Wandering Stars (Yiddish: Blonzhende Stern or Blundzhende Shtern) is a novel by Sholem Aleichem, serialized in Warsaw newspapers from 1909 to 1911. In it, Leibel, the son of a wealthy family from a small shtetl, falls in love with cantor's daughter Reizel, and both fall for a traveling Yiddish theatre group. Their ways part; both become successful performers in the West, under the names of Leo Rafalesco and Rosa Spivak. They eventually find each other again in America, but part again.
It is one of the three Sholem Aleichem's novels about artists, the other two being Stempenyu and Yosele Solovey.Anita Norich, Portraits of the Artist in Three Novels by Sholem Aleichem, Prooftexts, Vol. 4, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 1984), pp. 237-251 ,
Two English translations of the novel exist: a 1952 abridged version by Frances Butwin (Wandering Star), and a 2009 unabridged version by Aliza Shevrin (with a foreword by Tony Kushner).
Yiddishpiel, a Yiddish theatre in Israel, adapted a stage production based on the novel, with book by Aya Kaplan and Joshua Sobol and direction by Aya Kaplan. The production opened in January 2016 at the Tzavta Theater in Tel Aviv and closed by March 2016.Handelzalts, Michael. "A Sholem Aleichem Novel About Love, Theater and Yiddish Adapted for the Stage, and Quite Successfully, Too", Haaretz, February 18, 2016
In 1991, a two-part film was released in the Soviet Union.Блуждающие звезды
References
External links Online Yiddish Book: Wandering Stars