However, I have one correction–the original story on which both versions are based was not a “Yiddish story” but an English novel, published at the behest of William Dean Howell, known as the “dean” of American letters. The author, Abraham Cahan, was the founder and editor of a Yiddish newspaper. And while Silver’s black-and-white film was a “classic,” the book was not. It survived mainly in the hands of English majors who discovered Cahan in courses on American Lit.