Born to a poor Jewish family in imperial Russia, Sholem Rabinovich — also known as Sholem Aleichem — was a champion of the Yiddish language. His stories were adapted into the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. All Things Considered, March 2, 2009 · When Ukrainian-born writer Sholem Rabinovich died in New York City in 1916, throngs gathered in three boroughs to greet his funeral cortege. Rabinovich, who went by the pen name Sholem Aleichem ("peace be with you"), was a humorist and a champion of the Yiddish language — in the words of his New York Times obituary, a "Jewish Mark Twain."
Most people today are familiar with Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, which were adapted into the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. But while the musical tends to sentimentalize Aleichem's version of life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, the author's original work is often more complex.
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the author's birth, translator Aliza Shevrin has published Wandering Stars, a new translation of Blundzhende Shtern, Aleichem's story of two lovers in the Yiddish theater as they wander around Eastern Europe, London's East End and Manhattan. Playwright Tony Kushner, who writes an introduction to the translation, says that readers may be surprised by the novel's edginess.
"When you read Wandering Stars you'll be shocked if you haven't seen ... before how violent the emotions are, how full of rage the comedy is," says Kushner. "You can discern underneath that anger how much suffering there was, how much injustice and difficulty and loss there was in the lives of these people. ... Comedy was very much a way of channeling that and surviving the difficulty of living."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100309191
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