Sholem Aleichem

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Sholem Aleichem

(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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Biography: Sholom Aleichem

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Probably the foremost writer of Yiddish literature, Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916) was a catalyst for its revival at the turn of the century. He is also "The Jewish Mark Twain," a folk artist who faithfully recreated the "shtetl", village life of Russian Jews before modernity, anti-Semitism, and war destroyed that world forever.

Sholom Aleichem was born March 2, 1859. He grew up in Woronko, a Ukranian village which he later recalled with affection. When he was 12, his father failed in business and the family moved to nearby Pereyaslav. A year later his mother died and his father remarried. The stepmother harrassed the children, and her curses, which Sholom recorded, became his first writing. He also composed The Jewish Robinson Crusoe, modeled on Daniel Defoe, and The Daughter of Zion, an imitation of a Hebrew novel by Abraham Mapu.

Early Writings

Recognizing Sholom Aleichem's intelligence and talent, his father enrolled him in a Russian school where he received a secular education and graduated with honors. But because he was eligible for the draft - eventually he avoided conscription - he was refused admission to a teachers' institute. He found employment as tutor to a young girl, Olga Loyeff, in 1877. When a romance developed he was abruptly dismissed by the girl's father. In 1880 he became the certified rabbi of Louben, the Jewish community's representative to the government. A Hebrew article he wrote during this period came to Loyeff's attention. Tutor and pupil were reunited. They married in 1883, and, after reconciliation with her father, moved to his estate. There, Sholom Aleichem began publishing stories in Yiddish under his pseudonym (Hebrew for "Peace be with you") because Yiddish was considered an inferior dialect for serious writing.

In 1887 he moved to Kiev and produced more stories, mainly about childhood, and novels, including Sender Blank, Yossele Solovey, and Stempanyu. In 1888 he founded Die Yiddishe Folksbibliotek, a magazine containing works by Yiddish authors. He was famous. But writing did not pay, and he supported his family as a trader on the stock exchange. In 1890, after losing his money, he moved to Odessa, then back to Kiev in 1893. Between 1890 and 1903 some of Sholom Aleichem's best known works - the letters of Menachem-Mendel, the Tevye and Kasrilevka stories, subjects to which he later returned - appeared. By 1903 he had left business altogether to write full time.

His life reflected the fortunes of European Jewry. Following the 1905 revolution and pogroms, he fled Russia. Until 1908 he lived in Switzerland, but after a bout of tuberculosis he had residences in the more healthful climates of Italy and Germany. At the outbreak of World War I he was forced, as a Russian alien, to leave Germany for Denmark. In December 1914 he came to America, where he lived until his death on May 13, 1916.

Writings in Exile

During his exile he continued writing stories, novels, and plays. Sholom Aleichem also went on reading tours, including a brief visit to America in 1907. Everywhere he was a celebrity. In Austro-Hungary students carried him from the stage on their shoulders and pulled his carriage home. Crowds greeted him on both arrivals in America. In 1909 admirers held an international jubilee honoring his 50th birthday and 25th anniversary as a writer. But, despite his fame, finances were meager. Books were pirated, publishers owning rights to the works withheld royalties, magazine editors failed to pay. The move to New York in 1914 was financed by its Yiddish cultural community.

In America he disliked the materialism and rivalries among Jewish groups, newspapers, and theaters. Two plays, a dramatization of Stempanyu and Samuel Pasternak, had disastrous runs in 1907. In 1914 he was ill and depressed over the death of a son, Misha. Though he contributed regularly to the Yiddish press and his stories appeared in translation in The New York World, money remained a problem. But his popularity never waned. Huge audiences attended his readings, and over 100,000 people were at his funeral in 1916.

Early Yiddish fiction tended to be sentimental, romances with happy endings. Sholom Aleichem's subjects were real people and their problems. Menachem-Mendel moves from one financial catastrophe to another. Tevye is a milkman with seven daughters to support; Mottel, a cantor's son, an orphan. There are three major fictional settings: Kasrilevka, a shtetl; Yehupetz, a city; and Boiberick, a country town. Generally, the characters narrate their stories, capturing the rich vocabulary and cadences of Yiddish.

The works are studies of European Jews in recent times. But the themes are universal: poverty, endurance in adversity, conflict between tradition and progress, and nostalgia for a simpler life. The characters are treated with gentle humor. "Laughter is healthful," Sholom Aleichem said.

Concerned with form, he studied Dickens, Tolstoy, Goethe, and Chekhov, as well as the major Jewish authors - Mendele, Bialik, and Peretz. In his works Yiddish was no longer a "jargon" reserved for commonplace affairs but a literary language, the inspiration for a new generation of Yiddish writers. His works have been translated into many languages, and the musical adapted from his stories, Fiddler on the Roof (1964), had productions world-wide.

Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich Шолом Наумович Рабинович
Sholem Aleichem's stories in Yiddish, with the author's portrait and signature
Born	March 2 [O.S. February 18] 1859 Pereyaslav (in present Ukraine), Russian Empire
Died	May 13, 1916 (aged 57) New York City, United States
Pen name	Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish: שלום־עליכם)
Occupation	writer
Genres	novels, short stories, plays
Literary movement	Yiddish revival

Early life and family

He was born as "Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich" (alternatively: Sholom Nochem Vevik's) (Russian: Шолем Наумович Рабинович, Ukrainian: Шолом Наумович Рабинович) to the poor Jewish family of Menachem-Nukhem and Khaye-Ester Rabinovitch in the village of Voronko, near Pereyaslav, Kiev Governorate), Imperial Russia in 1859.^[1] 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" (not unlike "As-Salamu Alaykum" in Islamic/Arabic culture), 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, thereby becoming 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. Yiddish, the vernacular language often derogatively called "jargon", was however 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.

Monument of Sholem Aleichem in Kiev. His name is written in Cyrillic and Yiddish letters, the latter using the reformed Soviet Yiddish orthography (שאָלעם אלייכעם), which removes the different spelling of words derived from Hebrew, as was the case with Sholem Aleichem (שלום עליכם); it does, however use the final mem, which was also removed in the Soviet orthography.

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; 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 Baranowicze. 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].^[1] 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.^[2] 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.

America

In 1914, most of Sholem Aleichem's family emigrated to the United States, where they made their home in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. 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, Peysi the Cantor's Son, and was laid to rest at Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens.^[3] At the time, his funeral was one of the largest in New York City history, with an estimated 100,000 mourners. ^[4] ^[5] The next day, his will was printed in the New York Times and was read into the Congressional Record of the United States.

Legacy

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.

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

The main street of Birobidzhan is named after Sholem Aleichem; streets were named after him also in other cities in the USSR, among them Zhitomir and Mykolaiv. 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 and his picture appeared on an Israeli postage stamp.

An impact crater on the planet Mercury also bears his name.^[6]

On March 2, 2009 (150 years after his birth) the National Bank of Ukraine issued an anniversary coin celebrating Aleichem with his face depicted on it.^[7]

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^[8] 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."

Aleichem had a morbid fear of the number 13. His manuscripts never have a page 13. His headstone carries the date of his death as "May 12a, 1916". ^[9]

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
Marienbad, translated by Aliza Shevrin (1982, G.P. Putnam Sons, New York) from original Yiddish manuscript copyrighted by Olga Rabinowitz in 1917
The Bloody Hoax

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

^ ^a ^b Potok, Chaim (July 14, 1985). "The Human Comedy Of Pereyaslav". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03EFDE1738F937A25754C0A963948260. Retrieved 2008-06-16. "Approaching his 50th birthday, the Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem (born Sholom Rabinowitz in the Ukraine in 1859) collapsed in Russia while on a reading tour. He was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. As he put it later, 'I had the privilege of meeting his majesty, the Angel of Death, face to face.'"
^ First Yiddish Language Conference. Two roads to Yiddishism (Nathan Birnbaum and Sholem Aleichem) by Louis Fridhandler
^ Mount Carmel cemetery
^ "Vast Crowds Honor Sholem Aleichem; Funeral Cortege Of Yiddish Author Greeted By Throngs In Three Boroughs. Many Deliver Eulogies Services At Educational Alliance Include Reading Of Writer's Will And His Epitaph.". New York Times. May 16, 1916, Tuesday. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9500E4DA113FE233A25755C1A9639C946796D6CF. Retrieved 2008-04-20. "A hundred thousand people of the east side, with sadness in their faces, lined the sidewalks yesterday when the funeral procession of Sholem Aleichem, (peace be with you,) the famous Yiddish humorist, whose real name was Solomon Rabinowitz, passed down Second Avenue and through East Houston. Eldridge, and Canal Streets, to the Educational Alliance, where services were held before the body was carried over the Williamsburg Bridge to ..."
^ "2,500 Jews Mourn Sholem Aleichem; "Plain People" Honor Memory Of "Jewish Mark Twain" In Carnegie Hall. Some Of His Stories Read Audience Laughs Through Tears, Just As The Author Had Said He Hoped Friends Would Do.". New York Times. May 18, 1916. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=940CE3DF123DEF3ABC4052DFB066838D609EDE. Retrieved 2008-04-20. "More than 2,500 Jews paid honor to the memory of Sholem Aleichem, the "Mark Twain, who depicted in a style almost epic" the spirit of his race, at a "mourning evening" in Carnegie Hall last night."
^ MESSENGER: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging
^ Events by themes: To 150th years from the birthday of Sholom-Aleichem NBU issued an anniversary coin, UNIAN photo service (March 2, 2009)
^ Oyf vos badarfn Yidn a land, (Why Do the Jews Need a Land of Their Own?), translated by Joseph Leftwich and Mordecai S. Chertoff, Cornwall Books, 1984, ISBN 0-8453-4774-8
^ Hendrickson, Robert (1990). World Literary Anecdotes. New York, New York: Facts on File, Inc. pp. 7. ISBN 0-8160-2248-8.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sholom Aleichem

Works by Sholem Aleichem at Project Gutenberg
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.
Sholem Aleichem at Find a Grave

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