biography
| name: |
Asch, Sholem or Shalom
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1880–1957)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Kutno, C Poland. He studied at his local Hebrew school, then moved to Warsaw (1899), where he wrote stories, plays, poems, and novels in Hebrew and Yiddish. He emigrated to New York City (1914) and began as a writer for Yiddish newspapers. His play The God of Vengeance (1910) enjoyed great success in Berlin, and several other plays were later produced in the Yiddish theatre in New York. He continued his prolific career as a writer, occasionally in English, but mostly in Yiddish, and although he became a US citizen (1920) and had a home in Florida, he often lived abroad. Most of his works dealt with Jewish subjects, as in Mottke the Thief (1917) and Three Cities (1933). His most famous books (to English readers) formed a trilogy, The Nazarene (1939), The Apostle (1943), and Mary (1949), in which he attempted to portray Jesus, Paul, and Mary in a way that bridged Christianity and Judaism, but he so antagonized some American Jews that he moved to Israel in 1956. |
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