Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son

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SHOLEM ALEICHEM is the pen name of Sholem Rabinovitch (1859–1916), the most beloved writer in Yiddish literature and the creator of the famous Tevye character in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. His hundreds of short stories, plays, novels, poems, and feuilletons are still read, studied, produced, and translated all over the world.

Born in a small town in Ukraine, he began writing in Hebrew at an early age and first supported himself as a teacher of Russian. He also worked as a government rabbi, a clerk, and a businessman-speculator. He married the daughter of a wealthy landowner, upon whose death he became the administrator of her family’s large estate in Kiev. He turned to writing Yiddish fiction in 1883 and encouraged a number of Jewish writers, who were writing in Hebrew, to write in Yiddish as well, offering to publish their work as an incentive.

After the 1905 pogrom in Kiev, Sholem Aleichem and his large family left Russia, seeking refuge in Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, and America. He returned to Europe a year later, making personal appearances to great acclaim, but in 1914, at the start of World War I, he settled in New York, where his wit and writings caused some to call him the “Jewish Mark Twain.” He died two years later after a long illness, writing until his last day. His funeral procession was witnessed by one hundred thousand mourners.

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