THE BROTHERS SCHLEMIEL FROM BIRTH TO BAR MITZVAH

In the spirit of ShYWZh Aleichem, playwright, actor, director, writer, martial artist, and all-around Rhode-Island scholar Mark Binder adapted and narrated his serialized stories for this entertaining program. Binder's reading is gentle and understated as he tells the series of adventures of a pair of twin brothers born in the mythical village of Chelm, a community of fools. Chelm, a popular motif in Yiddish literature, underscores the same sort of paradox that Binder creates with this storytelling: Wisdom is foolish, innocence is poignant, and the complex is simple. Binder has serialized one hundred episodes of "The Brothers Schlemiel" in newspapers and on the Internet, of which the audio is an abridged collection. These stories of identical twins, confused from birth, will charm with their simplicity and sincerity. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 02]