Shalom asch biography of donald
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July 10,
Yiddish novelist and playwright Sholem Asch dies at age 76 in London.
Asch was born in Kutno in Russian-controlled Poland in as the youngest of 10 children in a Hasidic family. He received a formal Jewish education until he became interested in secular studies and moved to Wloclawek, where he wrote letters for illiterate townspeople. He moved to Warsaw in Influenced by European writers and the Jewish Enlightenment, Asch wrote in Hebrew until Yiddish author I.L. Peretz persuaded him to write in Yiddish. Asch’s early Yiddish works reflected the poverty he experienced in Warsaw.
His marriage in brought him some financial security and enabled him to focus on his writing, which brought him to prominence among Jewish writers. Asch wrote about traditional Jewish ways of life at a time of increasing change. His play “God of Vengeance” in was among many controversial works. He first visited Palestine in and wrote about the Jewish connection to the land. Visits
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Sholem Asch is often mentioned in the same breath as other modern Yiddish fiction-writers: Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim. But Asch 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 by writing in-depth about Judaism’s historical rival, Christianity.
Early Life
Born in a small town outside Warsaw in , Sholem Asch received both a traditional religious education and a more secular Yiddish education. He moved to Warsaw in , and that year he published his first short story, “Moishele.”
In , 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 style made Asch’
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God of Vengeance
Adapted from Sholom Asch's classic morality tale - a work of spellbinding power from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Dinner With Friends.
Jack Chapman runs a brothel on the first floor of his tenement, but wants a respectable marriage for his daughter. But when his daughter falls in love with one of the prostitutes, the marriage - and with it, Jack's dream of redemption - looks very doubtful indeed.
Donald Margulies's adaptation shifts the action of the Yiddish melodrama from its original setting - Poland - to the Lower East Side of New York in the early s, transporting Asch's concerns about piety and hypocrisy, love and transgression into the context of Jewish-American immigrant culture.
The original English-language version of God of Vengeance first appeared on Broadway in , but was closed down and the cast arrested for its portrayal of a lesbian love affair on stage.
'Diabolical ingenuity and rueful tenderness a playwright with a parti