Sholem Asch

Sholem Asch
File:Sholem Asch.jpg Sholem Asch, 1940
Born	Szalom Asz 1 November 1880 Kutno, Poland
Died	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.

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
• East River, 1946, spent more than 6 months on the New York Times Best Seller List (1946–7) including one week at #1
• 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)

Further reading

• Mostly about Asch's controversial trilogy that began with The Nazarene.

External links

• 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