I couldn’t help writing on Jesus.…Everything He ever said or did has value for us today, and that is something you can say of no other man, alive or dead.…He became the Light of the world. Why shouldn’t I, a Jew, be proud of it?

Born this day in 1880, Polish American writer Sholem Asch, whose work entered the literary mainstream through translation, was among the most controversial and most widely known writers in modern Yiddish literature.