Sholem Aleichem

Aleichem, Sholem [Heb.=Peace be upon you!], pseud. of Sholem Rabinowitz, 1859-1916, Yiddish author, b. Russia. One of the great Yiddish writers, he is best known for his humorous tales of life among the poverty-ridden and oppressed Russian Jews of the late 19th and early 20th cent. His works include five novels, many plays, and some 300 short stories. English translations include The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl (1979), In the Storm (1984), and Tevya the Dairyman (1988). In the last years of his life Sholem Aleichem lived in the United States; he died in New York City where, through his work, he helped to found the Yiddish Art Theater. Many of his works have been adapted for the stage, most notably the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1964). His autobiographical writings include From the Fair (1985).

Sholem Aleichem: see Aleichem, Sholem.

orig. Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz

(born Feb. 18, 1859, Pereyaslav, Russia—died May 13, 1916, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Russian writer. Drawn to writing as a youth, he became a private tutor at age 17 and later served as a government rabbi. Beginning in 1883 he published more than 40 widely translated volumes of novels, stories, and plays in Yiddish. English translations from his 14-volume collected works include Jewish Children and The Old Country. His best-known character, Tevye the dairyman, was the subject of a volume of short stories that later was the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1964).

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Sholem Aleichem (שלום־עליכם, Шолом-Алейхем; March 2, 1859 – May 13, 1916) was the pen name of Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich, the popular humorist and Russian (geographically, Ukrainian) 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 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, loosely based on Sholem Aleichem's stories about his character Tevye the Milkman, was the first commercially successful English-language play about Eastern European Jewish life.

Early life

He was born as "Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich" (alternatively: Sholom, Shulem, Rabinovitz, Rabinovitsh, etc.) (Шо́лем Нау́мович Рабино́вич) to a poor Jewish family of Menachem-Nukhem and Khaye-Ester Rabinovitsh in the Pereyaslav (Poltava region, east of Kiev), Imperial Russia in 1859. Sholem Aleichem's mother died when he was fifteen. His first writing was an 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 comic pseudonym Sholem Aleichem, derived from a common greeting meaning "peace be with you", or colloquially, "hi, how are you". For this reason, he is never referred to simply as "Aleichem", either in literary discussion or in bibliographic references.

After completing Pereyaslav local school with excellent grades in 1876, he left home in search for work. For three years, Sholem Aleichem taught a wealthy landowner's daughter Olga (Golde) Loev. Against the wishes of her father, Olga became Sholem Aleichem's wife on May 12, 1883. Over the years, 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 wrote the novel, Up the Down Staircase, which was made into a successful film.

Writer's career

At first, Sholem 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 largely by learned Jews. Sholem Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, the vernacular language often derogatively called "jargon" [zhargon], but which was accessible to nearly all literate East European Jews.

Besides his prodigious output of Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem also used his personal fortune to encourage other Yiddish writers. In 1888-1889, he put out two issues of an almanac, Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek ("The Yiddish Popular Library") which gave important exposure to many young Yiddish writers. In 1890, Sholem 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, as well as in Hebrew for Ha-melitz, and for an anthology edited by Y.H. Ravnitzky. It was during this period that Sholem Aleichem first contracted tuberculosis.

Emigration

After 1891, Sholem Aleichem lived in Odessa, and later Kiev. In August 1904, Sholem Aleichem edited Hilf: a Zaml-Bukh fir Literatur un Kunst ("Help: An Anthology for Literature and Art"; Warsaw, 1904) and himself translated three stories submitted by Tolstoy (Esarhaddon, King of Assyria; Work, Death and Sickness; Bibliography_of_Leo_Tolstoy#Three_Questions) as well as contributions by other prominent Russian writers, including Chekhov, in aid of the victims of the Kishinev pogrom. In 1905, he left Russia with some reluctance, forced by waves of pogroms that swept through southern Russia. Originally, Sholem Aleichem lived in New York City, but failed to establish himself in the Yiddish theatre world there. His family, meanwhile, set up house in Geneva, Switzerland. Sholem Aleichem soon discovered that his income was far too limited to sustain two households, and he left for Geneva. Despite his great popularity, many of Sholem Aleichem's works had not generated much revenue for the author, and he was forced to take up an exhausting schedule of travelling and touring in order to make money to support himself and his family. 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. Sholem Aleichem 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, Funem yarid [From the Fair]. During Sholem Aleichem's recovery, he missed the First Conference for the Yiddish Language, held in 1908 in Czernovitz; his colleague and fellow Yiddish activist Nathan Birnbaum went in his place. Sholem 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 admirers.

In 1914, most of Sholem Aleichem's family immigrated to the United States, where they made their home in New York City. Sholem 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 Sholem Aleichem into a profound depression.

Death

Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916, aged 57, while still working on his last novel, Motl the Cantor's son, and was laid to rest at Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens. 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 of the United States.

The will contained detailed instructions to his family and friends; both in regards to immediate burial arrangements as well as to how Sholem Aleichem wished to be commemorated and remembered on his annual yartzheit. 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". The gatherings continue to the present-day, and in recent years have become open to the public.

Commemoration

In 1997, a monument dedicated to Sholem Aleichem was erected in Kiev; another was erected in 2001 in Moscow. In 1996, a stretch of East 33rd Street in New York City between Park and Madison Avenue was renamed "Sholem Aleichem Place." Many streets in Israel are named after him. An impact crater on the planet Mercury also bears his name.

Beliefs and activism

Sholem Aleichem was an impassioned advocate of Yiddish as a national Jewish language, one which should be accorded the same status and respect as other modern European languages. He did not stop with what came to be called "Yiddishism", but devoted himself to the cause of Zionism as well. Many of his writings 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.

Sholem 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 was considered the "American Sholem Aleichem."

A short passage to illustrate Sholem 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.
• Rather the bite of a friend than the kiss of an enemy.

Works

English-language collections

• The Best of Sholom Aleichem, edited by R. Wisse, I. Howe (originally published 1979), Walker and Co., 1991, ISBN 0-8027-2645-3.
• Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, translated by H. Halkin (originally published 1987), Schocken Books, 1996, ISBN 0-8052-1069-5.
• Nineteen to the Dozen: Monologues and Bits and Bobs of Other Things, translated by Ted Gorelick, Syracuse Univ Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8156-0477-7.
• A Treasury of Sholom Aleichem Children’s Stories, translated by Aliza Shevrin, Jason Aronson, 1996, ISBN 1-56821-926-1.
• Inside Kasrilovka, Three Stories, translated by I. Goldstick, Schocken Books, 1948 (variously reprinted)
• The Old Country, translated by Julius & Frances Butwin, J B H of Peconic, 1999, ISBN 1-929068-21-2.
• Stories and Satires, translated by Curt Leviant, Sholom Aleichem Family Publications, 1999, ISBN 1-929068-20-4.
• Selected Works of Sholem-Aleykhem, edited by Marvin Zuckerman & Marion Herbst (Volume II of "The Three Great Classic Writers of Modern Yiddish Literature"), Joseph Simon Pangloss Press, 1994, ISBN 0-934710-24-4.

Autobiography

• Funem yarid, written 1914-1916, translated as The Great Fair by Tamara Kahana, Noonday Press, 1955; translated by Curt Leviant as From the Fair, Viking, 1986, ISBN 0-14-008830-X.

Novels

• Stempenyu, originally published in his Folksbibliotek, adapted 1905 for the play Jewish Daughters.
• Yossele Solovey (1889, published in his Folksbibliotek)
• Tevye's Daughters, translated by F. Butwin (originally published 1949), Crown, 1959, ISBN 0-517-50710-2.
• Mottel the Cantor's son Originally written in Yiddish. English version: Henry Schuman, Inc. New York 1953
• In The Storm
• Wandering Star

Young adult literature

• Menahem-Mendl, translated as The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, translated by Tamara Kahana, Sholom Aleichem Family Publications, 1969, ISBN 1-929068-02-6.
• Motl peysi dem khazns, translated as The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son (young adult literature), translated by Tamara Kahana, Sholom Aleichem Family Publications, 1999, ISBN 1-929068-00-X. Also appeared as Mottel the Cantor's son (Henry Schuman, Inc. New York 1953)
• The Bewitched Tailor, Sholom Aleichem Family Publications, 1999, ISBN 1-929068-19-0.

Plays

• The Doctor (1887), one-act comedy
• Der get (The Divorce, 1888), one-act comedy
• Di asifa (The Assembly, 1889), one-act comedy
• Yaknez (1894), a satire on brokers and speculators
• Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt (Scattered Far and Wide, 1903), comedy
• Agentn (Agents, 1905), one-act comedy
• Yidishe tekhter (Jewish Daughters, 1905) drama, adaptation of his early novel Stempenyu
• Di goldgreber (The Golddiggers, 1907), comedy
• Shver tsu zayn a yid (Hard to be a Jew, 1914)
• Dos groyse gevins (The Big Lottery / The Jackpot, 1916)
• Tevye der milkhiker, (Tevye the Milkman, 1917, performed posthumously)

Miscellany

• Jewish Children, translated by Hannah Berman, William Morrow & Co, 1987, ISBN 0-688-84120-1.
• numerous stories in Russian, published in Voshkod (1891-1892)

References

Further reading

• My Father, Sholom Aleichem, by Marie Waife-Goldberg
• Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6. 66 et. seq.
• A Bridge of Longing, by David G. Roskies

External links

• The Sholom Aleichem Network
• The Bloody Hoax (a book review)
• Interview with Bell Kaufman - in Russian
• Jewish Children by Sholom Aleichem MP3 recording from LibriVox.org.