Sholem Asch

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Sholem Asch

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1rocketjk
Mar 25, 2018, 1:15 pm

Yesterday I started The Apostle, the second of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch's controversial Christian trilogy. The Apostle is Ashe's fictional study of St. Paul. The other books in this trilogy were The Nazarene and Mary. Asch was very well known among Yiddish/Jewish readers in Europe and the U.S., having written both about the Jewish experience in eastern Europe in the 1920s and then, upon his moving to the U.S. about the Jewish immigrant experience. The Christian trilogy was published in 1943 - 1949. As one article I found explained the trilogy, briefly, "Asch had written these novels with a vision of Jewish-Christian reconciliation, particularly after the Holocaust, and his goal had been to expose the common themes behind religious differences." The Yiddish literary world evidently did not appreciate the effort, accusing Asch instead of promoting Christianity, and he became somewhat of an outcast.

It's a long book, over 700 pages. I'll be interested to see how it goes. I also read a piece this morning to the effect that Asch's English translators frequently flattened his rich Yiddish prose, in particular for American audiences. The article does say that Maurice Samuel, who translated The Apostle, was probably the best of the lot.

I have read one other book by Asch, many years ago, which I enjoyed a lot.

2torontoc
Mar 25, 2018, 1:45 pm

My parents read The Nazarene - I remember it in their book shelves- I may have it in my basement book shelves.

3rocketjk
Jul 30, 2019, 6:43 am

I finally finished The Apostle. It turned out to be quite plodding, so I read in gradually, a chapter at a time between other books I was reading. It is the fictional story, as mentioned above, of early Christianity as seen through the eyes of Saul, who become the Apostle Paul. Once he is converted and begins preaching about the Messiah, Paul schlepps back and forth across the Middle East, founding congregations and converting Jew and Gentile alike to the new faith. Being Jewish myself, I never knew the details of Paul's life nor much about the turning point where Paul stopped preaching only to Jews that their Messiah had arrived and instead insisted on preaching to everyone, thus taking the new religion out of the realm of Judaism. (And that is, of course, to whatever extent this book is faithful to what is know of those events.) So that was interesting. Unfortunately about 95% of the storytelling is done in flat, expository prose. There's almost nothing to draw us into the narrative for its own sake. So I plodded through, chapter by chapter, one chapter at a time over several years, and now I've finished! I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone other than the historically curious about Asch and his career. That's probably a fairly small subset of my LibraryThing friends! I do look forward to going back and reading some of Asch's earlier works, which were much praised when he wrote them and are still highly regarded.

4alans
Ago 6, 2019, 4:56 pm

I really want to read Asch's Three Cities Trilogy. I hear East River is sensational. The Jesus trilogy doesn't
interest me so much but boy did the Jewish community eat him alive for it.

5rocketjk
Ago 7, 2019, 2:41 pm

>4 alans: Yes, I'm looking forward to reading the Three Cities Trilogy sometime, as well. Not only did the Jewish community eat Asch alive for the Jesus trilogy, but, at least based on The Apostle, it hardly seems to have been worth the effort he was trying to make, as the book is barely readable other than from an historical interest perspective. So he wrote three books that would get his community angry but that nobody would particularly even enjoy reading. Can't fault his courage, though.

6MarthaJeanne
Ago 7, 2019, 2:49 pm

I wasn't able to read them again a decade or so ago, but I really enjoyed them as a teenager.