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

Brokheh isn’t satisfied. Neither are my mother and Taybl. Have you ever seen a satisfied woman?

They don’t like the men’s slaving to make a living in America. A dzhahb in a shahp is no treat. It starts at seven-thirty every morning and you have to allow an hour for travel, plus time for morning prayers and a bite to eat. You can figure out for yourself when that means getting up — and you want to be on time, because you’re docked half a day’s pay for each five minutes you’re late. How does anyone know how late you are? Leave it to America! Every shahp makes you tell it when you come to work. It’s called pahntshink deh klahk.

The klahk hangs on a wall. Elye says it’s called a klahk because it goes klik-klahk. A klahk that fits into your pocket, he says, is a vahtsh. “So why is it called a vahtsh?” I ask. “What should it be called?” Elye says. “A tahk,” I say. “Why a tahk?” Elye asks. “Because it goes tik-tahk,” I say. Elye got mad and told me I’d learned to think backwards from Pinye.

I’m glad Pinye wasn’t there. They would have fought over vahtsh just like they did over brekfish. Elye said it’s called brekfish because you eat herring. “In that case,” said Pinye, “why isn’t it called brekherrink?” “What a dope you are!” Elye said. “Don’t you know a herrink is a fish?” Pinye saw that Elye had him there and said: “You know what? Let’s ask an American.”

Well, right away they stop a smooth-shaven Jew in the street and say to him: “Brother! How long have you been in America?”

“Thirty years,” says the man. “How come you ask?”

“We have a question,” they say. “Why do Americans call the morning meal brekfish?”

The Jew looked at them and said: “Who says it’s called brekfish?” “Then what is it called?”

“Brekfist! Brekfist! Brekfist!” The Jew shouted three times in their face and turned to go. First, though, he added:

“Grinhawnz!”

It doesn’t look like we’ll grow old in the shahp. Elye says there are problems with the fawmin. Every shahp has a fawmin who’s in charge. In fact, every floor has a fawmin. The fawmin on Elye’s floor is a rat. He’s an old ahpereydeh who was promoted. The workers say he’s worse than the bawss. There’s a rumor that he’s tinkered with the klahk to make you seem late when you’re on time. A real bastard! And Pinye has even nicer things to say about his shahp. You’re not allowed to look at a noospeypeh there, not even during the lunch break. You’re not allowed to smoke. You’re not even allowed to talk. Pinye says it’s so quiet that you could hear the flies buzz if it weren’t for the noise of the machines.

The good thing is that the irons are gas-heated. The bad thing is that the gas stinks. It stinks in Elye’s shahp too. Elye’s bawss calls it gaass. Pinye’s bawss calls it gez. So now they argue about that too.

To make a long story short, the gez gives the workers such a headache that they have to keep taking breaks. The bawss makes up for that on pehdeh, when he docks the lost time from their pay. And you can add being docked for coming late and leaving early, not to mention days that you’re sick.

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