Sholem Asch

Life and work

Asch was born Szalom Asz in Kutno, Congress 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 until, 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, in 1903, he married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of the Polish-Jewish teacher and poet Menahem Mendel 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.

His 1907 drama God of Vengeance (Got fun nekome) is about a Jewish brothel owner who attempts to become respectable by commissioning a Torah scroll and marrying off his daughter to a yeshiva student. Set in a brothel, the play includes Jewish prostitutes, a lesbian scene, and the hurling of a Torah across the stage. In 1923, it was translated into English, and staged on Broadway at the Apollo Theatre on West 42nd Street with a cast that included the acclaimed Jewish immigrant actor Rudolph Schildkraut. Its run was cut short after six weeks when the entire cast, along with producer Harry Weinberger, and one of the owners of the theater, were indicted – and eventually convicted – on charges of obscenity; Weinberger, who was also a prominent attorney, represented the group at the trial. After a protracted battle by Weinberger, the conviction was successfully appealed. In Europe, the play was popular enough to be translated into German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Czech and Norwegian. Indecent, a play written by Paula Vogel tells of those events and the impact of God of Vengeance. It opened at the Cort Theater on Broadway in April, 2017, directed by Rebecca Taichman.

Asch's 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.

Asch was a celebrated writer in his own lifetime. In 1920, in honor of his 40th birthday, a committee headed by Judah L. Magnes published a 12-volume set of his collected works. 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, as well as 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 a writer, as well as a BBC Journalist.