Zlateh the Goat, and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

First published: 1966; illustrated

Subjects: Animals, death, family, religion, and the supernatural

Type of work: Short fiction

Recommended Ages: 10-15

Form and Content

The seven stories in this collection recapture a world that no longer exists—that of the pre-World War II, Eastern European Jewish shtetl (village or small town). It is the world that Isaac Bashevis Singer knew as a child, and his stories have their origins in the folklore and legends of the shtetl. Singer wrote them initially in Yiddish, the language of the shtetl, and then translated them into English with his editor, Elizabeth Shub. Award-winning illustrator Maurice Sendak also traces his family roots to the shtetl. Arthur Bell’s review of Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories notes how Sendak’s illustrations resemble early twentieth century photographs of New York City’s Lower East Side, many of whose inhabitants immigrated from Eastern Europe.

The book’s title story, “Zlateh the Goat,” takes place in a shtetl very much like those in which Singer lived as a small boy. A warm winter means bad business for Reuven the furrier, and his young son Aaron is sent to sell the family goat, Zlateh, to a butcher in town. A fierce snowstorm forces them off the path, and they seek shelter in a haystack, which furnishes them warmth and also nourishment. Zlateh eats the hay and feeds Aaron with its milk, and each has a way of comforting the other. On the third night, after the storm has ended, Aaron and Zlateh return home. There is no more talk of selling Zlateh, and, adding to the celebratory mood, the storm has brought colder weather and thus business to Reuven.

“Fool’s Paradise” offers wry insights into human nature. A lazy young man named Atzel, who learns that those in Paradise have no need to work, wishes that he were dead. After seemingly getting his wish, he is overjoyed to learn that there has been some mistake and that he must return to Earth. He marries his longtime love in a finale frequent in Singer’s work—that is, a wedding feast.

A few rollicking, humorous stories introduce readers to comic characters popular in Jewish folklore: the schlemiel and the townsfolk of Chelm. The schlemiel is a fool who is always getting into trouble. Schlemiels tend to come from Chelm, whose inhabitants appear all the more foolish because they are convinced that they are wise. “The First Shlemiel” is about a fellow who bungles everything, including his suicide, when he is left home to mind the baby while his wife sells vegetables in the marketplace. In “The Snow in Chelm,” the Chelmites aspire to wealth from the jewels that they see in the new-fallen snow, while in “The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom,” the Elder of Chelm resolves dilemmas involving Shmelka, his wife Shmelkicha, and their four daughters.

Goblins, demons, and the Devil himself appear in two brief tales that take place during the Hanukkah festival. In “Grandmother’s Tale,” the Evil One is exposed deceiving children playing dreidl, a Hanukkah game. In “The Devil’s Trick,” the Hanukkah lights shining through the window guide a lost young boy home; the quick-witted boy saves his parents by catching the Devil’s tail in the door and threatening to cut it off unless they, too, are returned.

Critical Context

Zlateh the Goat, and Other Stories was Isaac Bashevis Singer’s first book for children. He was sixty-two years old and a well-established author when an editor of juvenile fiction at Harper & Row persuaded him that his writing—full of demons and imps—was, as he recalls, “the very stuff that children might love.”

Most reviewers agreed. In Horn Book magazine, Helen B. Crawshaw described the collection as “a gift of seven stories for all children.” In 1967, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories was named a Newbery Honor Book. Singer would publish sixteen additional books for children before his death in 1991.

In the tradition of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, and Kenneth Grahame, respect for children’s understanding marks Singer’s writing for them. “No matter how young they are,” he remarked, “children are deeply concerned with so-called eternal questions.” Singer, who would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, credited children with being “the best readers of genuine literature.” That it is “rooted” in folklore “alone makes children’s literature so important,” he claimed, adding that without folklore, “literature must decline and wither away.”

The shtetl’s wise men of Chelm, it has been critically noted, resemble Britain’s legendary wise men of Gotham. Additionally, the schlemiel is kin to fools encountered in folk literature the world over. “The more a writer is rooted in his environment,” Singer has explained, “the more he is understood by all people.” In the decades following the publication of Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, more folktales from around the world would appear in books for children in the United States, in response to an increasing interest in multiculturalism.