Sholem Aleichem — writer (fiddler on roof) with roots in the Russian Empire
Sholem Aleichem (born Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich) was a Ukrainian-born Yiddish author and playwright who became the most beloved writer in the Yiddish language. His stories of Tevye the Dairyman — the philosophical Jewish dairy farmer in Tsarist Russia — were adapted into Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history.
Tracing the roots — Pereyaslav (Ukr)
Born in Pereyaslav (Russian Empire, now Ukraine) in 1859, Sholem Aleichem spent his life writing about the Jewish shtetl world of the Russian Empire — its poverty, its joy, its faith, and its catastrophic disruption by pogroms and revolution. He died in New York in 1916; 100,000 people attended his funeral. Mark Twain called him 'the Jewish Mark Twain,' to which Sholem Aleichem replied that he was 'the American Sholem Aleichem.'
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Pereyaslav (Ukr). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."