Young Sholem Aleichem’s unknown photo. Kiev, 1884
R. Sender Blanḳ un zayn fulgeshetsṭe familye: a roman ohn a liebe
Sholem Aleichem, Odessa, ca. 1890
[Alexander Balaban and Geny Shapiro]
Sholem Aleichem cabinet card portrait, recto (left); Sholem Aleichem’s autograph to Leo Wintz on the verso (right)
Odessa, ca. 1890
Following the bankruptcy of the real estate business that Sholem Aleichem inherited from his father-in-law, and fighting financial hardship, he moved his family from Kiev to Odessa in 1890. They stayed there until 1893. It is possible that this undated photograph was taken at the Deribasovskaya Street atelier of the local photographers Alexander Balaban and Geny Shapiro during this time, although Sholem Aleichem would return to Odessa in later years as well.
Sholem Aleichem poses here elegantly dressed, clutching his iconic hat against the staged background of a snowy forest. The reverse side of this cabinet card photograph, which is designed in the Art Nouveau style popular at the time, features Sholem Aleichem’s handwritten dedication to Leo Winz (1876–1952), a Ukrainian-born Jewish journalist, editor and Zionist, who cofounded and published the well-regarded German-Jewish cultural magazine Ost und West (East and West) in Berlin from 1901 to 1923. The inscription in Yiddish, marked with a touch of Sholem Aleichem’s humor, states: “To the honorable and esteemed editor of Ost und West, Mr. Leo Winz, from a simple Jewish writer who writes in plain Yiddish jargon. Sh. Rabinovitch.” This inscription was likely made sometime after 1901, when Winz’s magazine was well established as a means of fostering connections between Eastern and Western European Jews.
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