In 1903, Asch married Mathilde (Madzhe) Shapiro, daughter of a relatively wealthy poet and Hebrew teacher. This allowed him to devote all of his time to writing. His next piece was the nostalgic A shtetl, an episodic story written for Der fraynd magazine, inspired by the atmosphere of the writer's home in Kutno, as well as Kazimierz Dolny, which he would occasionally visit.
Over the course of following years, Asch wrote four plays, of which the most popular is Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance) from 1907, widely considered to be controversial – its plot was set in a brothel, with a lesbian romance in the background. It was first staged in German by Max Reinhardt in Berlin, just after it was written.
Traveling across shtetls and continents
The next years of his life were filled not just with new works, but also travels. In 1908, Asch visited the Land of Israel, and in 1911 published essays from that journey. In the same year, he took part in a conference in Chernivtsi, devoted to promoting Yiddish as the Jewish national language. Accompanied by Reyzen and Nomberg, as well as Leybush Peretz, he travelled from one town to another, advocating turning Yiddish into the language of science and literature, and seeking approval for the idea.
Between 1909-1910, Asch lived in New York. After this time he entered an incredibly fruitful creative period, which marked the beginning of his endeavour to map out the panorama of Jewish life across Central-Eastern Europe. In 1913 alone he published three novels, including Meri (Mary) and Der veg tsu zikh (The Route to Oneself).
When World War One broke out, the writer decided to stay in the United States. There, he collaborated with the largest Yiddish newspaper Forverts and became one of the founders of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – an organization which still plays a significant role in supporting the Jewish community in all possible ways, especially materially.