Metadata: Sholom Aleichem
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Manuscript Institute of the V. I. Vernads’kyi National Library of Ukraine
- Holding institution (official language):
- Інститут рукопису Національної бібліотеки України ім. В.І. Вернадського
- Postal address:
- Building number 2, 62 Vladimirskaya street, 3rd floor, k.307; 4th floor, k. 403, Kiev 03039, Ukraine
- Phone number:
- 380 (44) 288-1418
- Web address:
- http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/node/1
- Email:
- irnbuv@gmail.com
- Reference number:
- F. 189
- Title:
- Sholom Aleichem
- Title (official language):
- Шолом-Алейхем
- Creator/accumulator:
- Sholom Aleichem
- Date(s):
- 1876/1946
- Language:
- Yiddish
- Hebrew
- German
- Russian
- Extent:
- 35 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Included are originals (author’s manuscripts and typewritten texts with author’s corrections) of works by Sholom Aleichem: the story “Grins” (“Greens,” 1908); an early variant of part 1 of the autobiography From the Fair (titled “The History of a Life,” 1908-[13]); and photocopies of fragments of a draft of the novel Wandering Stars, and of the title page of the story “The Brigands” (undated). Biographical materials include photocopies of the future writer’s diploma upon graduating from the Pereiaslav County School (1876) and of his official discharge from the post of Lubny crown rabbi (1883), as well as documents on police surveillance of him and on postal censors’ opening and inspection of his correspondence (1903).
The epistolary section of the archive includes letters from Sholom Aleichem to David Iakovlevich Aizman (1909), Barskii (1903), I. Geinakh (1902), G. Kissing (1910), Kh. Kremenchugskii (1902), the writer’s daughter L. Rabinovitz (1915), and M. Meier (1914); and letters of other persons: from the writer’s daughter E. Berkovich to David Aizman (1909), and from M. Daikhovskii to Shloyme Rapoport (S. An-ski) (1914). The fonds also includes A. Levitskii’s article “Menahem Mendl in the Works of Sholom Aleichem….” (1930s); articles by A. Iuditskii and B. Vaisman on issues of translating the writer’s works (1940s); and I. Ia. Veitsman’s “Reminiscences of Sholom Aleichem” (1946).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem (a pseudonym; real name Sholom Nokhumovich Rabinovitz) (1859-1916) wrote in Yiddish, as well as Hebrew and Russian. He was born into a patriarchal family in the city of Pereiaslav (Poltava province; now the city of Pereiaslav-Khmel’nyts’kyi, Kyiv/Kiev region). As a child he received a traditional Jewish education (in a cheder, and at home, supervised by his father). Later, in 1873-76, he studied at the Pereiaslav County School. In 1877-79, he worked as a domestic tutor for the family of the estate owner M. Loev in the town of Sofievka (Kiev province), and would later marry Loev’s daughter Ol’ga.
From 1881-83, he served as crown rabbi of the city of Lubny (Poltava province); and subsequently worked for a while for the sugar manufacturer I. Brodskii in Belaia Tserkov’. His writings were first published (in Hebrew) in 1879 in the newspapers Ha-Melits and Ha-Tsefirah, and his first Yiddish-language works were published in 1883 in the newspaper Yudishes folks-blat. It was at this time that he first signed one of his stories with the pseudonym Sholom Aleichem (literally, “peace be unto you”). In 1885, he received considerable wealth upon the death of his father-in-law, and moved to Kiev to take up business; however, he soon went bankrupt, and travelled around Russia and abroad to evade creditors. In 1888-90, he published the annual Yiddish-language almanac Di yidishe folksbibliotek, to which he recruited the most prominent luminaries of Yiddish literature (Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Avraham Ber Gottlober, Yitskhok Yoyel Linetski, and others).
He left Russia due to the country’s revolutionary situation and the Kiev pogrom of 1905; and from then on, and also due to the poor state of his health, he lived and worked for the most part abroad (in Lemberg/L’vov and other Galician cities, Romania, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and the United States). In December 1914, he moved to the United States for good, settling in New York, where he died in 1916. Sholom Aleichem authored numerous tales and stories, novels, plays, essays, and pamphlets, which earned him worldwide renown and the status of a classic of modern Yiddish-language Jewish literature.
- Access points: locations:
- Ukraine
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes a single inventory implicitly systematised by document type (with correspondence of Sholom Aleichem and other persons alphabetised by addressee and correspondent name).
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary