Marie Waife

Marie Waife was a Jewish writer best known for writing the biography My Father, Sholem Aleichem.

Biography

Marie Waife was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1892 as the fifth child to Sholem Aleichem and his wife Olga.^[1] She lived in various locations throughout Europe including Switzerland, Germany and Italy due to financial insecurity until 1914 when she and her family immigrated the United States, residing in the Lower East Side. She married writer and journalist Ben Zion Goldberg in 1917 and had two sons Sholom and Mitchell. In 1968 Waife published a biography of her father titled My Father, Sholem Aleichem, the first complete biography of the famous writer. She was known for holding meetings at her New York residence on the anniversary of Aleichem's death to read his works. Waife died on November 30, 1985 in New York.^[2]

References