Peretz’s tales of caring inspire actor

By Tom Tugend
Published on September 7, 2011

Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Leib (I.L.) Peretz died almost a century ago, but the works of the two giants of Yiddish literature live on in film and on stage.

Gogol, Chekhov ... Sholem Aleichem — Russia’s other great author

By Tom Tugend
Published on July 26, 2011

Despite a long life of distinguished writing, it’s not without irony that Sholem Aleichem today is probably known to most people as the guy who wrote the story behind “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Sholem Aleichem, Gogol Show Two Views of Shtetl Jews

Published on March 11, 2009

Russians, Jews and literature scholars get excited about jubilee years, and for those who fit any of these categories, 2009 is a big year. One hundred and fifty years ago this month, a writer who would immortalize the Russian Jew in literature, Solomon Rabinovich (1859-1916) — better known by his literary persona, Sholem Aleichem — was born in the town of Pereyaslav, near Kyiv. This spring also marks the 200th birthday of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), who was born about 100 miles to the east of Kyiv, in the town of Sorochintsy. Gogol, too, helped to immortalize the Russian Jew in literature, but in a more problematic way: the Jews who crop up around the margins of his stories, most of them crafty market vendors, money-lenders and tavern keepers, are anti-Semitic stereotypes, an unsettling detail in the work of one of the greatest comic writers of modern literature.