SOURCE: "Extra-Legal Disabilities, Raids, Pogroms and Other Forms of Hostility," in Sholom Aleichem: The Writer as Social Historian, Peter Lang, 1989, pp. 65-84.

In the following excerpt, Halberstam-Rubin asserts that Aleichem's short stories demonstrate how ignorance, prejudice, and violent physical attacks affected the day-today lives of the Jewish people in his time.

The focus of this [essay] is the illustration of the ways Sholom Aleichem captured and illuminated such historical phenomena as raids, pogroms, the blood-libel and other forms of Jew-baiting. These "extra-legal" hostilities paralleled and were related to the formal, anti-Jewish legislation such as the residential and occupational restrictions. As in the case of the legal problems, the author enables us to "participate" in some of these events and to gain an understanding of their impact upon all concerned, especially the victims. The most detailed account of the developments surrounding the phenomenon of the pogroms is given by...