Hold Literary Post Mortem of Sholom Aleichem’s Works

A sort of literary post ###ortem was held over the works of the late Sholom Aleichem, the Jewish humorist, when Jewish communists in Kiev staged a literatrial of Chave, the heroine of the humorist’s “Taviah, Der Milchker”.The invisible Chave was accused of having foresaken her religion and parents, the accusers arguing that the ties of relig### family are important factors of life and must not lightly be severed. Minimizing the importance of these factors the defense sought to justify Chave’s desertion and apostacy.

The audience, acting as the jury, accepted as final the verdict in the form of a resolution, that Chave was a product of a period when the collective instinct was still strong and she cannot, therefore, be held countable for rebelling and leaving her family. The “court” did not deal any too harshly with Sholom Aleichem’s good-natured here. Taviah, it was decided, cannot be blamed for banning Chave and he new religion she embraced, because he was of the masses within the course of thousands of years, had been “poasoned by religion.”