"Eternal Life" by Sholem Aleichem

Sholem Aleichem's breakout story follows Moshe, a naive young scholar whose first trip away from home devolves into a comic nightmare involving a dead woman, an amoral shtetl, and the Russian police. As Moshe loses his innocence, Aleichem exposes the gap between Jewish ideals and Jewish behavior, as well as the precariousness of Jewish life in tsarist Russia.