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

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.

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.