The Jewish author Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) wrote with great humor of Jewish life in eastern Europe and America.

Sholem Aleichem was born Sholem Rabinowitz on March 3, 1859, in Freislav, Poltava district, in the Ukraine. He received a traditional Jewish education but also attended a state school. His mother died when he was 13, and he suffered considerable hardship at the hands of his stepmother. At 17 he made his first literary attempts. The following year he was employed by a Jewish landowner in Kiev as a tutor. He remained at the estate for 3 years but was forced to leave at the discovery of his secret romance with the young lady he tutored. In 1880 he began to serve as a rabbi in a Jewish town. At this time he began to publish his writings in both the Hebrew and Russian press. In 1883 his first Yiddish works were published. In that year he...