Resumo de The Old Country - Sholom Aleichem

Sholom (Sholem) Aleichem (February 18 (O.S.) = March 2 (N.S.

), 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
comedy

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.

Born Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz to a poor

patriarchal Jewish family in Pereyaslav (near Kiev),

Ukraine. Sholem's mother died when he was 13. 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, 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.

At first Aleichem wrote in Russian and Hebrew, but
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
language

used exclusively by the learned Jews. Sholom
Aleichem

wrote

for about three million Russian Jews whose only
language

was

Yiddish.

Israeli postal stamp dedicated to the centennial

birthday of

Sholom Aleichem

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 annual, Die

Yiddishe

Folksbibliotek (The Yiddish Popular Library) which

gave

important exposure to many young Yiddish writers. A

third

issue was edited, but never printed, because he lost
his

entire fortune in a stock speculation in 1890. 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.

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.

After 1891 Sholom Aleichem lived in Odessa, but as
waves

of

pogroms swept southern Russia in the early 1900s, he

emigrated with the family in 1905, settling first in

Switzerland, and in 1914, in the United States,
where he

made his home in New York City. He died there at the
age

of

57 and was laid to rest at the Brooklyn cemetery.

In 1997, a monument dedicated to Sholom Aleichem was

erected

in Kiev; another was erected 2001 in Moscow.

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