Sholom Aleichem
Sholom Aleichem
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a leading Yiddish author and playwright. The musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The Hebrew phrase Shalom aleichem literally means "Peace be upon you", and is a greeting in traditional Hebrew and Yiddish...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth2 March 1859
CountryRussian Federation
No one knows whom the shoe pinches - no one.
Here lies a plain and simple Jew who wrote in plain and simple prose.
Ah, how many luxuries has the good God prepared for his Jewish children.
A real pleasure is a pleasure that one enjoys by one's self, without a companion, and without a single argument.
If you listen carefully, you get to hear everything you didn't want to hear in the first place.
There are people who have never been taught anything, and know everything, have never been anywhere, and understand everything, have never given a moment's thought to anything, and comprehend everything. 'Blessed hands' is the name bestowed on these fortunate beings. The world envies, honours and respects them.
Playing nuts is a game like any other, neither better than tops, nor worse than cards. The game is played in various ways. There are 'holes' and 'bank' and 'caps.' But every game finishes up in the same way. One boy loses, another wins. And, as always, he who wins is a clever fellow, a smart fellow, a good fellow.
I will never permit myself to give in to American taste and lower the standards of art.
To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - the first Festival evening prayer and blessing.
Without love our life is ... a ship without a rudder ... like a body without a soul.
It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.
The worm in the radish doesn't think there is anything sweeter.
Love is a taste of paradise.
This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn't weep. If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my humor. Not to cry, out of spite, only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh.