150 Years On, Reconsidering The ‘Jewish Mark Twain’

“When Ukrainian-born writer Sholem Rabinovich died in New York City in 1916, throngs gathered in three boroughs to greet his funeral cortege. Rabinovich, who went by the pen name Sholem Aleichem (‘peace be with you’), was a humorist and a champion of the Yiddish language — in the words of his New York Times obituary, a ‘Jewish Mark Twain.'” People today are more familiar with his work than they might realize.