SOURCE: "Authorial Voice in the Kasrilevke Stories," in Author as Character in the Works of Sholom Aleichem, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1985, pp. 73-99.

In the following excerpt, Aarons examines the defining characteristics of Aleichem' s shtetl stories.

At the heart of Sholom Aleichem's short stories, monologues and feuilletons lies Kasrilevke, the fictionalized shtetl, representative of the small villages at the outskirts of the cities where Jews were forced to live. In one of the Kasrilevke stories, "The Town of the Little People," Sholom Aleichem explains the origin of the name, Kasrilevke:

The town of the little people into which I shall now take you, dear reader, is exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale into which Jews have been packed as closely as herring in a barrel and told to increase and multiply. The name of the town is Kasrilevka. How did this name originate? I'll tell...