Sholem Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son

“If you think about it,” I said, “one can understand very well that maybe you aren’t entirely to blame. Let’s consider the whole thing from both sides. To say you did it on purpose would be foolish because we were equal partners, fifty-fifty. I put in the money, you put in the brains, God help me! Your intention certainly was, as it is said, for life and not for death —you meant it for the best. Ay, the roof fell in? Maybe it wasn’t destined to be; as they say, “Don’t rejoice today, because tomorrow. .” Man proposes and God disposes.

“Take me, for example,” I said. “You would think I have a stable business, it can’t fail. Yet a year ago this autumn, it shouldn’t happen to anyone, my cow, a great bargain at fifty, laid down and died, and right after her a lovely little red calf, I wouldn’t take twenty for her. You see, I couldn’t do a thing about it. If it doesn’t go,” I said, “forget it!

“I don’t want to ask you what happened to my money. I know myself where you put my money, my hard-earned money, woe is me. It went into the grave, into those worthless stocks, never to be seen again. And who is to blame if not myself, who let you talk me into striking it rich, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, empty dreams? Money, my friend, one has to earn by the sweat of one’s brow. One must toil over it, slave over it.” I said, “I deserve a trouncing. But what good is my complaining? As it is written: So the maiden cried . Shout until you’re blue in the face! Wisdom and regret — always they come too late. It wasn’t fated that Tevye become rich. As the Russian Ivan says, “The Jew never had any money and never will.” Maybe,” I said, “that’s the way God wants it to be. He giveth and He taketh away, says Rashi. Come, my friend, let’s have a little brandy!”

And that, Pani Sholem-Aleichem, is how the roof fell in, and with it all my dreams! Do you think I really took it to heart that I’d lost my money? May I know as much of evil! We know what it says in the Bible: The silver is mine and the gold is mine —money is worthless! The main thing is the person — that is, if he’s really a person. So what was rankling me? It was the dream that had vanished. I wanted, oh how I wanted, to be a rich man, if only for a little while! But what good did it do me? It is written: Regardless of thy will, thou livest —you live in spite of yourself, and in spite of yourself you wear out your boots. “You, Tevye,” says God, “have to keep your mind on butter and cheese, not in dreams.” And what of hope and faith? On the contrary, the more troubles you have, the more faith you must have, and the poorer you are, the more hope you must have. Do you want any more proof?

But I think I’ve gone on too long today. It’s time to go and tend to my business. As you’ll no doubt say, “All men are false.” Every man has his burden. Be well and have a good life!

WRITTEN IN 1899.

You were talking about today’s children. Here’s what Isaiah said: I have nourished and brought up children —you bring them into the world, they make your life miserable, you sacrifice yourself for them, you slave away night and day, and what comes of it? You’d think that by raising them on what little you have, things would work out one way or the other. I’m not trying to compare myself with Brodsky, of course, but I’m not ready to sell myself short either. I’m not just anybody, and as my dear wife says, we do manage, and we don’t come from tailors or cobblers. So I figured that with my daughters it would surely work out. Why? First of all, God blessed me with pretty daughters, and as you yourself have said, a pretty face is half the dowry. And second of all, with God’s help I am these days not the same Tevye as before. I can aspire to the best match even in Yehupetz. What do you say to that?

But there is a merciful and compassionate God in this world, and He displays His great wonders and makes summer into winter for me, lifts me up and casts me down. He says to me: “Tevye, don’t start thinking like a fool. Let the world run itself the way it will!”

Listen to what can happen in this great world. And who do you think has all the luck? Tevye shlimazel .

To make a long story short — why should I fill your ear? — you probably remember what happened to me with my cousin Menachem-Mendl, how nicely he worked out our business in Yehupetz, investing in all those stocks and shares and gold imperials, may his name and memory be obliterated. I lost everything, may it happen to all my enemies. I was sure it was the end of Tevye and his dairy business! I was really downhearted.

“You fool!” my wife said to me. “Enough moping! It won’t do you any good! You’ll just eat your heart out, so enough! Tell yourself it’s as if robbers attacked us and took the money. Why don’t you go for a little ride to Anatevka, to Lazer-Wolf the butcher? He wants to talk to you about something.”

“He wants to talk to me? If he thinks he’s buying our milk cow, he might as well take a stick and knock that idea out of his head.”

“What’s so wonderful about our milk cow?” she said. “Is it for all the milk we get from her and the cheese and butter?”

“No,” I said, “just the idea of it. It’s a shame to sell her to be slaughtered, a pity on a living creature. It is written in the sacred Torah—”

“Oh, enough with the Torah, Tevye! Everybody knows you’re a man of the Torah. Listen to me, your wife. Go over to Lazer-Wolf’s. Every Thursday,” she said, “when our Tzeitl goes to his shop for meat, he doesn’t leave her alone. ‘Tell your father,’ he says, ‘to come see me. It’s important that I talk to him.’ ”

Well, sometimes you have to listen to a wife. So I let myself be talked into it and went to Lazer-Wolf’s in Anatevka, three versts from us, but didn’t find him at home. “Where is he?” I asked a snub-nosed woman who was bustling about the house. “He’s in the slaughterhouse,” she said. “They’re slaughtering an ox since early this morning. He’ll be back soon.” I wandered around the house and admired Lazer-Wolf’s household— kayn eyn horeh, may all my loved ones have the like: a cupboard full of copperware you couldn’t buy for a hundred and fifty rubles, a samovar and another samovar, a brass tray and another one from Warsaw, a pair of silver candlesticks, many gold-rimmed glasses, a wrought-iron Chanukah lamp, and much porcelain bric-a-brac. My God! I thought, wishing my children could live like this. What a lucky man this butcher was! Not only was he rich, but his two children were married, and he was a widower into the bargain!

Finally the door opened, and an angry Lazer-Wolf came in, furious at the shochet, the ritual slaughterer. He had ruined him. He had declared an ox that was the size of an oak to be unkosher, after finding a tiny scar on the animal’s lung the size of a pinhead — may he have a stroke, may he sink into the earth! “God Almighty, Reb Tevye,” he said to me, “how come it’s so hard to reach you? How are you?”

“How can I be?” I said. “I do and I do, and I’m still just beginning to get somewhere. As it says in the Torah, Neither Thy sting nor Thy honey —no money, no health, barely keeping life and limb together.”

“You sin, Reb Tevye,” he said to me. “Compared to the way you once were, may it never happen again, you are now, kayn eyn horeh, a rich man.”

“What I still need to be a rich man,” I said, “may we both have. But never mind, I thank God for what I do have. There is a saying in the Gemorah: Neither from Your sting nor from Your honey .” But in my heart I was thinking, You should live so long if you think there’s a phrase like that in the Gemorah, my fine butcher boy.