Sholem Asch

Sholem Asch was born in 1880 in Kutno

Asch was born in 1880 in Kutno, Poland, to a Hasidic family. His father was a livestock trader and innkeeper. He grew up speaking Yiddish and also knew Russian and Hebrew.

He studied in a cheder and later in a Beit Midrash, and his parents hoped he would become a rabbi. As a teenager he began reading secular books in secret. His parents sent him to relatives in a nearby village, where he taught Hebrew, and he later moved to Włocławek and started writing.

In 1899 he moved to Warsaw and met I. L. Peretz, who convinced him to write in Yiddish instead of Hebrew. His first story collection appeared in 1902, and his play God of Vengeance opened in Berlin in 1907. When the play ran on Broadway in 1923, its actors were tried for obscenity.

His novel The Nazarene, published in 1939, began a trilogy on Christian figures that caused a dispute in the Jewish world. Asch said he remained Jewish and rejected the criticism. He was also a founding member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

He moved to the United States in 1938 and left it in 1953 after questioning by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1955 he settled in Bat Yam, Israel. He died in London in 1957, and his Bat Yam house became a museum.