curated by Madeleine Cohen. Mindl is academic director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, where she directs the Yiddish translation fellowship and is translation editor of the Center’s online translation series. Mindl has a PhD in comparative literature from UC Berkeley. She is a visiting lecturer in Jewish Studies at Mount Holyoke College and president of the board of directors of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 
My 9 year old grandson, Adison, and I are reading “The Clever Little Tailor” together, in English, and I read some to him in Yiddish. He is so interested and he never wants to stop! Adison takes it on himself to guess how the tailor will succeed!
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