Background
Asch, Sholem was born on November 1, 1880 in Kutno, Poland. The son of a learned Kutno (Poland) family.
(The Apostle by Sholem Asch is a novel based on the life o...)
The Apostle by Sholem Asch is a novel based on the life of St. Paul. The story of Paul opens seven weeks after the crucifixion of Christ. We here a faint whisper circulating through the ranks of the poor in seething Jerusalem: The Messiah has come.
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1943
Shalom Ash
Asch, Sholem was born on November 1, 1880 in Kutno, Poland. The son of a learned Kutno (Poland) family.
Asch received a traditional Jewish education. At seventeen, he taught himself German well enough to read the classics, having come upon a copy of Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation of the book of Psalms.
His parents’ concern that he was straying from the accepted path took him to a small village where he taught Torah to children and had his first studied glimpse into the local peasants’ life. Before he was twenty, he moved to Wloclawek, where he served as a professional letter writer for the illiterate of the town.
In 1900, he sought out I. L. Peretz in Warsaw with his first literary attempts and was advised to pursue a career in Yiddish writing. As a result, several of his works in Yiddish and Hebrew were published by 1903, all written in a tone of youthful sadness. In addition to Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, and German literary influences, Asch’s early works show signs of his friendships with A. Reiscn and H. D. Nomberg, with whom he lived in Warsaw, “lodged in dark, damp holes, encountering the needy and the poverty-stricken.” Fortunately his life changed upon meeting the Polish Jewish writer M. M. Shapiro, whose daughter, Mathildc, he later married.
From 1904, his prolific writings introduced a fresh appreciation of the passion and genuineness of village life to the Yiddish literary world. A reputed playwright whose acclaimed plays such as Got fun Nekomeh (“God of Vengeance,” 1907) were staged in Russia. Poland, and Germany, he soon set his sights upon new horizons with visits to Eretz Israel (1908) and the United States (1910). This period is characterized by concerns that transcend the confines of the village and touch upon worldwide Jewish problems, as with the novel Mary (1917) and its sequel Der Weg tzu Zikh (“The Way to Oneself”).
Asch spent the war years from 1914 to 1917 in the United States, then returned to Poland and went on to France to write Motke Ganev (“Motke theThicf,” 1917), Onkl Mozes( 1918), the historical novel Kiddush Ha-Shem (1919), and Di Kishufma- kerhinfun Kastilien(“T\te Witch of Castile,” 1921). Each story is woven with contrasts and questions of faith and morality as Asch artfully juxtaposes the mundane with the sacred, the Sabbath with the workday, and the harsh external realities of Eastern European Jewish life with the individual Jew’s will to overcome them.
Before returning to the United States, in 1938, he mastered the descriptive narrative and began to develop a recognized Aschian character as evidenced in Di Muter (“The Mother,” 1919), Toyt Urteyl(“Death Sentence,” 1924), and Khaym Lederers Tsurikkumen (“Chaim Lederer's Return,” 1927). Zachary Mirkin, in particular, as the hero of Asch’s Farn Mabul (“Before the Flood,” a trilogy written between 1921 and 1931) typifies the author’s own believing quest into the world of the ideal, while describing Jewish life in Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century.
Once in America, his vivid style made him a respected and beloved storyteller to Englishspeaking, as well as Yiddish-speaking, audiences. In contrast to a most encouraging reception by the general English press to his trilogy about the beginnings of Christianity (The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary, 1943-1949), vicious attacks from the Yiddish press, and particularly the leading daily, Forward, accused Asch of furthering the invasive work of Christian missionaries of the day, and he was especially condemned for publishing such works while the Holocaust was in progress.
In spite of the ensuing alienation from Yiddish literature and from many of his Jewish social contacts, Asch went on to complete his American-Jewish narrative Ist River (“East River,” 1946), his novel about Germany under the Nazis, The Burning Bush, and his last work, based upon Isaiah, The Prophet (1955).
(The Apostle by Sholem Asch is a novel based on the life o...)
1943Member Joint Distribution Committee, New York City. Member Jewish Agency of Jerusalem.
Married Mathilda Spira, December 1901. Children: Nathan, Moe, John, Ruth.