The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son

by Sholem Aleichem

  It’s more than anyone can take. There’s going to be a streik.

  WE’RE ON STREIK!

  I tell you, going on streik beats all! What it’s like is …well, suppose you send your child to the heder and the teacher hits him so hard that you take him out and look for another teacher. Meanwhile, there’s no school.

  Elye and Pinye have stopped going to the shahp. The apartment is a different place now that they’re home again. It’s like a week full of Sundays. I’ve told you that working in a shahp means getting up at the crack of dawn and falling into bed at night. That’s because of awvehteim. Awvehteim is staying to work in the shahp when everyone else goes home. Pinye and Elye don’t work awvehteim because they have to, they do it for the extra pay. A lot of good it does when pehdeh comes around and they see all they’ve been docked for! “They’re bandits,” Elye says.

  “You’re an imbecile,” says Brokheh.

  If she ever worked in a shahp, Brokheh says, no one would spit in her kasha. She’d have the bawssehz and the fawminz eating dirt. You better believe it. If anyone can do it, it’s Brokheh.

  That’s why Brokheh was pleased as punch when all the shahp hands called a streik. Every last garment worker in New York laid down his scissors and iron and walked out. You should have seen the excitement! I’m talking homes, strits, hawlz. A hawl is a big room where all the garment workers get together for a mitink. They talk and they talk and they talk.

  You hear words you’ve never heard before. Dzhenril streik …yunyin …awknahzayshn …hiyeh vedzhehz …beddeh voikink kahndishinz …skebz …streikbrehkehz …pikits and a lot more like that. I can’t make head or tails of any of it. My friend Mendl says he understands it all. Just don’t try asking him to explain. “When you’re older, you’ll get it too,” he says. Maybe I will.

  Meanwhile, I sit watching the action with itchy fingers. What wouldn’t I give to get it down on paper—how everyone looks, and what everyone does, and the things everyone says!

  Take Elye, for instance. He doesn’t say a thing. He just goes from group to group, listening and biting his nails. I get a kick out of watching him nod. He agrees with everyone.

  Do you see that garment worker over there, the one with the wen on the side of his head? He’s just grabbed Elye by the lapel and is shaking him while saying it’s all a big waste of time. The streik won’t get us workers anywhere. The sosayshn uv menefektshehz is too strong. Elye nods. I’ll bet he knows what a sosayshn uv menefektshehz is as much as I do.

  Now someone new goes over to him, a man with a face like a duck’s who sputters when he talks. He takes hold of Elye’s jacket button and sputters away, stopping every few sentences to say: “No, sir! We’ll fight to the end!” Elye nods again. It’s too bad Brokheh isn’t here. She’d give him a piece of her mind, don’t think she wouldn’t.

  Pinye is a different story. If you’ve never heard Pinye speak at a mitink, you’ve missed something grand. He puts his heart and soul into it and lets loose with the most terrific words and names.

  You have to see it with your own eyes. When it comes to boring an audience of thousands, Pinye is in a class by himself. He begins with Columbus, runs through the entire history of the United States, and would go on all night if anyone let him.

  “Who’s the spikkeh?” someone asks.

  “A grinhawn!”

  “What’s he want?”

  “What are his demands?”

  “What’s he sounding off about?”

  “Sharrap!” a man shouts at Pinye. Pretty soon a whole chorus is shouting:

  “Sharrap!” Sharrap is not a nice word. In Jewish you would say, “Go peddle your wares around the corner!” But words don’t scare Pinye. He runs on like an unplugged barrel. You can stop it with your finger, stuff a rag in it—nothing helps. You either wait for the last drop to trickle out or roll the barrel away. That’s what two young pressehs did to Pinye. They took him gently by the arms and led him off the steydzsh.

  Not that that stopped him. He talked all the way home. And when we got there he started in again on my mother, Brokheh, and Taybl. He actually had some good points, Pinye did. But try talking to a woman. When he’s finished, Brokheh comes up with one of her gems:

  “What does it matter to the turkey if it’s slaughtered for the Purim dinner or the Passover seder?”

  Maybe you can tell me what that means.

  The days go by. The streik continues. The workers are tough as steel. Every day there’s another mitink in a different place. The menefektshehz, they say, are tough too. They’re not giving in. But they will. Everyone’s sure of it. There’s nothing the workers can’t accomplish. This is America.

  There’s always the last resort. It’s called a mahtsh. Thousands of streikehz get together and parade through the streets with their flags. Let’s hope it works. We’ll be in bad shape if it doesn’t.

  Mendl and I think it’s a swell idea. We’ll mahtsh in the front row. But go tell that to an old woman like Brokheh! She says we’re just playing soldiers. “You’ll ruin your shoes,” she tells us. You should hear what Pinye has to say about that.

  There’s no turning back now. Mendl and I have put on our good suits. It’s as exciting as the Fawt uv Dzhulei. That’s an American holiday. They shoot fiyehkrekehz in the strit and people get killed. What’s a few dead on the Fawt uv Dzhulei? It’s the day America beat its enemies.

  Suddenly the grand mood is spoiled. A man has been killed on Kenell Strit. Pinye brings us the news. He was there and saw it happen. The man had it coming, he says. He was a gengsteh.

  “What’s a gengsteh?” my mother asks. “A thief?”

  “Worse!” Pinye says.

  “A murderer?”

  “Worse!”

  “What’s worse than a murderer?”

  “A gengsteh is worse than a murderer,” Pinye says, “because a murderer murders for murder and a gengsteh murders for pay. They get money to beat up the streikehz. One of them attacked a girl. There was a fight. People jumped on him and hit him.”

  That’s all we can get out of Pinye. He runs around the apartment on his long legs, pulling his hair and breathing fire and shouting:

  “O Columbus! O Vashinktn! O Linkn!”

  Then he turns around and runs out.

  Naturally, the next victims are Mendl and me. My mother won’t let us into the strit for all the money in the world. Not us, not Elye, not Brokheh, not Taybl! If people are getting killed there, she says, it’s no place to be. She’s gotten us so worried that Taybl is crying like a baby. It’s anyone’s guess where Pinye is.

  My mother turns to Taybl. There’s a great God above, she says. He’ll see to it Pinye is all right. With God’s help he’ll come home safe and sound. He’ll be a good father to his children, God willing.

  Taybl is childless. She’s taking medicine and hoping for the best.

  “Lots of children,” my mother says. “Amen to that!” I say and get a whack from Elye. That means I should mind my own business.

  Thank God, Pinye is back! He has good news. The gengsteh who was killed is alive. He’ll be a cripple for life. He lost an eye and broke an arm. “It serves him right,” Pinye says. “It will teach him not to be a gengsteh.”

  My mother feels sorry for the gengsteh. “W hat difference does it make what he is? There’s a God in heaven, it’s his job to settle accounts. Why should anyone lose an eye and break an arm? Why should a gengsteh’s wife and children have a cripple for a father?”

  The streik drags on. There isn’t a stitch of work. Elye is frantic. My mother tries comforting him. The God who brought us to America, she says, won’t let us down now.

  Yoyneh the bagel maker and Pesye and Moyshe and all our other good friends come by every day to cheer us up. They say it’s not the end of the world. Where is it written in the Bible that in America you have to be a garment worker? And to show you how right they are, listen to this.

  KASRILEVKE IN NEW YORK

  Before I tell you about other
ways of making a living in America, I’d better tell you about our friends and acquaintances in New York, because it’s thanks to them we’ve risen in the world. Touch wood, we have plenty of them!

  All Kasrilevke has moved to America. After we left, folks say, it was one disaster after another. First there was a bad pogrom, then a fire—the whole town burned to the ground. We found out about it from my mother. Leave it to my mother to be the first to hear of any calamity. She heard the news in synagogue. Kasrilevke, you should know, even has its own synagogue in America.

  We hadn’t been in New York a week when my mother asked about a place to pray. New York has lots of synagogues. There’s one on every strit. That first Saturday she went with Pesye.

  Pesye’s synagogue turned out to be our own. I mean the people were all from Kasrilevke. They call it the Kasrilevke Synagogue Association, or the Kasrilevke shul for short. We know everyone who prays there. Would you like to guess who that is? Eighteen brains wouldn’t be enough for you.

  First of all, there’s the cantor—I mean Hirsh-Ber, the man in whose choir I sang. You may remember my carrying around his lame daughter Dobtshe. She died back in Russia, in the pogrom, and Hirsh-Ber came to America with his wife and children to make a living.

  He isn’t just a cantor here. He’s a circumciser and a titsheh too. A titsheh titshiz children. Mostly he pinches them when no one is looking. That’s because in America he isn’t allowed to hit them. They say Hirsh-Ber is doing well. He’s changed a whole lot. Well, maybe not all that much, but he dresses differently. If he had worn a hat in Kasrilevke like the one he wears here, he’d have had the whole town running after him. His jacket is shorter too. And he’s cut off his earlocks. He hasn’t touched his big beard, though. He’s the only one who hasn’t.

  Your American hates a beard more than a Jew hates a pig. Once some Christian boys—loahfehz, they call them—stopped Hirsh-Ber in the strit and tried shaving his beard off. It was his good luck that some Jews came along and rescued him from the loahfehz. Since then he tucks his beard into his overcoat whenever he walks in the strit.

  Bereh the shoemaker is here too. That’s the man whose rats Elye tried getting rid of. I’ve told you he likes to spin yarns. No one else would dream of the things he makes up. In fact, he’s one lying Jew. In America that’s called a blahfeh.

  Bereh is the same Bereh as always. If a third of what he said about his shoes were correct, he’d be pretty well off. He says he’s the biggest shoemaker in America. The whole country, he says, wears his boots. The prehzident himself has ordered a pair—he swears it with such oaths that you’d have to believe him even if he wasn’t a Jew. My brother Elye says it’s as true as his story of the cat-eating rats. In short, he’s blahfink. In Jewish you would say, “He’s rattling the teapot.”

  I like “rattling the teapot” a lot better. I like it so much that I drew it. I mean I drew Bereh the shoemaker shaking a big teapot in the air. Everyone died laughing. Even Elye gave it half a smile. He doesn’t whack me for doodling any more. He just grumbles and says, “If you have nothing to do, I suppose you may as well do it.”

  Who else should I tell you about? Rich Yosi is in America too. Once we all dreamed of having a fraction of his money. Now he doesn’t have it himself. How’s that? The pogrom did him in. I don’t mean he was hurt or anything, but he did lose everything he had. His furniture was smashed, his linens were torn, and all the goods were stolen from his store. He and his family escaped by hiding for three days in the cellar and nearly starving to death. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that his debtors went bankrupt. That made him go bankrupt himself. Who would have imagined Rich Yosi running away from his creditors? He cleared out in the middle of the night—for America.

  Do you remember Yosi’s bug-eyed son Henekh, the one who laughed at me for going to America? Now he walks the strits of New York. He looks the other way when he sees me. It’s beneath him to talk to me even now. Wasn’t Haman the proud one too! My friend Mendl says he’ll make him black-eyed Henekh. Mendl doesn’t like swellheads.

  And to take the cake, Menashe the doctor is here with the Doct’ress! You know all about their garden with its peaches, cherries, apples, and pears. Well, it went up in smoke. The whole place burned to a crisp. You wouldn’t recognize the two of them. They’re old and gray. Menashe wheels a pushcart with apples and oranges and the Doct’ress peddles tea. “It could break your heart,” my mother says, all teary-eyed.

  “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman,” says Elye.

  I agree. The Doct’ress got what she deserved. They don’t come any meaner. She wouldn’t have given a rotten apple to a beggar! She thinks I’ve forgotten catching it from her in the attic. Not till the day I die.

  All the time we were roaming around Europe, the pogromchiks were robbing and torching our Kasrilevke Jews. The half house we sold to Zilye the tailor was burned too. Now Zilye is in New York. He’s still a tailor, but in Russia he was his own bawss while in America he works for someone else. Sometimes he’s an assistant presseh and sometime he’s an ahpereydeh. He takes home, so he says, seven or eight dollars a week. That’s not enough for a living but you can triple it because his three daughters work making shoits.

  I asked Elye why it’s called a shoit. Elye said that’s one English word he can’t explain. “Why just one?” said Pinye. “I suppose you can explain all the others.” “As a matter of fact, I can,” Elye said. “Then suppose you explain butsheh,” said Pinye. “It comes from butsherink a cow,” Elye said. Next Pinye asked why a tailor was called an ahpereydeh. “He’s called an ahpereydeh,” Elye said, “because …because …because get off my back! Since when do I have to explain every word in America to you?”

  “Shhh, stop shouting! What good are you to anyone? Come here, little man,” Pinye said to me. “If there’s anything you want to know, don’t ask your brother. He’s no wiser than you are.”

  Brokheh stuck up for Elye. “A corpse,” she said, “knows more than both of you together.”

  But I’ve gotten off the subject. That was who we know in America. All of Kasrilevke is here, except for Pinye’s family. They say it’s on its way too.

  Pinye’s father Hirsh-Leyb the engineer and his uncle Shneyur the watchmaker have written that they would have left for America long ago if only they had money for the tickets. They’ve asked Pinye to lend it to them. We’re saving our pehnehz. As soon as they add up to a dahleh, we’ll make a down payment on the tickets. God willing, they’ll pay us back. They should do well here. Hirsh-Leyb writes that he’s invented a new stove. It hardly needs any wood. In fact, it needs none at all. How is that? It’s Hirsh-Leyb’s secret. And Shneyur has thought up a new clock that America will go wild for. What sort of clock is it? I’ll tell you what he wrote Pinye.

  At first glance you might think it was just an ordinary clock. So what’s so special about it? Well, look at the dial and you’ll see a moon with twelve stars. That’s by night. By day you’ll see the sun—and that’s not the half of it. When the clock strikes twelve a door opens and out steps an officer with a sword and a marching band. The officer lifts his sword and the band plays a march and marches back through the door, which shuts behind it.

  What’s your guess? Will Shneyur’s clock make a million in America? He’s been working on it for quite a few years. It was almost finished when the pogromchiks smashed it to pieces. But so what? He’ll make another. Let him get to America and he’ll be awreit.

  I still haven’t told you how we’re now making a living. But I’d better leave something for the next chapter.

  MAKING A LIVING

  The first to start making a living again was Elye. He can thank my mother for that. Every Saturday she prays in the Kasrilevke shul. It’s a good place to meet people. It was there that she met Missiz Prehzident. (In America the head of a synagogue is a prehzident too.) She’s a fine lady who thinks well of my mother. Brokheh says that’s because my mother can follow the prayers and knows what the
cantor is saying, which is more than can be said for most women.

  Brokheh says the only reason women go to synagogue in America is to show off their deimindz. She’s sorry to say they’re a bunch of fat cows who can’t even read the letters in the prayer book. Eating and gossiping is all they’re good for.

  My mother doesn’t let her get away with that. “My dear daughter-inlaw,” she says, “that’s gossip too.” Brokheh says it’s not gossip as long as it stays in the family.

  But let’s get back to Missiz Prehzident and her husband, the prehzident of the Kasrilevke shul.

  Maybe you’ve heard of Hibru Neshnel Delikatesn. It’s a company that sells kosher salami, frankfurters, pickled tongues, and corned beef. It has stores all over town. If you’re hungry, you step into one and order a haht dawg with mustard or horseradish. My friend Mendl and I once ate three haht dawgz apiece and could have polished off a few more if we had the cash …but that’s not what I wanted to tell you.

  What I wanted to tell you was that the prehzident of our shul is an owner of Hibru Neshnel Delikatesn. My mother used her connections with his wife to get Elye a job.

  Elye is a selzmin. He’s also a vaydeh. That means anyone wanting a haht dawg tells him to bring it. At first he objected to that. “What’s the big idea?” he asked. “Since when is a Jew with a beard, a cantor’s son and a bagel maker’s son-in-law, supposed to be someone’s servant?”

  Pinye gave him what for.

  “Listen to you! Do you think you’re still in that dump of a Kasrilevke? You’re in America, that’s where you are! Lots of fine young men like you have sold noospeypehz here, peddled metshehz, polished shoes in the strit. Take Kahnegi! Take Rahknfelleh! Take Vendehbilt! Read about Dzhordzh Vashinktn and Eybrim Linkn and all the other great Americans! You’ll see that even Peysi the cantor’s son can sell haht dawgz.”

  That’s when Pinye caught it from my mother. As long as he stuck to Kahnegi and Rahknfelleh, she let him have his way. But hearing Dzhordzh Vashinktn and Eybrim Linkn mentioned in one breath with my father was too much for her. For all she knew, she told Pinye, Vashinktn and Linkn were honorable men and good Jews. Still, she would thank Pinye to leave my father out of it. He belonged where he was, in Paradise, putting in a good word for us all.