Sholom aleichem biography for kids

Sholem Aleichem, the most beloved classical Yiddish writer, was born Sholem Rabinovitz in in Pereyaslav, Ukraine. His father — a merchant — was interested in the Russian Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), and the young Sholem was exposed to modern modes of thinking in addition to traditional Judaism.

Sholem attended the heder (Jewish school) in Voronkov, the town his family moved to when he was young, and in his teenage years he graduated with distinction from a Russian gymnasium.

Like his contemporaries Mendele Mokher-Sefarim and I.L.

Peretz, Sholem Aleichem originally wrote in Hebrew, and he contributed to a number of Hebrew weeklies.

Sholom aleichem biography for kids youtube

Literature was the purview of maskilim (proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment), and for the maskilim, Hebrew was the appropriate language of Jewish high culture. It was the traditional language of Jewish scholarship, and it was considered more sophisticated than Yiddish — the language of the people.

Indeed, when the year old Sholem Rabinovitch pu