Chava Rosenfarb on Sholem Asch

“Sholem Asch and Isaac Bashevis Singer reflected through the prism of their personalities and unique talents the soul of the jew as a human being, and in this way they became universal writers.”

“the great Sholem Asch never sees women as they really are, but rather as he would like them to be, that is, saintly and self-sacrificing. Her heart overflowing with love, the Yiddish literary heroine is ready to throw away her life for the man she loves and the people she loves. Asch's favourite female type is the mother. As is well-known, Asch suffered from a mother-fixation, a fixation that leads him to the apotheosis of all mother figures in the novel Mary, the third volume of his Christian trilogy. Even in earlier work - for instance, Kiddush-Hashem and "The Sorceress of Castille" - Asch describes his heroines, Dvora and Jephta, as if they were Jewish versions of the Virgin Mary. But Asch never shows us the human complexity that troubles his heroines' souls. In fact, in the course of the entire narrative of "The Sorceress of Castille," Jephta does not utter a single word.”