Peacemaker

The first works of Solomon Rabinovych who later took the name Sholom-Aleichem (in Hebrew meaning "peace be with you") were, as was usual, in ancient Hebrew and, in the critics' opinion, not very good. But, as the writer told about his early works, the editors "had plenty of paper to keep their stoves going."

In 1883 Sholom-Aleichem published his first story in Yiddish- Two Stones and dedicated it to his wife Olha Loyeva who for three years was his student in the village of Sofiyivka, Kyiv region.

Sholom-Aleichem thus described his love to colloquial language: "Jargon (Yiddish - O. S.) is my passion, my second mistress, my idee fixe."

From 1888 to going abroad Sholom Aleichem wrote the brilliant novels Sender Blank and His Family, Tevie the Milkman, and Yossele the Nightingale describing the life of his nation, hounded and oppressed for centuries. With wise sorrow he portrayed the world of ordinary Jews living with their everyday concerns - the world of Kasrilovkas, Boiberykys, Yehuptsis - a lost world that is impossible to read about without the ache of nostalgia.

While abroad the writer cherished the memories of Kyiv, and of the town of his childhood, Pereyaslav. Touching are his words about Shevchenko's poems: "When I wrote my poems I was desperately looking for a Kobzar, this Song of Songs by Shevchenko, and could not find it. I was willing to give anything and everything for it. Only now I understand that I would not make a mistake if I paid the highest price even for his Kateryna alone."

The writer never believed in the essence of anti-Semitism, viewing it as a social disease, a perversion of the mind. In the words of his character Tevie he asked: "What are a Jew and a goy? And why did God created Jews and the goyim? And if He created them both, why should they be so separated, why should they hate each other?"

It was when Sholom-Aleichem was living abroad that he learned of the Beilis case (1913) of a Jew wrongly accused of a Slavic boy's ritual murder. The writer published the novel Bloody Joke where called anti-Semitism an evil joke of bloody color.

In 1915, being sick but with enormous will to work, Sholom-Aleichem settled in New York. Feeling death's inexorable approach he wrote his testament including the words, "Wherever I die I will be buried not among aristocrats, celebrities, or the rich, but among ordinary, working people, together with real people, so that the monument put on my grave will enrich the modest graves around me, and modest graves would enrich my monument the same way as ordinary and honest people in my life always enriched their people's writer."

He died on the holy day for all the Jews, Saturday, May 13, 1916. This son of his simultaneously sad and happy nation closed his own sad and happy eyes forever.