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Sholom Aleichem
--- Fiddler on the roof ---
Sholom Aleichem, the pseudonym of Sholom Yakov Rabinowitz, whose name is actually a conventional Yiddish greeting meaning "Peace be with you", was born in the Ukraine to a wealthy father who was a religious scholar. At age 12 Sholom Aleichem's family met with hard times and a reversal of fortune, shortly after which his mother died of cholera. He began his writing career in the early 1880s when Jews in western Russia were coming increasingly under attack and the hateful word "pogrom" (an oftentimes governmentally dictated persecution or even massacre) became more and common. As a result of the increasingly frequent pogroms and the restrictive laws associated with them, Jews in Western Europe became increasingly dislocated.
The dislocation, which was meant to fragment and destroy Jewish culture, miraculously had the opposite effect. Dislocation caused an increased cultural awakening. As a result, a movement to establish a body of literature in Yiddish, the everyday language of the Western European Jews, gained steam. Yiddish, which derives from Middle High German but draws its vocabulary from Hebrew, Russian, Polish, and English (among a few others), had been, up to this point, considered an inappropriate language for literature. Sholom Aleichem became one of the premier Yiddish writers and as Jewish life became more and more fragmented through displacement, he helped unify people through his stories.
As a child, Aleichem wrote, encouraged by his father, even during times of his family hardship. Despite the family set- back at age 12, eventually his father's fortunes changed and at that point Sholom Aleichem pursued his secondary education. He never attended a university, however. Instead, he joined the Army and upon being discharged, worked as a rabineer (or government rabbi) for three years.
As a child, and even into his early adult years, Aleichem wrote in Hebrew and Russian, the acceptable languages for stories, but between the years of 1883 and 1916 he wrote 40 volumes of novels, short stories, and plays in Yiddish. Aleichem has been regarded as "The Jewish Mark Twain", largely through the success of his stories of Tevye the Dairymen. Shortly after the dawn of the twentieth- century Aleichem was supporting himself and his family solely through writing (a remarkable feat, especially considering his work was in Yiddish). Sadly, though, increasing pogroms made writing difficult, at best. In addition, copywrite issues plagued Aleichem. His work was often published and distributed without his knowledge, causing a great loss of income to which he was due. As a result, Aleichem frequently toured Poland and Russia to make money. It was at this time he was diagnosed with TB.
When WW1 broke out, Sholom Aleichem and his family found themselves with nowhere to turn but American and so, in 1914, the family moved to New York City. Sadly, though, Aleichem was forced to leave his son Misha (who also had TB) behind, an action which grieved him sorely. In America during the last two years of his life Aleichem wrote about Jewish immigrants in America, leaving us with insightful accounts which help us reconstruct what life was like for them. Despite Aleichem's continuous writing and publishing he continued to struggle financially and his financial worries, as well as his concern for his son Misha, began to take their toll. Misha died from TB in 1915 and Aleichem followed him in 1916.
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