Shalom asch biography meaning
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Sholem Asch fryst vatten often mentioned in the same breath as other modern Yiddish fiction-writers: Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim. But aska was decidedly quirkier. Not content to write only about shtetl life or the Jewish immigrant experience–though he also covered these themes–Asch explored provocative topics like prostitution and lesbianism, and he even tested the limits of Jewish literature bygd writing in-depth about Judaism’s historical rival, Christianity.
Early Life
Born in a small town outside Warsaw in 1880, Sholem aska received both a traditional religious education and a more secular Yiddish education. He moved to Warsaw in 1900, and that year he published his first short story, “Moishele.”
In 1904, Asch’s semi-autobiographical short story “The Little Town” gained immediate acclaim. In it, he described shtetl life with precise realism, carefully avoiding the kind of “insider” references that often characterized Yiddish literature about the shtetl. This styl
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SHOLEM ASH (ASCH) (November 1, 1880-July 10, 1957)
Born in Kutne (Kutno), Poland, according to his birth certificate—it was January 1; according to his mother’s reckoning—four days after Passover. His father, Rabbi Moyshe Gombiner, came from a family of ritual slaughterers and was something of a scholar as well as a philanthropist. He did business in sheep and also ran a hotel. His mother, Malka, née Vidovski, the second wife of his father and much younger, came from a scholarly family in Lentshits (Łęczyca). He was raised at home “between two worlds”: on one side his full brothers—tall, healthy youngsters who did business with butchers and Gentiles and loved life’s adventures (they later moved to the United States and made their way there). From the other side, several step-brothers who prayed in Hassidic conclaves and walked around dressed in their gabardines. Ten children were
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Abandon all folksy Yiddish archetypes, ye who enter here. Sholem Asch gives a darker and richer portrait of Jewish life during the Russian Revolution in Three Cities, as Aaron Hamburger details in this Lost & Found.
I had to travel from schmaltzy New York to white-bread Gulf Coast Florida to discover the great Yiddish writer Sholem Asch. I was visiting my parents and had run out of things to read when my father handed me Asch’s novel Three Cities. “Try this,” he said. “It’s a masterpiece.”
As I read over Asch’s bio page, I was surprised I’d never heard of the guy, given all the success and notoriety he achieved during his lifetime, from 1880 to 1957. His first major work, a play called God of Vengeance (1907), about a lesbian affair between prostitutes, was considered so shocking, even for Broadway, that it was forced to close. In 1933, his best-selling epic novel of the Russian Revolution, Three Cities, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Re