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Sholem Aleichem literally means ‘peace be upon you’ or, colloquially, ‘how do you do’. It was the pen name chosen by Solomon Rabinovich. Rabinovich chose to write for the Jewish common-man, in Yiddish, their mother tongue. He took the pen name, because he did not want to disappoint his father, who would have preferred his son write in the more formal languages of Russian or Hebrew.
Rabinovich grew up and lived in a number of different shtetls in the Pale of Settlement, the area of Western Russia/Eastern Europe where the Jewish population was permitted to live under Russian law.
As a child, Rabinovich suffered many hardships, including his family’s impoverishment, the passing of his mother from cholera, and his father’s second marriage to a woman who the young Rabinovich disliked. Later, even though he was popular as a writer, he suffered from financial hardships. His stories often feature autobiographical details and plots.
Sholem Aleichem writes for and about the Jewish community, his community—their struggles, tribulations, and challenges. The stories are often tragic, but told with the resiliency of humor. Sholem Aleichem touches the very heart of life for the Jewish community at the turn of the century; a people dealing with emigration, assimilation, antisemitism, and financial hardships, but also their endurance in the face of adversity, their ways of coping with the changing world. Their tales tell of a time and place, but their resilience in the face of adversity, their ways of coping with the changing world make them universal and timeless.
David Labkovski wanted to commemorate the world of Eastern European Jews prior to the Holocaust—the “world that was”. Labkovski both reflected on his own childhood in Vilna and he looked to the writing of Sholem Aleichem as his muse. Sholem Aleichem wrote stories in his and his readers’ mother tongue, Yiddish. His stories are told with tenderness and humor. As a part of the community for whom he wrote, Sholem Aleichem’s tales were relevant and timely. He intimately understood the challenges faced by his community of readers: antisemitism, poverty, migration and assimilation.
David Labkovski leaves no question as to his purpose. The characters in Sholem Aleichem’s stories were so true-to-life that they could have been the people of Vilna, Labkovski’s childhood home. In fact, Labkovski’s illustrations and his depictions of Vilna share many characteristics. The Great Synagogue is the background of Labkovski’s illustrations of Kasrilevka, Sholem Aleichem’s fictional shtetl, market village.
As varied as were Sholem Aleichem’s plots and characters, so too were Labkovski’s depictions of his childhood community. Vilna was called the “Jerusalem of the North” because of its dynamic, rich and complex cultural, educational and religious communal life.
“The town of the little people into which I shall now take you, dear reader, is exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale into which Jews have been packed as closely as herring in a barrel and told to increase and multiply. The name of the town is Kasrilevka.”
–The Town of the Little People
Sholem Aleichem created a fictional shtetl called Kasrilevka. It was home to many of his beloved characters and the setting for many of his tales.
Here, Labkovski illustrates his vision of Kasrilevka in the likeness of Vilna, the city of his childhood.
Notice the towering building in the background; it is a depiction of the Great Synagogue of Vilna. Where the building is identifiable, Labkovski’s use of line and color add to a fairytale quality of this work.
“Jews, have a taste of paradise: Cold drink with lots of ice!” -My Brother Elyahu’s Drink
Motl is a young boy from Kasrilevka (Sholem Aleichem’s fictional village). His story opens with the untimely death of his father the cantor, leaving the family impoverished. The stories follow Motl’s childhood, ultimately leading to his family emigrating from Russia to America.
The issues faced by Motl and his family were relatable to Sholem Aleichem’s audience. The turn of the century was a time of mass emigration from Russia; people chose to migrate to make a better life for themselves and their families. Here, the illustration depicts one of Motl’s youthful misadventures.
In an attempt to improve family finances, Motl’s brother, Elyahu, buys a book filled with “get rich quick” schemes. Motl assists his brother in their attempts to follow the guide to earn money. Their first scheme is to make and sell kvass, a fermented barley beverage.
The kvass scheme goes awry when Motl fills the jug with soapy water from the laundry barrel instead of the freshwater barrel. The story concludes, as so many of Sholem Aleichem’s characters prove, with a spirit of resiliency—on to the next scheme!
The letters are the communications between a husband and wife. Menachem Mendl left the shtetl, market town, to make money in the “big city”; Sheyne Sheyndl is at home with their children. Reading the letters gives the audience a glimpse into their private lives. Once again, the Yiddish language is a cause for humor, the names and the curses abound! The humor covers the difficulties for families to earn a living in the shtetl world and the encroachment of modernity on a traditional community.
Methusaleh is the oldest person in the Bible, over 900 years old. Already, the scene is set for a humorous tale about an old horse. Indeed, this story opens with a glimpse into the hard life of the horse and Kasriel, the water carrier from Kasrilevka who purchases the horse at the fair to help with the water deliveries.
In this collection, Methusaleh ends there; however, in the story, the children tease the old horse, they sneak into Kasriel’s yard, dress the horse up, and take him out for a ride. At a point, Methusaleh has had enough and bucks the children off his back. He runs out of Kasrilevka and the field workers see the dressed up horse and set their dogs on Methusaleh. He dies from the attack. The children and others find the tragic ending comical, but not Kasriel and his wife, who mourn the passing of Methusaleh.
