33 Facts About Sholem Asch

Sholem Asch, written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States.

Sholem Asch was the fourth of the ten children that Moszek and Frajda Malka had together.

Sholem Asch was known to be a very charitable man who would dispense money to the poor.

Sholem Asch grew up in a majority Jewish town, so he grew up believing Jews were the majority in the rest of the world as well.

Sholem Asch admitted to killing Christ out of fear, but they beat him and tore his coat anyway.

Sholem Asch never lost his fear of dogs from that incident.

At his friend's house, Sholem Asch would explore these new ideas by secretly reading many secular books, which led him to believe himself too worldly to become a rabbi.

Sholem Asch attempted to master the short story and wrote in Hebrew.

Sholem Asch's reputation was established in 1902 with his first book of stories, In a shlekhter tsayt.

In 1904, Sholem Asch released one of his most well-known works, A shtetl, an idyllic portrait of traditional Polish-Jewish life.

Sholem Asch wrote the drama Got fun nekome in the winter of 1906 in Cologne, Germany.

Sholem Asch became increasingly active in public life and played a prominent role in the American Jewry's relief efforts in Europe for Jewish war victims.

Sholem Asch was a founding member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Sholem Asch had no desire to take Peretz's place, moving to Bellevue, France after years and continuing to write regularly for Yiddish papers in the US and Poland.

Ever the traveller, Sholem Asch took many trips to the Soviet Union, Palestine and the United States.

Sholem Asch always held painters in high regard and formed close friendships with the like of Isaac Lichtenstein, Marc Chagall, Emil Orlik, and Jules Pascin.

Sholem Asch spoke to the hundreds of mourners at Pascin's funeral after the painter died by suicide.

In 1930, when Sholem Asch was at the height of his fame and popularity, he moved to Nice, then almost immediately moved back to Poland and spent months touring the countryside to do research for his next novel: Der tehilim-yid.

Sholem Asch then moved into a house outside of Nice and rebuilt it as the "Villa Shalom," with luxuries such as a study facing the sea, a swimming pool, a bowling green, and an orchard.

Sholem Asch delayed leaving Europe until the last possible moment, then reluctantly returned to the United States.

On his second sojourn in the US, Sholem Asch first lived in Stamford, Connecticut, then moved to Miami Beach, where he stayed until the early 1950s.

Sholem Asch felt that while the first two books only described Christian beliefs, Mary went much further by affirming them, including beliefs that had been abandoned by most Protestants.

Nevertheless Samuel always maintained that Sholem Asch was not an apostate.

Sholem Asch subsequently started writing for a communist paper, Morgen frayhayt, leading to repeated questioning by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In 1953, Chaim Lieberman published The Christianity of Sholem Asch, a scathing criticism of Asch and his Christological trilogy that disgusted even some of Asch's strongest critics.

Sholem Asch's grandson Michael Asch is an anthropologist, and his great-grandson, David Mazower, is a writer and a BBC Journalist.

Sholem Asch was believed to have adopted much of his own philosophies from his father, such as his love for humanity and his concern for Jewish-Christian reconciliation.

Sholem Asch summed up his father's faith as "love of God and love of neighbor".

Sholem Asch often wrote two kinds of characters: the pious Jew and the burly worker.

Sholem Asch placed the Jew at the center of his every work, along with an awareness of the Jewish relationship with the outside world.

Sholem Asch was repelled and intrigued by Christian violence, and inspired by Jewish martyrdom and survival.

Sholem Asch reflected on cosmopolitan interests and concern for the people and conditions he encountered.

Sholem Asch's work was not easily categorized, and straddled the lines between romanticism and realism, naturalism and idealism.