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Tales of My People
A collection of stories portrays the lives of the Eastern European Jews of obscure villages who are the forefathers of the American Jew today
Hardcover
About the author
Sholem Asch
263 books38 followersPolish-American writer Sholem Asch (also written Shalom Ash, Yiddish: שלום אַש, Polish: Szalom Asz) sought to reconcile Judaism and Christianity in his controversial novels, such as
The Nazarene
(1939).
Sholem Asch composed dramas and essays in the language.
Frajda Malka bore Asch and nine other children to Moszek Asz, a cattle-dealer and innkeeper. Asch received tradition and as a young man followed, obtained a more liberal education at Włocławek, and supported with letters for the illiterate townspeople. He moved to Warsaw and met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of Menahem Mendel Shapiro. The Haskalah or Hebrew enlightenment initially influenced Asch, but Isaac Leib Peretz convinced him to switch.
Plot of God of Vengeance , his drama of 1907 features a lesbian relationship in a brothel.
He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and to the United States in 1910.
His Kiddush ha-Shem in 1919 in the earliest historical modern literature concerns the anti-Semitic uprising of Khmelnytsky in mid-17th century Ukraine.
He sat out World War I in the United States and a naturalized as a citizen in 1920. He returned.
People celebrated a 12-volume set of his collected works, published in his own lifetime in the early 1920s.
When people performed God of Vengeance , the highly esteemed play, on Broadway in 1923, authorities arrested and successfully prosecuted the entire cast on obscenity charges despite the fact that people in Europe already translated it into German, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Czech, and Norwegian.
Farn Mabul ( Before the Flood , translated as Three Cities ), his trilogy of 1929 to 1931, describes early 20th century life in Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow.
In 1932, the republic awarded the decoration of Polonia Restituta, and the club of poets, essayists, and novelists (PEN) elected him honorary president.
He later moved to France and visited Palestine again in 1936. Dos Gezang fun Tol ( The Song of the Valley ) about the halutzim or Zionist pioneers in Palestine reflects his visit of 1936 to that region.
He set his Bayrn Opgrunt (1937), translated as The Precipice , in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
He settled in the United States in 1938.
He, however, later offended sensibilities with The Apostle , and Mary , parts of his trilogy, which in 1939 to 1949 dealt with subjects of New Testament. The Forward , leading language newspaper of New York, dropped him and openly attacked him for promotion.
Asch spent most his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel but died in London. His house in Bat Yam now houses his namesake museum. Yale University holds the bulk of his library, which contains rare books and manuscripts, including some of his own works.
Sholem Asch composed dramas and essays in the language.
Frajda Malka bore Asch and nine other children to Moszek Asz, a cattle-dealer and innkeeper. Asch received tradition and as a young man followed, obtained a more liberal education at Włocławek, and supported with letters for the illiterate townspeople. He moved to Warsaw and met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of Menahem Mendel Shapiro. The Haskalah or Hebrew enlightenment initially influenced Asch, but Isaac Leib Peretz convinced him to switch.
Plot of God of Vengeance , his drama of 1907 features a lesbian relationship in a brothel.
He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and to the United States in 1910.
His Kiddush ha-Shem in 1919 in the earliest historical modern literature concerns the anti-Semitic uprising of Khmelnytsky in mid-17th century Ukraine.
He sat out World War I in the United States and a naturalized as a citizen in 1920. He returned.
People celebrated a 12-volume set of his collected works, published in his own lifetime in the early 1920s.
When people performed God of Vengeance , the highly esteemed play, on Broadway in 1923, authorities arrested and successfully prosecuted the entire cast on obscenity charges despite the fact that people in Europe already translated it into German, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Czech, and Norwegian.
Farn Mabul ( Before the Flood , translated as Three Cities ), his trilogy of 1929 to 1931, describes early 20th century life in Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow.
In 1932, the republic awarded the decoration of Polonia Restituta, and the club of poets, essayists, and novelists (PEN) elected him honorary president.
He later moved to France and visited Palestine again in 1936. Dos Gezang fun Tol ( The Song of the Valley ) about the halutzim or Zionist pioneers in Palestine reflects his visit of 1936 to that region.
He set his Bayrn Opgrunt (1937), translated as The Precipice , in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
He settled in the United States in 1938.
He, however, later offended sensibilities with The Apostle , and Mary , parts of his trilogy, which in 1939 to 1949 dealt with subjects of New Testament. The Forward , leading language newspaper of New York, dropped him and openly attacked him for promotion.
Asch spent most his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel but died in London. His house in Bat Yam now houses his namesake museum. Yale University holds the bulk of his library, which contains rare books and manuscripts, including some of his own works.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 3, 2018
I first discovered this author when I was reading fictional account so Jesus. His poor trail was so good and detailed and so not nontraditional but interesting is not really an adequate description. Let’s just say I enjoyed it and so I read East River and I was OK with Facebook was chilling and interesting in a different way. I wonder how hard it was to write this book. I know from research that he wasn’t in Europe during the holocaust but he described it so vividly and he did something that I haven’t come across in a while and that was put individual stories into the events. And he also covers other things besides the holocaust two different traditions of Eastern European jewelry kind of like Isaac the Chivas singer does. I admit to getting a lot of my knowledge about Jewish tradition and prayers and such from these writers this one is no exception. I will definitely read more of his books but I do have to say in addition to that, a couple of stories here really left me chills and that was a child leaves the way and the one about the eyes I can’t remember the title now. That one was kind of strange but that whole area was strange. The story about the eyes I think just from thinking about it combines Jewish mysticism with the event of the Holocaust. The descriptions were very detailed in terms of geography day today existence and that was his intent. I would probably read this book again only certain parts of it I don’t know if I would read the whole book again but I found that some of the stories are worth a second read. I don’t think I’ll read that story again a child leaves the way that was just creepy. I think that that evening and may have happened more than once but just reading about it was disturbing in itself. If you get a chance pick up this book. I hate or I hesitate to say I enjoyed it because can you enjoy books that cover murder in such detail was such a vivid picture rail? It’s not entirely about the whole cars but since my main experience with that evening and I know that he probably put trade every other event that he covers with the same accuracy and detail. I like this author.
August 24, 2019
This little collection of mismatched stories illustrates Asch's magnificent command of language (rendered expertly into English by Meyer Levin in the edition I have) as well as his fanciful imagination. The book consists of two very different parts.
The first half of the book is a novella called The Little Town, a strangely idealized view of the early twentieth-century shtetl. In Asch's view all the rabbis are highly spiritual, all the ordinary people are faithful, the rich provide for the poor, and so on. Nevertheless, there is some drama and the novella is worth reading for the author's Chassidic approach to the holiness of all nature and everything around us. A scene of prayer in the field outside the town is particularly thrilling.
The rest of the book shows more tension, and some real horror in the Holocaust stories. These may be historically significant because they are an early record (the book was published in 1948) of the sufferings caused by the Shoah. However, the tribulations of individual characters lose some of their power as Asch weaves the into a mythologized treatment of spirituality.
The first half of the book is a novella called The Little Town, a strangely idealized view of the early twentieth-century shtetl. In Asch's view all the rabbis are highly spiritual, all the ordinary people are faithful, the rich provide for the poor, and so on. Nevertheless, there is some drama and the novella is worth reading for the author's Chassidic approach to the holiness of all nature and everything around us. A scene of prayer in the field outside the town is particularly thrilling.
The rest of the book shows more tension, and some real horror in the Holocaust stories. These may be historically significant because they are an early record (the book was published in 1948) of the sufferings caused by the Shoah. However, the tribulations of individual characters lose some of their power as Asch weaves the into a mythologized treatment of spirituality.
August 7, 2019
The Little Town: A fascinating and idyllic look into Jewish shtetl life in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sholem Asch’s foreword is particularly timely. He dedicates this work to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and defends American Jewish life as the inheritor of the Eastern European experience he describes. Yiddish literature shines through in this edited volume in translation.
January 1, 2017
This collection of stories is a kaleidescope of the lives of Eastern European (Polish)Jewry before and during the Holocaust. Asch captures the syntax, culture, and religious practices of the Jews, warts and all. Asch's writing is rich, evocative, and poignant. Much of the subject matter is painful,but reading these stories transports the reader to a world that is lost.
The Yiddish language conveyed the hopes, dreams, and tragedies, and outlook of a people who no longer exist. Reading Asch's Tales of My People brings them life once again.
The Yiddish language conveyed the hopes, dreams, and tragedies, and outlook of a people who no longer exist. Reading Asch's Tales of My People brings them life once again.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews