Sholem Asch

Sholem Asch
Sholem Asch, 1940
Born	Szalom Asz 1 November 1880 Kutno, Poland
Died	10 July 1957 (aged 76) London, England
Nationality	Polish, American
Other names	Szalom Asz, Shalom Asch, Shalom Ash
Occupation	Novelist, dramatist, and essayist

Sholem Asch (Yiddish: שלום אַש‎), also written Shalom Asch or simply Shalom Ash (1 November 1880 – 10 July 1957), was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language that settled in the United States.

Life and work

Asch was born Szalom Asz in Kutno, Poland, one of ten children of Moszek Asz (1825, Gąbin – 1905, Kutno), a cattle-dealer and innkeeper, and Frajda Malka, née Widawska (born 1850, Łęczyca), and received a traditional Jewish education; as a young man he followed that with a more liberal education obtained at Włocławek, where he supported himself as a letter writer for the illiterate Jewish townspeople.

From there he moved to Warsaw, where he met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of the Polish-Jewish writer, M. M. Shapiro. Influenced by the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), initially Asch wrote in Hebrew, but I. L. Peretz convinced him to switch to Yiddish.

He attended the Czernowitz Yiddish Language Conference of 1908, which declared Yiddish to be "a national language of the Jewish people". He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and the United States in 1910. He sat out World War I in the United States where he became a naturalized citizen in 1920. He returned to Poland and later moved to France.

His Kiddush ha-Shem (1919) is one of the earliest historical novels in modern Yiddish literature, about the anti-Jewish and anti-Polish Chmielnicki Uprising in mid-17th century Ukraine and Poland. When his 1907 drama, God of Vengeance — which is set in a brothel and whose plot features a lesbian relationship — was performed on Broadway in 1923, the entire cast was arrested and successfully prosecuted on obscenity charges, despite the fact that the play was sufficiently highly esteemed in Europe to have already been translated into German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Czech and Norwegian. His 1929–31 trilogy, Farn Mabul (Before the Flood, translated as Three Cities) describes early 20th century Jewish life in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow. His Bayrn Opgrunt (1937, translated as The Precipice), is set in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. Dos Gezang fun Tol (The Song of the Valley) is about the halutzim (Jewish-Zionist pioneers in Palestine), and reflects his 1936 visit to that region.

Sholem Asch

A celebrated writer in his own lifetime, a 12-volume set of his collected works was published in the early 1920s. In 1932 he was awarded the Polish Republic's Polonia Restituta decoration and was elected honorary president of the Yiddish PEN Club.

He visited Palestine again in 1936, and returned to settle in the United States in 1938. However, he later offended Jewish sensibilities with his 1939–1949 trilogy, The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary, which dealt with New Testament subjects. The Forward, New York's leading Yiddish-language newspaper, not only dropped him as a writer, but also openly attacked him for promoting Christianity. Translation of his major novel, The Man from Nazareth (transl. Michal Friedman; intr. Salomon Belis-Legis), was published by Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie (1990) in the series of Jewish-Polish writers, Biblioteka Pisarzy Żydowskich, Aleph.

Death and legacy

Asch spent most of his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel, although he died in London.

His house in Bat Yam is now the Sholem Asch Museum. The bulk of his library, containing rare Yiddish books and manuscripts, including the manuscripts of some of his own works, is held at Yale University.

His sons were Moszek Asz Moses "Moe" Asch (12 February 1905, Warsaw – 19 October 1986, United States), the founder and head of Folkways Records, and Natan Asz/Nathan Asch (1902, Warsaw – 1964, United States), also a writer.

His great-grandson David Mazower is also a writer.^[1]

Bibliography

A Shtetl ("The Village"), 1904 or earlier, story Mitn Shtrom (With the Stream), 1904 novel and play Got fun Nekomeh (God of Vengeance), 1907, play Reb Shloyme Nogid, 1913, novel Motke Ganev (Motke the Thief), 1916, novel Mary, 1917, play Der Veg tsu Zikh (The Way to Oneself), 1917, play Motke Ganev (Motke the Thief), 1917, play Onkl Mozes (Uncle Moses), 1918 (translated into English 1938), play Kiddush ha-Shem, 1919 (translated into English 1926), novel Di Muter (The Mother), 1919 (translated into English 1930) Di Kishufmakherin fun Kastilien (The Witch of Castile), 1921 Urteyl (Death Sentence), 1924 Khaym Lederers Tsurikkumen (The Return of Khaym Lederer), 1927 Farn Mabul trilogy (Before the Flood) 1929-31, translated as Three Cities, 1933 Gots Gefangene (God's Captives), 1933 Der T'hilim Yid, 1934, translated as: Salvation

The War Goes On, 1935 Bayrn Opgrunt, 1937, translated as: The Precipice The Mother, 1937, novel Three Novels, 1938 Dos Gezang fun Tol (The Song of the Valley), 1938 (translated into English, 1939) The Nazarene, 1939, novel What I Believe 1941, essay, 201 pages Children of Abraham, 1942, short stories My Personal Faith, 1942, Published: London, George Rutledge & Sons, Ltd The Apostle, 1943, novel One Destiny: An Epistle to the Christians, 1945[2][3][4] East River, 1946,[5] spent more than 6 months on the New York Times Best Seller List (1946–7) including one week at #1[6] Tales of My People, 1948, short stories Mary, 1949, novel, unrelated to his earlier work of the same name Salvation, 1951 Moses, 1951, novel A Passage in the Night, 1953 The Prophet, 1955

Discography

• In the Beginning: Bible Stories for Children by Sholem Asch (Performed by Arna Bontemps) (Folkways Records, 1955)
• Joseph and His Brothers: From In the Beginning by Sholem Asch (Performed by Arna Bontemps) (Folkways Records, 1955)
• Jewish Classical Literature: Read by Chaim Ostrowsky (Folkways Records, 1960)
• Nativity: Sholem Asch's Story of the Birth of Jesus (Performed by Pete Seeger) (Folkways Records, 1963)
• Readings from the Bible - Old Testament: Compiled by Sholem Asch (Performed by Harry Fleetwood) (Folkways Records, 1972)
• Sholem Asch: A Statement and Lecture at Columbia University, N.Y. October, 1952 (Folkways Records, 1977)

References

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30214204
2. "Sholem Asch, One Destiny: an Epistle to the Christians | Issue 22". Kesher Journal. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
3. "One Destiny Part 1". Petahtikvah.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
4. "One Destiny Part 2". Petahtikvah.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
5. Sholem Asch. East River: A Novel of New York. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
6. John Bear, The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times bestsellers since the first list, 50 years ago, Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1992. pp. 21–27

Further reading

• "Sholem Asch". YIVO encyclopaedia.
• "Sholem Asch". Yale University Library Judaica Collection.
• Bell, June D. "Sholem Asch's Yiddish drama God of Vengeance (1907)". All About Jewish Theater.
• "Asch, Sholem". The Columbia Encyclopedia (sixth ed.).
• Umansky, Ellen. "Asch's Passion". Mostly about Asch's controversial trilogy that began with The Nazarene.
• Tumanov, Vladimir (1998). "Novelizing Myth in Sholem Asch's Moses" (PDF). Yiddish 11 (1–2): 162–184.

External links

• Works by or about Sholem Asch at Internet Archive
• Works by Sholem Asch at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Sholem Asch Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
• Ben Siegel, The controversial Sholem Asch: an introduction to his fiction at Google Books, 313 pages.
• Alyssa Quint, Asch's Diamonds, A New Essay Collection Gives an Oft-neglected Master His Due, a review in The Jewish Daily Forward
• "Workbook" on the Asch-Howe Quarrel
• Sara Blacher-Retter reads A shtiler gortn and A dorf-tsadik
• A bust of Sholem Asch by Jacob Epstein, from the collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem