“I told you not to compare me to Hodl, Papa. Hodl lived in Hodl’s times and Beilke lives in Beilke’s times. From Hodl’s times to Beilke’s times is as far as from here to Japan.” Do you understand what she was talking about?
Anyway, I realize you are in a hurry, Pani. Two minutes more and it will be an end to all the stories. I was full up to here. I’d heard enough of sorrows and troubles from my youngest daughter and left her house wretched and brokenhearted. I flung the cigar that had clouded up my head onto the ground and said to it, “Go to hell!”
“Who are you cursing, Reb Tevye?” I heard a voice behind me. I turned, looked, and saw—it was he, Ephraim the matchmaker, may he have a stroke!
“Welcome,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was visiting my children.”
“How are they?”
“How should they be? May we be as well.”
“I see,” he said. “You are satisfied with my merchandise?”
“Satisfied?” I said. “May God repay you for what you have done.”
“Thank you for the blessing,” he said. “Maybe you can add a little extra on to the blessing?”
“Weren’t you paid for the match?”
“May your Podhotsur only be worth as much as he paid me.”
“What is it?” I said. “Was the fee too small?”
“Not at all, but it was the way it was given.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s not a groschen left.”
“What happened to it?”
“I married off a daughter.”
“Mazel tov,” I said. “May God grant much luck, and may you live to have much pleasure.”
“I’ve already lived to have much pleasure. I got myself a son-in-law—a charlatan who beat my daughter, took her last gulden, and ran off to America.”
“Why did you let him get so far?” I said.
“What could I have done?”
“You should have put salt on his tail.”
“Are you feeling all right, Reb Tevye?”
“May you feel half as well, may God help you!”
“Is that so?” he said. “And I thought of you as a rich man.”
“If that’s the case,” I said, “here’s a pinch of snuff for you.”
Having gotten rid of the matchmaker with a pinch of snuff, I went home. There I began to sell off my business of so many years. You can imagine that it was not done as easily as it was said. Every pot and pan took a lot out of me. Some things reminded me of Golde, God rest her soul. Others reminded me of the children, may they have many years. But nothing cut so deeply as selling my old horse. I felt particularly guilty about him. After toiling so many years together, slaving together, struggling together—and suddenly to sell him off.
I sold him to a water-carrier because from teamsters I got only abuse. They said, “God be with you, Reb Tevye, do you call that a horse?”
“What else?” I said. “Do you think it’s a chandelier?”
“It isn’t a chandelier, but one of thirty-six saints who hold up the world.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That’s an old man of thirty-six years, without teeth, with a gray lip, shaking like an old lady in the Shabbes frost.”
How do you like that talk? I swear the poor horse understood every word; as it says in the commentaries: The ox knoweth his owner—even a dumb beast knows when it’s about to be sold. I knew this because when I finalized the deal with the water-carrier, I said to him, “I wish you lots of luck.” Suddenly my horse turned his old head to me and looked at me with mute eyes, as if to say, “And this is the way I am repaid for all my labors? This is the way you thank me for all my years of hard and faithful service?”
As the water-carrier took him away to teach him the tough lessons of his new trade, I took one last look at my horse. I stood alone, thinking, God of the Universe! How cleverly you run your little world! Here you created a Tevye and you created, no comparison, a horse, and they both wound up with the same fate. The difference is that a man can at least complain, bare his heart. But a horse, what can it do? Poor thing, a dumb tongue, as we say: “the advantage of man over animal.”
You are looking at me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, because my eyes are filled with tears, and you are surely thinking, “This Tevye misses his horse? Why only a horse?” I am sorry about everything, and I will miss everything. I will miss the horse and the village. I will miss the elders, the constable, the Boiberik dachniks, and the Yehupetz rich folks. I will even miss Ephraim the matchmaker, may a plague afflict him, because in the end, if you want to be a bit of a philosopher, he is no more than a poor Jew trying to scrape out a living.
If God will bring me safely to my destination, I don’t know what I’ll do there. But first I will go to Rachel’s Tomb and pray for my children, whom I will probably never see again. And I will also think of Ephraim the matchmaker, and of you and all of Israel.
Here is my hand on it, and please send my best regards to everyone in the most friendly way.
“GET THEE GONE”
WRITTEN IN 1914.
A fine, hearty sholem aleichem to you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, to you and to all your children! I have long been looking forward to seeing you. I have quite a lot to tell you. I keep asking myself, why aren’t we seeing you lately? I am told you’ve been traveling to far-off countries, as we say in the Megillah: the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of King Ahashueros.
I see you are looking at me in a strange way. I bet you are wondering, “Is it he or not he?” It is he, Pani Sholem Aleichem, it is your old friend Tevye the dairyman. The same Tevye, no longer a dairyman but just an ordinary Jew, an old Jew as you can see, though not so old in years. As we say in the Haggadah, Lo, I am not yet seventy years old—I am still far from seventy! Then why is my hair so white? Believe me, not from pleasure, dear friend—a little my own sorrows, and a little the sorrows of all Israel. May God forgive me—a bad time! A bitter time for Jews! But I know what you’re itching to find out. You most likely remembered that when we last parted, I was on my way to Eretz Yisroel. And so you are figuring that this surely is Tevye returning from Eretz Yisroel, and you are probably eager to hear all about it. You want to find out about Mother Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of Machpelah and the other holy places. I can set your mind at rest. If you have some time to spare, listen to remarkable happenings, but listen carefully—as it says in the chapter, I pray thee, hear me. And when you have heard me out, you will say that a man is no more than an ass and that we have a powerful God who runs the world as He sees fit.
Tell me, what Bible reading are you up to in your synagogue? Vayikro—the first chapter of Leviticus? I am on a different chapter—the chapter Lech l’cho, or Get Thee Gone. “Leave, Tevye,” I was told. Get thee gone from thy land and from thy father’s house and go to the land which I will show thee. Get thee gone from the village where you were born and lived all your life, go wherever your eyes lead you! And when did they remind themselves to give Tevye this chapter to study? At the very time he was already old, weak, and alone. As we say in the Rosh Hashanah prayers, Cast us not away, O Lord, in our old age.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I almost forgot to tell you the very beginning, about what happened in Eretz Yisroel. How is it there, dear friend? May we both thrive as much. As it says in the Torah, it is truly a land of milk and honey! The problem is that Eretz Yisroel is in Eretz Yisroel, and I am, as you see me, still far from the Promised Land. Of Tevye, hear me out, the chapter of the Megillah applies: If I perish, I perish—I was a shlimazel and a shlimazel I will die. There I was, almost, almost standing with one foot on the other side, in the Holy Land. All I needed was a ticket, board the ship, and I was off. But God had other ideas.
Wait till you hear this, may it not happen to any Jew. My oldest son-in-law, Motl Komzoil, the tailor from Anatevka, goes to sleep a strong, healthy man and just dec
ides to die! Well, he was never that healthy. After all, he was a workingman, sat night and day absorbed in Torah and in work—bent over his needle and thread patching trousers. He did this until he got consumption. He began coughing, coughed and coughed till he spat out the last of his lungs. Nothing could be done to help him, no doctor, no quack, no goat’s milk, no chocolate with honey. He was a fine young man, simple, not learned, but an honest man without pretensions. He loved my daughter with all his heart and sacrificed himself for his children and thought the world of me!
In short, we finish up the text: Moses passes away—Motl died and left me with a weight around my neck. How could I even think of going to Eretz Yisroel at that time? I had my own Eretz Yisroel at home! I ask you, how could I leave a widowed daughter, with little orphaned children, without a crumb of bread? Of course I was of as much use to her as a sack full of holes. I couldn’t bring her husband back from the dead, or return their father to his children. There I was, no more than a broken vessel in my old age, hoping to rest my weary bones, to feel like a mensch, not a donkey. I had had enough toiling, enough struggling in this world. I wanted to give some thought to the world to come. It was high time! In addition, I had already sold off my few possessions: the horse you know about, but the cows as well, except for two calves that might grow up to be useful if they were fed well. And there I was in my old age, suddenly a father of orphans, little children! Are you ready for more? Wait! The worst is yet to come, because with Tevye, if one tragedy happens, another is soon on the way. To give you an example—if ever a little heifer died, another one soon died as well. That’s the way God created His little world, and that’s the way it will always be—a lost cause!
Do you remember that my youngest daughter Beilke struck it rich when she landed Podhotsur, the big-shot contractor who made a fortune from the war? He’d returned to Yehupetz lugging back sacks full of money and fell in love with my daughter because he wanted a beautiful bride. And he sent Ephraim the matchmaker to me, cursed be his name, who made the match. Podhotsur proposed on bended knee and took her poor as she was, showered her from head to toe with gifts, jewels, gold, and diamonds. Sounds good, eh? Well, from all that good luck nothing is left, but nothing, nothing but mud. God protect us, because if God so wills it, the wheel turns, and everything falls upside down. As we say in the Hallel: first it’s He who raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and before you know it, it’s gone and He angrily looketh down low upon heaven and upon the earth. God loves to toy with human beings, how He loves it! He has toyed with Tevye time and time again—ascending and descending—first up, then down!
That is how it was with my contractor, Podhotsur. Do you remember his mansion in Yehupetz with the thirteen servants, the mirrors and the clocks and the fancy ornaments? Piff-poff! I talked to Beilke, begged her to make sure he bought the house and registered it in her name. Well, they heard me as much as Haman heard the Purim noisemakers—what does a father know? A father knows nothing! What do you think happened? You would wish it on your worst enemy. In the end, besides losing everything, Podhotsur went bankrupt, had to sell all he had—the mirrors and clocks and his wife’s jewelry. He had to flee his creditors at great risk to himself and become a fugitive, may it not happen to any Jew, and escape to where the beloved Holy Shabbes goes west—to America. That’s where unhappy souls go, and that’s where Beilke and Podhotsur also went.
At first it was terribly difficult for them. Whatever little money they had was eaten up, and when they had no food left, the poor things had to take work, backbreaking labor, like the Jews in Egypt. Now she writes that it’s not so bad, praise God. They have jobs in a stocking factory and are “making a living.” That’s what they call it in America. In our language it’s called “scraping for a piece of bread.” But they feel lucky; they are just the two of them, with no children to feed. And so it is for the best!
Nu, I ask you, shouldn’t an evil spirit possess that Ephraim the matchmaker for making that fine match he finagled me into and for the mire he led me into? Would it have been so awful for her to have married a workingman, as Tzeitl did, or a teacher, as Hodl did? Ay, those two weren’t so lucky either. One is a young widow, and the other is in exile God knows where. But that is all God’s doing—how can a man be prepared for that? To tell the truth, my wife Golde, God rest her soul, was the wisest one of all, if only because she saw what was going on around her, said goodbye to this foolish world, and left it. Tell me yourself—rather than suffering because of daughters, as Tevye has, is it not a thousand times better to lie in the ground and bake bagels? How did our rabbis say: Regardless of thy will thou livest—man does not take his fate into his own hands, and if he does he gets his knuckles rapped.
Let us, as you say in your books, leave the hero and get back to the heroine. Where were we? Yes, at the passage in Get Thee Gone. But before we get to that, I beg you to be so kind as to stop for a while at the section about the Amalekites in the Book of Exodus. Since the world began, it has always been the custom to study Get Thee Gone first and then Exodus. But with me it is the other way around—first study the Amalekites and then Get Thee Gone. I was taught a real lesson from that book. You might want to hear this—it might come in handy someday.
Long ago, right after the Japanese war, during the struggle over the constitution, all kinds of salvations and consolations were being visited on the Jews, first in the big cities, afterward in the small towns. But they never reached me, and I thought they never would. Why not? That’s easy to answer: after living for so many years among Gentiles, real peasants, I was on friendly terms with everyone in the village. Uncle Tevel was held in the highest esteem! Did you need advice? Go to Uncle Tevel. Did you need a cure for the fever? Go to Tevel’ye. How’s about a little loan? Also go to Uncle Tevel. Did I need to worry about such things as pogroms, when the peasants had told me many times that I had nothing to fear? They wouldn’t allow it! And so it was—but listen to this.
One day I arrived home from Boiberik. I was still going strong at the time, doing very well, selling dairy, cheese, butter, and vegetables. I unhitched the horse and tossed him some hay and oats. As I was about to wash up before eating, I suddenly noticed a crowd of goyim, the entire village, outside my door, including the elders, from Ivan Poperilo the mayor down to the last goy, Trochim the shepherd. All of them looked very strange to me, all dressed up in their holiday best. At first my heart thudded: what kind of holiday was this, all of a sudden? They hadn’t come to study Torah with me! But I pulled myself together: Nonsense, Tevye! You should be ashamed of yourself. All these years you’ve lived here as a Jew in peace and tranquillity among so many Gentiles, and no one has ever touched so much as a hair on your head.
So I went out and greeted them with a hearty sholem aleichem. “Welcome,” I said. “What are you doing here, my dear neighbors? What good news do you bring?”
The mayor, Ivan Poperilo, stepped forward and said without any preliminaries, “We have come here, Tevel, to beat you up.”
What do you say to that? What more did they have in mind? But show them my feelings—never! On the contrary! Tevye is not a little boy. So I said to them cheerfully, “Mazel tov to you, but why did it take you so long to get around to it? In other places they’ve almost forgotten about beatings!”
Then Ivan Poperilo the mayor said, rather seriously, “You must understand, Tevel, that we have been arguing over whether we should beat you up or not. Since everywhere else people are getting beaten up, why should we let you get away without it? So the village council has decided we should beat you up. But we don’t know what else to do with you, Tevel. Should we knock out your windows and rip up your feather beds and pillows, or should we burn down your house and barn?”
Now that really began to upset me. My guests leaned on their tall staffs and whispered to one another, looking as if they meant business. If they did, I thought, then as we say in the Psalms, The flood waters are rising up to my very soul. Tevye, you are in deep trouble! Eh, with th
e Angel of Death you don’t play games—I had to say something to them.
Why drag the story out, dear friend? It was fated that a miracle take place. The One Above put in my head the idea that I not humble myself. I took heart and in good spirits said to the villagers, “Listen, gentlemen, to what I have to say. If the council has decided, they must know best. Tevye deserves to have you destroy his home and everything he has. But you know, there is something higher than your council. There is a God Above. I am not saying my God or your God, but I am speaking of the God of all of us, who sits above and sees all the wickedness that goes on down below. It could be,” I said, “that He pointed me out to be punished by you, my best friends, for no reason at all, or possibly the opposite, He wants under no circumstances for Tevye to be harmed. Who,” I said, “can know God’s will? Maybe there is one among you who will take it upon himself to understand it?”
Apparently they realized that they would not get the best of Tevye, and so Ivan Poperilo the mayor said to me, “This is the way it is. We have nothing against you, Tevel. It’s true you are,” he said, “a Jew, and you are not a bad person. But one thing has nothing to do with the other. We must beat you up. The council decided it, and that’s the way it has to be! We will break out your windows. That we must do, because if some official passes through, they must see that you’ve been punished. Otherwise we might be the ones who get punished.” Those were his very words, so help me God! Nu, I ask you now, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you are a man of the world who has traveled all over. Is Tevye right when he says we have a powerful God?
Now let us return to the Lech l’cho—Get Thee Gone. I studied it not too long ago, and it has the most meaning. This time, you understand, no fancy interpretations or speeches helped me. Here is the story exactly, with every jot and tittle, as you like to hear it.
Right at that time the world was turning topsy-turvy over Mendel Beiliss and the blood-libel trial. Beiliss was suffering the punishments of the damned, atoning for the sins of others. Sitting on the stoop of my house, I was deep in thought. It was summertime. The sun was baking, and my head was spinning. How could this be happening? I wondered. How could it be possible, in these times, in such a clever world full of such smart people! And where was God, the old Jewish God? Why was He silent? How could He allow such a thing? How could it be, and again, how could it be? And I began to ponder the universe and wondered, What is this world? And what is the next world? And why does not the Messiah come? Ay, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Messiah were to come down right now riding on his white horse! That would be a fine thing! Never has he been so badly needed by our Jewish brethren as now! I don’t know about the rich people, the Brodskys in Yehupetz or the Rothschilds in Paris. Maybe they never think of Him at all. But we poor Jewish folk from Kasrilevka and Mazepevka and Zlodeyevka, and even Yehupetz and Odessa, crave his coming. We strain our eyes looking for him! Our entire hope now is that God will perform a miracle and the Messiah will come!
Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son Page 18