“No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you.”
On this day in 1859, the leading Yiddish author and playwright, Solomon Rabinowitz, was born near the Russian Jewish shtetl of Voronkiv, located in modern-day Ukraine. Under the pen name “Sholem Aleichem” Rabinowitz would author more than forty volumes of work in Yiddish.
Rabinowitz’s work was characterized by straightforward, natural conversation among his characters, as well as a vivid depiction of their shtetl surroundings. His characters’ cheerfulness often belied their circumstances, granting poignancy to the tragic challenges they faced.
In 1894, he published Tevye the Dairyman, the first of several stories which would ultimately become the basis of the 1964 American musical Fiddler on the Roof. As such, he remains the sole inspiration for much of America’s collective memory of the Eastern European shtetl experience, reminding us that joy can be found even in heartrending circumstances.
— Rabbi Josh Knobel