Sholom Aleichem
A PEOPLE steeped in poverty and persecution, hemmed in by enemies who seek its humiliation and destruction produces, as the foremost and deepest interpreter of its life, a humorist! What a paradoxical phenomenon! Is it not more reasonable to expect that the foremost Jewish bard of our days would be a Jeremiah rather than a Sholem Aleichem? For this is true of Sholem Aleichem, that no other writer, whether of the Jews or any other people, has achieved such deep and wide contact with the great masses whose life he interpreted and illumined with his life-giving laughter.
That Sholem Aleichem was a talented writer, that he was a literary creator of high rank is overshadowed by the fact that he was the Great Consoler of an oppressed and struggling people. To become enshrined in the Jewish heart it is not enough that the Jewish writer should be talented and productive: he must also be a Jewish hero. For it is the man of mind and spirit who must supply the Jewish people with the weapons for self-preservation. Sholem Aleichem is one in the long line of such Jewish heroes, beginning with Isaiah II, of the Babylonian Captivity and running through Jochanan ben Zakkai, Jehudah Halevi, and the other Great Consolers.
Such is the active rôle of Sholem Aleichem. This is his contribution to the Jewish struggle. His message, no matter what the form it took, was "Comfort ye, Comfort ye, my People."