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Sholom Aleichem

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Sholom Aleichem

This article is about the writer. For the Hebrew greeting, see shalom aleichem
Sholom Aleichem (Yiddish: , Russian: ; March 2 [O.S. February 18] 1859 – May 13, 1916) was a popular humorist and Russian Jewish author of Yiddish literature, including novels, short stories, and plays. He did much to promote Yiddish writers, and was the first to pen children's literature in Yiddish.

His work has been widely translated. The musical "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964), based on Sholom Aleichem's stories about his character Tevye the Milkman, was the first commercially successful English-language play about Eastern European Jewish life.

Contents

Life and career

Born Sholem Yakov Rabinovitsh or Rabinowitz (ru: Рабино́вич) to a poor patriarchal Jewish family in Pereyaslav (near Kiev), Ukraine. Sholem's mother died when he was thirteen. His first writing was alphabetical vocabulary of the epithets used by his stepmother. At the age of fifteen, inspired by Robinson Crusoe, he composed his own, Jewish version of the famous novel and decided to dedicate himself to writing. He adopted the pseudonym Sholom Aleichem, derived from a common greeting meaning "peace be with you".

After completing Pereyaslav local school with excellent grades in 1876, he left home in search for work. For three years, he taught a wealthy merchant's daughter Olga Loev, who on May 12, 1883 became his wife. They had six children, including painter Norman Raeben—whose teaching Bob Dylan credits as an important influence on Blood On The Tracks—and Yiddish writer Lyalya (Lili) Kaufman. Lyalya's daughter Bel Kaufman is an American writer, author of the book Up the Down Staircase.

At first Sholom Aleichem wrote in Russian and Hebrew. From 1883 on, he produced over forty volumes in Yiddish, to become a central figure in Yiddish literature by 1890. Most writing for Russian Jews at the time was in Hebrew, the liturgical language used exclusively by the learned Jews. Sholom Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, a spoken language often derogatively called the "jargon".

Besides his prodigious output of Yiddish literature, he also used his personal fortune to encourage Yiddish writers. In 1888-1889, he put out two issues of an almanac, Die Yiddishe Folksbibliotek ("The Yiddish Popular Library") which gave important exposure to many young Yiddish writers. In 1890, Aleichem lost his entire fortune in a stock speculation, and could not afford to print the almanac's third issue, which had been edited but was subsequently never printed. Over the next few years, while continuing to write in Yiddish, he also wrote in Russian for an Odessa newspaper and for Voskhod, the leading Russian Jewish publication of the time, and in Hebrew for Hamelitz and for an anthology edited by Y.H. Ravnitzky. It was during this period that Aleichem first contracted tuberculosis.

After 1891 Sholom Aleichem lived in Odessa, and later Kiev. In 1905, he emigrated with his family, as waves of pogroms swept through southern Russia. Originally, Aleichem lived in New York City, with the rest of his family in Geneva, Switzerland. However, he soon discovered that his income was far too limited to sustain two households, and he returned to Geneva. Despite his great popularity, many of Aleichem's works had not generated much revenue for the author, and he was forced to take up an exhaustive schedule of travelling and touring in order to make money to support himself and his family.[link] In July, 1908, while on a reading tour in Russia, he collapsed on a train going through Baranowicz. He was diagnosed with a relapse of acute hemorrhagic tuberculosis and spent two months convalescing in the town's hospital. He later described the incident as "meeting his majesty, the Angel of Death, face to face", and claimed it as the catalyst for writing his autobiography, Funm Yarid [link]. During Aleichem's recovery, he missed the First Conference for the Yiddish Language, which was happening in Czernovitz; his colleague and fellow Yiddish activist Nathan Birnbaum went in his place. [link] Aleichem spent the next four years living as a semi-invalid; only eventually becoming healthy enough to return to a regular writing schedule. During this period the family was largely supported by donations from friends and Aleichem admirers.

In 1914, most of Aleichem's family emigrated to the United States, where they made their home in New York City. Aleichem's son Misha was ill with tuberculosis at the time and therefore inadmissible under United States immigration laws. Misha remained in Switzerland with his sister Emma, and died in 1915, an event which put Aleichem into a profound depression.[link] Sholom Aleichem died in New York in 1916 at the age of 57, while still working on his last novel, Mottel the Cantor's son, and was laid to rest at the Brooklyn cemetery. At the time, his funeral was one of the largest in New York City history, with an estimated 100,000 mourners. The next day, his will was printed in the New York Times and was read into the congressional record. The will contained detailed instructions to his family and friends; both in regards to immediate burial arrangements as well as how Aleichem wished to be commemorated and remembered on his annual yahrzeit. He told his friends and family to gather, "read my will, and also select one of my stories, one of the very merry ones, and recite it in whatever language is most intelligible to you." "Let my name be recalled with laughter," he added, "or not at all." [link] The gatherings continue to the present-day, and in recent years have become open to the public.

In 1997, a monument dedicated to Sholom Aleichem was erected in Kiev; another was erected in 2001 in Moscow.

Beliefs and activism

Sholom-Aleichem was an impassioned advocate of Yiddish as a national Jewish language which should be accorded the same status and respect as other modern European languages. He did not stop with what came to be called the "Yiddishism" and devoted himself to the cause of Zionism and many of his writings[#endnote_zionist] present the Zionist case. In 1888, he became a member of Hovevei Zion. In 1907, he served as an American delegate to the Eighth Zionist Congress held in the Hague.

Legacy

Sholom Aleichem was often referred to as the "Jewish Mark Twain" because of the two authors' similar writing styles and use of pen names. Both authors wrote for both adults and children, and lectured extensively in Europe and the United States. When the two finally met late in life, however, Twain retorted that he considered himself the "American Sholom Aleichem."

A short passage to illustrate Sholom Aleichem's style

"Pinhas Pincus is of less than normal height, with one small eye and one bigger eye. When he talks, it seems as if the eyes talk to each other; the smaller eye asks for and seeks approval from the bigger eye; and the bigger eye gives its approval of every plan or undertaking. When he first came to Nuremberg, there was no limit to his sufferings; he had to endure starvation, misery and personal insults from his German brethren. In Nuremberg he was protected from massacres, but was not protected from starvation."  —from An Early Passover, translated by George Zinberg

Quotes

A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.
Gossip is nature's telephone.
Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you.
The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

Works

English-language collections

Autobiography

Novels

Young adult literature

Plays

Essays

Miscellany

References

External links

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