Sholem Aleichem

Jewish writer and playwright of Yiddish, who worked in Russian Empire, Switzerland, Germany and the United States (1859-1916)

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Lived 1859–1916, aged 57

WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
50 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1859–1916
Aged 57
Known for
Jewish Luck
1925

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

The pen name means "peace be upon you" — and the Yiddish stories he signed with it gave the world Tevye the Dairyman, the milkman whose daughters and dreams became Fiddler on the Roof, the first big English-language stage hit about Jewish life in the shtetl.

Biography

About

Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich was born March 2, 1859, in the Russian Empire and wrote under a pen name borrowed from a traditional greeting. He became a playwright and author working in Yiddish, chronicling a world most of his future audience would never see firsthand. His Tevye stories — about a dairyman, his daughters, tradition bending under pressure — stayed in print long after he died in the United States on May 13, 1916. Nearly fifty years later, in 1964, Fiddler on the Roof opened and became the first commercially successful English-language production to bring Eastern European Jewish li…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Sholem Aleichem

Sholem Aleichem

said1888

The fiddle weeps, sinking to the lower strings

— "My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu" (1888)

Sholem Aleichem

said1888

No doubt everyone has worries—a Jew does not need to go looking for trouble.

— "My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu" (1888)

Sholem Aleichem

said1888

The heart itself, and particularly the Jewish heart, is a violin: you pluck the strings, teasing out various, generally sad and gloomy songs

— "My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu" (1888)

Sholem Aleichem

said1888

He would grab his fiddle and with one pass of his bow, just one mind you, the fiddle would begin to speak. What do I mean by “speak”?

— "My First Jewish Novel, Stempenyu" (1888)

Sholem Aleichem

saidundated

In America there’s a custom: you moofe. That is, you pack up from one apartment to the next. From one street to the next. From one biznes to the next. Everybody has to moofe.

— Motl, the Cantor's Son translated from Yiddish by Larry Rosenwald

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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