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Salvation
The story of the life of the Jewish people.
332 pages, Hardcover
First published June 27, 1934
33 people want to read
About the author
Sholem Asch
259 books36 followersPolish-American writer Sholem Asch (also written Shalom Ash, Yiddish: שלום אַש, Polish: Szalom Asz) sought to reconcile Judaism and Christianity in his controversial novels, such as
The Nazarene
(1939).
Sholem Asch composed dramas and essays in the language.
Frajda Malka bore Asch and nine other children to Moszek Asz, a cattle-dealer and innkeeper. Asch received tradition and as a young man followed, obtained a more liberal education at Włocławek, and supported with letters for the illiterate townspeople. He moved to Warsaw and met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of Menahem Mendel Shapiro. The Haskalah or Hebrew enlightenment initially influenced Asch, but Isaac Leib Peretz convinced him to switch.
Plot of God of Vengeance , his drama of 1907 features a lesbian relationship in a brothel.
He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and to the United States in 1910.
His Kiddush ha-Shem in 1919 in the earliest historical modern literature concerns the anti-Semitic uprising of Khmelnytsky in mid-17th century Ukraine.
He sat out World War I in the United States and a naturalized as a citizen in 1920. He returned.
People celebrated a 12-volume set of his collected works, published in his own lifetime in the early 1920s.
When people performed God of Vengeance , the highly esteemed play, on Broadway in 1923, authorities arrested and successfully prosecuted the entire cast on obscenity charges despite the fact that people in Europe already translated it into German, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Czech, and Norwegian.
Farn Mabul ( Before the Flood , translated as Three Cities ), his trilogy of 1929 to 1931, describes early 20th century life in Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow.
In 1932, the republic awarded the decoration of Polonia Restituta, and the club of poets, essayists, and novelists (PEN) elected him honorary president.
He later moved to France and visited Palestine again in 1936. Dos Gezang fun Tol ( The Song of the Valley ) about the halutzim or Zionist pioneers in Palestine reflects his visit of 1936 to that region.
He set his Bayrn Opgrunt (1937), translated as The Precipice , in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
He settled in the United States in 1938.
He, however, later offended sensibilities with The Apostle , and Mary , parts of his trilogy, which in 1939 to 1949 dealt with subjects of New Testament. The Forward , leading language newspaper of New York, dropped him and openly attacked him for promotion.
Asch spent most his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel but died in London. His house in Bat Yam now houses his namesake museum. Yale University holds the bulk of his library, which contains rare books and manuscripts, including some of his own works.
Sholem Asch composed dramas and essays in the language.
Frajda Malka bore Asch and nine other children to Moszek Asz, a cattle-dealer and innkeeper. Asch received tradition and as a young man followed, obtained a more liberal education at Włocławek, and supported with letters for the illiterate townspeople. He moved to Warsaw and met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of Menahem Mendel Shapiro. The Haskalah or Hebrew enlightenment initially influenced Asch, but Isaac Leib Peretz convinced him to switch.
Plot of God of Vengeance , his drama of 1907 features a lesbian relationship in a brothel.
He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and to the United States in 1910.
His Kiddush ha-Shem in 1919 in the earliest historical modern literature concerns the anti-Semitic uprising of Khmelnytsky in mid-17th century Ukraine.
He sat out World War I in the United States and a naturalized as a citizen in 1920. He returned.
People celebrated a 12-volume set of his collected works, published in his own lifetime in the early 1920s.
When people performed God of Vengeance , the highly esteemed play, on Broadway in 1923, authorities arrested and successfully prosecuted the entire cast on obscenity charges despite the fact that people in Europe already translated it into German, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Czech, and Norwegian.
Farn Mabul ( Before the Flood , translated as Three Cities ), his trilogy of 1929 to 1931, describes early 20th century life in Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow.
In 1932, the republic awarded the decoration of Polonia Restituta, and the club of poets, essayists, and novelists (PEN) elected him honorary president.
He later moved to France and visited Palestine again in 1936. Dos Gezang fun Tol ( The Song of the Valley ) about the halutzim or Zionist pioneers in Palestine reflects his visit of 1936 to that region.
He set his Bayrn Opgrunt (1937), translated as The Precipice , in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s.
He settled in the United States in 1938.
He, however, later offended sensibilities with The Apostle , and Mary , parts of his trilogy, which in 1939 to 1949 dealt with subjects of New Testament. The Forward , leading language newspaper of New York, dropped him and openly attacked him for promotion.
Asch spent most his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel but died in London. His house in Bat Yam now houses his namesake museum. Yale University holds the bulk of his library, which contains rare books and manuscripts, including some of his own works.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 27, 2012
Sholem Asch’s SALVATION centers around one person in a Hassidic community in Poland in the early 19th century. The whole book is, in some sense, a commentary on the Psalmic verse, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The main character, Yechiel, is a disappointment to his family, because he is apparently slow of learning, and he is finally kicked out of the House of Study, in part because he has to take off so much time to help his mother support the family.
He becomes instead a “Psalm-Jew,” who only reads and studies the Psalms with ordinary working people. He is scorned by the Jews in the House of Study, but he is motivated by the pure love of God, which gives him a peculiar strength and eventually leads him to a position of prominence, which he fills with great humility. After some cathartic events and much soul searching, he finally sees the truth and dies in what non-Jews might call the odor of sanctity.
I recommend this novel highly to anyone interested in religious literature in general or Hassidism in particular.
He becomes instead a “Psalm-Jew,” who only reads and studies the Psalms with ordinary working people. He is scorned by the Jews in the House of Study, but he is motivated by the pure love of God, which gives him a peculiar strength and eventually leads him to a position of prominence, which he fills with great humility. After some cathartic events and much soul searching, he finally sees the truth and dies in what non-Jews might call the odor of sanctity.
I recommend this novel highly to anyone interested in religious literature in general or Hassidism in particular.
July 22, 2024
Sholem Asch was the most popular Yiddish writer in English translation and this book was his best seller. Now more remembered for his dramatic works, during his lifetime his novels were what made him a household name in America and deserve just as much praise and attention. Two editions of Salvation were published in English. The first, from 1934, is an abridged version and should be avoided. The second, from 1951, features the full text and was translated by Willa and Edwin Muir with input from Asch himself. The Muirs are talanted translaters most famous for introducing Kafka to the English speaking world through their complete translations of his work, which remain the standard recommended editions today.
Salvation is at heart a polemic in favor of Asch's idiosyncratic view of religion as pure faith in devotion to a Messiah, separate from any sort of dogma around specific rules or names. There are nuances to this argument best communicated in a novel form but if at any time the book drags, it is often due to falling too deep in polemical lecture. But Asch's chief goal in the novel: to communicate the beauty in pure piety and blind devotion is achieved effectively and I thank him for it, for that is a beauty we have all forgotten and reason enough to pick up this book. It is also worth seeing that specifically Jewish form of piety built around study on display in the novel. This is a vision particularly attractive to myself who already esteems study and it is honorable and inspiring to read how reveered the act was.
The prose rendered by the translators leans formal and professional, I have no way of knowing how much this fits with the original. At times though, an undoubtable greatness shines through the text, often at the beginning of chapters when the narrator turns to describing the world around the story. Here Yechiel, the main character, finds joy in watching the renewing of God's creation each day at the start of chapter five, book two:
In our secular age when discontentedness has replaced passion, it is a helpful exercise to remind ourselves of what the true religious devotion which captivated much of the human population looked like, and to recognize the real existing beauty in this. This is a solid novel and worth reading.
Salvation is at heart a polemic in favor of Asch's idiosyncratic view of religion as pure faith in devotion to a Messiah, separate from any sort of dogma around specific rules or names. There are nuances to this argument best communicated in a novel form but if at any time the book drags, it is often due to falling too deep in polemical lecture. But Asch's chief goal in the novel: to communicate the beauty in pure piety and blind devotion is achieved effectively and I thank him for it, for that is a beauty we have all forgotten and reason enough to pick up this book. It is also worth seeing that specifically Jewish form of piety built around study on display in the novel. This is a vision particularly attractive to myself who already esteems study and it is honorable and inspiring to read how reveered the act was.
The prose rendered by the translators leans formal and professional, I have no way of knowing how much this fits with the original. At times though, an undoubtable greatness shines through the text, often at the beginning of chapters when the narrator turns to describing the world around the story. Here Yechiel, the main character, finds joy in watching the renewing of God's creation each day at the start of chapter five, book two:
The wide meadows were wrapped in a milky white mist. It was rent by strong arms. Hilltops rose through it. As the tree trunks could not be seen, it was as if the branches floated in the air. Then the sun arose in the sky, reminding one of the words of psalm: "Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretches out the heavens like a curtain..." Streams of light poured over the firmament and dried the moist earth like a cow licking her new born calf. And soon there was full day in heaven and earth. Silver fringed cloud islets floated in the azure sea; one thought of the sentence: "God rides upon the clouds..." And with the coming of God the earth flung off her veils. Out of the thick mist appeared suddenly the verdant green pasture land, stretching away for miles to the dark-blue line of the forest.
In our secular age when discontentedness has replaced passion, it is a helpful exercise to remind ourselves of what the true religious devotion which captivated much of the human population looked like, and to recognize the real existing beauty in this. This is a solid novel and worth reading.
June 6, 2016
The book follows the life of Yechiel, a Jewish boy that, encouraged by the early failures in his studies, decides to be pious and fearful of God with all his strength.
I read it thinking I would get an historical novel, playing in the post Napoleonic Poland, but the book centers in the spiritual conflict of Yechiel and other characters.
Being interested in Jewish culture, I enjoyed the book as it enters in the world of scholars, sects, semi-religious people and their view of the country they live in.
Not an easy reading. At some points, the excruciating detail of the spiritual state of the characters gets tedious.
Overall the story is excellent, definitely would recommend it to readers who may be interested in Jewish culture.
I read it thinking I would get an historical novel, playing in the post Napoleonic Poland, but the book centers in the spiritual conflict of Yechiel and other characters.
Being interested in Jewish culture, I enjoyed the book as it enters in the world of scholars, sects, semi-religious people and their view of the country they live in.
Not an easy reading. At some points, the excruciating detail of the spiritual state of the characters gets tedious.
Overall the story is excellent, definitely would recommend it to readers who may be interested in Jewish culture.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews