Tag Archives: Yiddish

Jew of the Week: Sholem Aleichem

The Jewish Mark Twain

Sholem Solomon Alexei Rabinovich (1859-1916) was born to a wealthy family near Kyiv in what was then the Russian Empire. He grew up in the Jewish shtetl of Voronkiv, receiving both a secular education and a traditional Jewish one. His father lost most of the family’s fortunes, and his mother died of cholera when he was just 13. Rabinovich started writing around this time, and already at age 15 wrote a Jewish version of Robinson Crusoe. He wrote stories in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian. At 24, he took up the pen name “Sholem Aleichem”, the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew greeting meaning “peace be upon you”. After completing his studies, he worked as a teacher and then as a “crown rabbi”, a representative of the Jewish community to the Russian government. He lost his own wealth in the stock market in 1890 and at one point struggled to make a living and feed his five children. By the end of the 1890s, Sholem Aleichem was the most popular Yiddish writer in the world, and inspired countless other young Jewish writers. He published Tevye the Milkman in 1894, which was later adapted to Fiddler on the Roof, becoming a major international hit (as well as a Broadway play—the first to run for more than 3000 performances—and a film). Rabinovich lived in Kyiv until 1905, when terrible pogroms raged across the Russian Empire and he witnessed the brutality firsthand. The family fled, splitting their time between New York City and Geneva, Switzerland. All in all, Sholem Aleichem wrote some 40 works in Yiddish, and many more in Hebrew and Russian. He was commonly referred to as “the Jewish Mark Twain”. (When Mark Twain himself heard about this, he said that he was actually “the American Sholem Aleichem”!) Rabinovich was a passionate Zionist, too, joining Hovevei Zion in 1888, and representing the American Jewish community at the Eighth Zionist Congress in 1907. There are streets, schools, and other public places named after him around the world, including in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. There is even a Sholem Aleichem Crater on the planet Mercury! Rabinovich’s funeral drew some 100,000 mourners, making it among the largest in New York’s history. He wrote in his will: “Let my name be recalled with laughter, or not at all.”

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Words of the Week

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
– Sholem Aleichem

Jew of the Week: Clara Lemlich Shavelson

A Yiddish Feminist Icon

Clara Lemlich (1886-1982) was born to a religious Jewish-Russian family in what is now Horodok, Ukraine. She grew up speaking Yiddish, and learned Russian against the wishes of her parents. This actually allowed her to start a business in her youth, writing letters in Russian for her neighbours. She used the money to buy books, and soon took a deep interest in socialist literature. Following the horrors of the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903—in which 49 Jews were killed, over 500 injured, and 1500 Jewish home destroyed—the family fled to the US and settled in New York City. Lemlich got a job in the garment industry, working long hours in terrible conditions, with no breaks or benefits, and poor compensation. She joined the International Ladies’ Garment Worker’s Union and soon got elected to its executive board. Lemlich started to organize strikes and protests. During one protest, gangsters hired by her employers broke her ribs. Undeterred, in November of 1909 she gave a rousing speech (in Yiddish!) and got 20,000 workers to join her in a massive strike which came to be known as the “Uprising of the 20,000”. This then inspired male garment workers to stage a strike, too, resulting in the “Great Revolt” that brought 50,000 to protest. The result was that employers finally took notice and slowly began improving conditions for their employees. Lemlich, however, was blacklisted from working in the garment industry. Instead, she turned her attention to universal suffrage and wrote: “The manufacturer has a vote; the bosses have votes; the foremen have votes, the inspectors have votes. The working girl has no vote…” and until she gets to vote, “she will not get justice; she will not get fair conditions.” Lemlich founded the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League. Two years later, she married Joe Shavelson and started a family, switching gears to spend most of her time raising her children. Her activism continued, though, for example participating in a housewives’ boycott of kosher butcheries to protest price gouging. She would go on to join the Communist Party of America, and then to work for Progressive Women’s Councils. She campaigned against nuclear weapons, genocides, and the Vietnam War. At 81, she moved to California to be with her children and lived in a nursing home. Even then, her activism didn’t stop and she convinced the nursing home management to join in on boycotts protesting high prices on fruits and vegetables. Today, Lemlich is recognized as a major feminist icon and an inspiration for countless Jewish women.

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Words of the Week

The world suffers a lot not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.
– Napoleon Bonaparte

Jew of the Week: Nathan Birnbaum

The First Zionist (and the First Modern Ba’al Teshuva)

Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) was born in Vienna to a traditional Jewish family of Hungarian and Galician heritage. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Vienna, where he founded Kadimah, the first nationalist Jewish student association. He also started a new magazine called Selbstemanzipation! (“Self-Emancipation!) In fact, it was in an 1890 article for his magazine that Birnbaum coined the terms “Zionism” and “Zionist”. Two years later, he coined the term “political Zionism”, as distinct from the religious Zionism that has always existed in Judaism. Birnbaum’s writings were hugely popular and helped ignite the modern Zionist movement. They also played a role in inspiring Theodor Herzl. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Birnbaum was elected Secretary General. However, he soon had a change of heart when he saw how Zionism was becoming too secular and too political. Instead, he began to advocate for “Jewish cultural autonomy”, also called golus (or galut) nationalism. He hoped Jews would be recognized as a distinct and semi-autonomous people within the countries in which they dwelled. Birnbaum ran for Austrian parliament and while he did win the election, corruption and anti-Semitism prevented him from taking his seat. Birnbaum was a huge proponent of “Yiddishism”, and to make Jews proud of their culture and language. In 1908, he convened the first Conference for the Yiddish Language, and even traveled to America to promote the revival of Yiddish. During this trip, he had a meeting with US President Teddy Roosevelt. Birnbaum eventually realized that true salvation for the Jews can only come from adherence to Torah and Jewish law. In 1916, he became a ba’al teshuvah and began to live a strictly Orthodox life. Three years later, he became the General Secretary of Agudas Yisroel (originally an umbrella organization for Eastern European Orthodox Jews, and today also a political party in Israel). He wrote a popular text called Gottesvolk (“God’s People”), where he outlined his plan for reviving Judaism and laid out a vision of the ideal Jewish community. He argued passionately against “modern paganism” and warned about the dangers of godless secularism, quite accurately foreseeing how it could destroy society. He affirmed that settling and living in Israel was still important, of course, but for spiritual reasons, not political ones. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Birnbaum fled with his family to the Netherlands, where he lived out the last few years of his life. Today there is a street in Jerusalem named after him. He has been called a “prophetic personality” and the “first modern ba’al teshuvah”.

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Words of the Week

When one stands in prayer, he should place his feet together side by side. He should set his eyes downwards as if he is looking at the ground, and his heart upwards as if he is standing in Heaven.
– Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (“Maimonides”, 1138-1204), Mishneh Torah