Le shtetl de Sholem Aleichem : du roman yiddish au film américain
The Shtetl of Sholem Aleichem: from the Yiddish Novel to the American Film

Summary/Abstract: Among the great authors of modern Yiddish literature, Mendele Moykher Seforim, Itshok Leybush Peretz and Sholem Aleichem personally experienced misery, hunger and wandering in Eastern Europe. With great ingenuity, some have transformed these difficult experiences into literary treasures. Thus, poverty has become an object of self-mockery. But behind the comic tone, these authors, confronted with injustice, draw on their anger to satirize a society characterized by its social injustice, its indifference and sometimes its cruelty. In the present article, we shall approach the film adaptation of an emblematic Yiddish work, that brings together satire and poverty: Fiddler on the Roof (adapted for the Hollywood musical before being adapted for the cinema) derives from the Yiddish universe described by Sholem Aleichem. Going further, a series of questions arise: how does cinema adopt the issues of an author who has lived in the shtetl? How do these themes converge with the centers of interest of the American public? Has Sholem Aleichem’s goal been well understood and taken up or, on the contrary, does cinema divert this initial goal by highlighting secondary themes? What remains, in the end, on the screen of a work of such depth?

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