Sholom Aleichem Quotes
I never turn down a drink. Among friends it’s always appropriate. A man is only a man as they say, but brandy is still brandy. You’ll find that in the Talmud too.
Aleichem, Sholom. Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories. Translated by Hillel Halkin, Schocken Books, 1987.
The distinction between recreational drinking and heavy drinking is a subtle one and rarely made until modern times. Most leaders who would not have heavy drinkers in positions of responsibility were usually themselves teetotalers and they were very rare. Heavy drinkers and alcoholics have been in positions of responsibility throughout history including modern times—eg House Ways & Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Peter was unusual in that he made the distinction.
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish and Hebrew: שלום עליכם, also spelled שאָלעמ־אלייכעמ in Soviet Yiddish, [ˈʃɔləm aˈlɛjxəm]; Russian and Ukrainian: Шо́лом-Але́йхем), was a leading Yiddish author and playwright. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The Hebrew phrase שלום עליכם (shalom aleichem) literally means "[May] peace [be] upon you!", and is a greeting in traditional Hebrew and Yiddish.
