of his works are no longer read today, his best works have proven to be standards of Jewish and Yiddish literature. His sons were Moszek Asz/Moses "Moe" Asch (2 December 1905, Warsaw – 19 October 1986, United States), the founder and head of Folkways Records, and Natan Asz/Nathan Asch (1902, Warsaw – 1964, United States), also a writer. His great-grandson, David Mazower, is a writer and a BBC Journalist. Inspirations and major themes Many of Asch's father figures are inspired by his own father. Sholem was believed to have adopted much of his own philosophies from his father, such as his love for humanity and his concern for Jewish-Christian reconciliation. He summed up his father's faith as "love of God and love of neighbor". Asch often wrote two kinds of characters: the pious Jew and the burly worker. This was inspired by his family, as his brothers dealt with peasants and butchers and fit in with the hardy outdoor Jews of Kutno, which Asch had much pride in. His older half-brothers, on the other hand, were pious Hasidim. One of Asch's major goals in his writing was to articulate Jewish life, past and present. He placed the Jew at the center of his every work, along with an awareness of the Jewish relationship with the outside world. Some of his most frequent recurring themes were: man's faith, goodness, and generosity. He was repelled and intrigued by Christian violence, and inspired by Jewish martyrdom and survival. Asch reflected on cosmopolitan interests and concern for the people and conditions he encountered. His fiction can mostly be put into three categories: tales, novels and plays of Eastern European Jewish life (Polish mostly); tales and novels of Jewish life in America; five biblical novels: two on figures in the Hebrew Bible and three on New Testament figures. Smaller groupings included works on the Holocaust and modern Israel. His work was not easily categorized, and straddled the lines between romanticism and realism, naturalism and idealism. Bibliography A Shtetl ("The Village"), 1904 or earlier, story Mitn Shtrom (With the Stream), 1904 novel and play Tsurikgekumen (Coming Back), 1905 Moshiakhs tsaytn (Time of the Messiah), 1906, play Got fun Nekomeh (God of Vengeance), 1907, play Reb Shloyme Nogid, 1913, novel Motke Ganev (Motke the Thief), 1916, novel Mary, 1917, play Der Veg tsu Zikh (The Way to Oneself), 1917, play Motke Ganev (Motke the Thief), 1917, play