After its premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July and then its successful run at the Opera Plaza Cinema last August, Sholem Aleichem has returned by populat demand to the Balboa Theater in the Richmond District of San Francisco.
It's easy to think of storyteller Sholem Aleichem as a mythic figure. When I studied Spanish in Junior High School, I thought of Anonymo as a fable writer imparting wisdom from under an olive tree, much as I imagined Aesop did in Greece millennium earlier. Obviously, I was a neophyte Spanish student or I would have known Anonymo means anonymous and the stories had no accredited writer at all. This documentary gives a face, a character, a history to the great Yiddish writer, most famous for creating Tevya of 'Fiddler on the Roof.' Tevya was only one of a plethora of characters developed in countless stories Aleichem penned. Importantly, Aleichem brought Yiddish to the written medium for the first time, raising the language to the station it had deserved for centuries -- the language of Jews throughout a vast stretch of Europe and America -- the vernacular spoken by millions, not the revered, respected language of Hebrew which was reserved for temple, study and ceremony. Since his controversial step of publishing in Yiddish, thousands of books have followed. Hopefully, the language will always have readers and speakers to enjoy its richness and cultural history. There is so much more to this man than one famous play; he depicted a time in history for the Jews of Eastern Europe with wit, charm, and compassion. Put a face and context to this truly unique and prolific writer, publisher and proponent of a language and culture.
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness
Writer/Producer/Director: Joseph Dorman
Time: 93 min.
Opening September 16 at the Balboa in San Francisco
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