Resumo de The Adventures Of Mottel, The Cantor's Son

Sholom Aleichem - Author

Sholom Aleichem is the pen name of the most famous author of Yiddish literature, Solomon Yakov Rabinovitz. The name Sholom Aleichem is derived directly from the name Solomon, which in Yiddish is often spelled Sholomo. By dropping the ending, the word 'sholom' or 'sholem', meaning peace (as in 'shalom') is obtained. Aleichem completes the name to form a Yiddish greeting, or phrase, from the Hebrew for peace be unto you'. The name Sholom Aleichem will be used throughout this Entry.
Sholom Aleichem was born on 2 March, 1859 in the small town of Pereyaslav - not to be confused with the more famous town Pereyaslav-Zalyeskiy near Moscow - southeast of Kiev, now Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire. Aleichem never settled for very long periods, but stayed mostly in that part of the Ukraine. The beginning of the 1905 Russian revolution and the growth of violent antisemitism made him leave the Russian Empire. He lived mainly in western Europe until the beginning of WWI in 1914. He then moved to New York, USA. Aleichem passed away two years later, on 13 May, 1916. A more detailed biography is given below.
Two of his most famous works are: Tevye's Daughters, a compilation of short stories (from 1895 to 1914) which later served as a basis for the Broadway musical The Fiddler on the Roof, and The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son (ca. 1900). His works are difficult to categorize without diverging into full interpretations and studies about the historical and cultural context, but are mainly of satirical and/or humourous nature. Aleichem himself wrote in his autobiography:
To make people laugh, to point the comical out to them, this was for me almost like an illness.
One aspect of Aleichem's storytelling style that might appear intriguing to readers unfamiliar with his works is the contrasting of humour with very serious subjects like discrimination, poverty, political arbitrariness, suicide or hunger - Aleichem's works while one the one hand very humourous, are at the same time deeply touching.
Alecihem's Life
Sholom Aleichem was born on 2 March, 1859 into a relatively well-off family and had eleven siblings. His father was a merchant and was knowledgeable about religious matters. He sympathised with the haskalah, which is in very rough terms a progressive movement within Judaism towards a less traditionalistic form He was part of the so-called inteligentsia, an ill-defined circle of middle-class intellectuals (of all walks of life) in Russia. In the early 1860s the family moved to Voronko, a very small town, not far from Pereyaslav. This village ended up serving as a model for the fictitious Jewish villages, or shtetls, of Kasrilevke and Anatevke in Aleichem's work. Around 1870 the family ran into financial difficulties and moved back to Pereyaslav. Aleichem's mother died in 1872 during a cholera epidemic. Encouraged by his father, Aleichem attended secondary school in Russia in spite of the intensive religious segregation
After graduation in 1876 he started working as a tutor and from 1880 to 1883 he served as a so-called 'court-rabbi in the town of Lubny a very poor Jewish village. During this time he learned to love the simple, humble Jewish people, who were to become the characters of his stories. It was probably during this time he decided to start writing in Yiddish (cf. also above). Aleichem had already started to publish short stories and commentaries for periodicals in 1879. In 1883, Aleichem married his former pupil Olga Loyev, who came from a relatively wealthy family (they had six children). She studied to become a dentist, which helped to stabilise their financial situation. However, money was always a concern. The 1890s were difficult years, and Aleichem was not very prolific; he had to travel around eastern Europe to read from his books. Around this time he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In the late 1890s he started writing the first stories of Dairyman Tevye of Menachem Mendl. Around 1900 the financial situation became stable: Olga ran a working practice, and Sholom was earning more money from writing. The ongoing turmoil in Russia, however, worsened the situation for the Jews. In 1905, after a particularly violent wave of pogroms, Aleichem left Russia with his family. They originally moved to New York, USA, but Aleichem did not find a job as a writer for a Yiddish theatre or Yiddish newspaper. They returned to western Europe in 1907 and lived mostly in Switzerland, but were in reality moving from place to place. The finacial situation became comfortable, after Aleichem regained control over his copyrights. In 1914 WWI broke out and Aleichem fled with his family to New York. Aleichem's son Misha, who had tuberculosis, and Aleichem's daughter Emma, who was to take care of him, stayed in Switzerland. In New York, Aleichem was plagued yet again by financial instability, but managed to write some pieces for the Yiddish theatre and made sporadic contributions to Yiddish newspapers. Misha died in 1915 leaving Aleichem in great dolefulness. Sholom Aleichem died in on 13 May, 1916. On the day of his burial, all Jewish shops closed, and hundred thousands attended. He is buried in the Mount Neboh Cemetery in Queens.

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