The World of Sholom Aleichem

by Maurice Samuel

An Alternate Cover for this ISBN can be found here.

A picture of the Jewish Pale in Southern Russia during the late 19th century, based on the writings, autobiographical and fictional, of Shalom Rabinowitz writing under the pen name "Sholom Aleichem." Maurice Samuel and Sholom Aleichem have merged so completely that the seams never show. Samuel's has brought the characters, folk lore and memories created by Shalom Aleichem to the modern age of readers. The book is full of bueaty, humor and delight. Though about the inner story of Jewry since the earliest days of the Diaspora, the tales are presented without bitterness. The stories: Man in the Forest; Tevyeh the Dairyman; The Townlet of the Tiny Folk; The Eternal Hopuse; Love of Life; Faith; One Man to Be Envied; Sabbaths and Festicals; From Passover to Passover; Kasrielevky on a Binge; A Tale of Two Cities; The Judgements of Reb Yozifel; A Seat by the Eastern Wall; Kasrielevky of Kasreilevky; Old and New Kasrielevky; The Reconsiliation; A Special Kind of Anti-Semite; Kasrielevky in Dissolution; The Sons-in-Law of Tevyeh; The Humor of Kasrielevky; Kasrielevky Billingsgate; The Superstitions of Kasrielevky; Rabbis and Rabbis; The Two Extremes; The Open World; Fringe Types; The Children's World; The Cheder; Aurora Americana; Death in Exile.

Genres: Jewish

331 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Maurice Samuel (February 8, 1895 – May 4, 1972) was a Romanian-born British and American novelist, translator and lecturer.

Born in Măcin, Tulcea County, Romania, to Isaac Samuel and Fanny Acker, Samuel moved to Paris with his family at the age of five and about a year later to England where he studied at the Victoria University. His parents spoke Yiddish at home and he developed strong attachments to the Jewish people and the Yiddish language at early age. This later became the motivation for many of the books he wrote as an adult. Eventually, he left England. Samuel emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1917.

A Jewish intellectual and writer, he is best known for his work You Gentiles, published in 1924. Most of his work concerns Judaism or the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction, such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place during the Borgias' rule of Renaissance Italy, and the fantasy science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch". He and his work received acclaim within the Jewish community during his lifetime, including the 1944 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his non-fiction work, The World of Sholom Aleichem. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature posthumously in 1972.

He died in 1972 in New York City.

Reviews

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a reasonably good book and I quite liked the writing style but it was not a biography of Sholom Aleichem nor was it a history of where he grew up or located his stories.
Rather it was a discussion of Sholom Aleichem’s characters and the places they lived, written with a great deal of affection but little analysis and all in a tone incredibly similar to Sholom Aleichem himself.
After a while I just came to the conclusion that it would be better to return to the source.

This is a great book for the uber-fan who has read all Sholom Aleichem’s books and simply wishes to sojourn longer in a similar world but for anyone else I would recommend they simply read a book by Sholom Aleichem.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

In reading this book I had two objectives. I wanted to follow up on Maurice Samuel, who has written many books and is a potential character for niche interest. (Conclusion: he's readable and informative, but I'll pass.) I also wanted to read it as a homage to the guy who is responsible for the magnificent character Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, which I consider one of the best movies I've ever seen. Done and done. (And probably the movie is better than the books, at least translated into English.)

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful background on Polish Jewish life in the late 19th c.