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

“Of course, as long as it’s a good question.” I stopped the horse.

“You have,” he said, “Reb Tevye, a daughter!”

“I have,” I said, “seven, may they be well.”

“I know,” he said, “you have seven. I also have seven.”

“So together,” I said, “we have fourteen.”

“Let’s not joke,” he said. “This is what I want to talk to you about. As you know, Reb Tevye, I am a matchmaker, and I have a bridegroom for you, but a groom without compare, the cream of the crop!”

“Really?” I said. “What do you mean by the cream of the crop? If he’s a tailor or a cobbler or a teacher, he can stay where he is. Enlargement and deliverance shall arise for the Jews —I will find my equal in another place, as the midrash says.”

“Ah, Reb Tevye,” he said, “you’re starting in again with your midrash? To talk to you, one has to be well prepared! You scatter the midrash everywhere. Better listen,” he said, “to what a match Ephraim the matchmaker has to offer you. Just listen and be quiet.”

Ephraim proceeded to rattle off all the virtues of this groom. Quite impressive, he comes from the best of families, not just anybodies, and that is most important to me, because I myself am also not just anybody. In my family there are all kinds, as they say: ‘streaked, speckled, and spotted’—we have ordinary people, laborers, and property owners. In addition this groom is a learned man who understands what’s in the small print in the commentaries, and that’s not a trivial thing for me. I hate a coarse young man more than I hate pork. To me an ignorant person is a thousand times worse than a hoodlum. You can go without a hat and even walk upside down, if you like, but as long as you know what Rashi is about, you are a man after my own heart. That’s the kind of Jew Tevye is. It turns out the young man is also rich, stuffed with money, and drives a carriage with two spirited horses that leave a cloud of dust behind them! All right, I thought, that wasn’t his worst fault. Better a rich man than a poor one. As it is said: “God Himself must hate a poor man, because if God loved a poor man, the poor man wouldn’t be poor.”

“Well then, what more do you have to say?” I asked.

“I must tell you, he wants me to arrange a match, he’s dying for it,” he said. “He’s so eager — not for you but for your daughter Hodl. He wants a pretty girl.”

“Is that so?” I said. “Let him keep dying. Who is this treasure of yours? A bachelor? A widower? Is he divorced? What’s wrong with him?”

“He is a bachelor,” he said, “a little elderly, but he’s never been married.”

“What is his name?” He wouldn’t tell me.

“Bring her to Boiberik,” he said, “and then I’ll tell you.”

“What do you mean, I should bring her? You bring a horse to the market, or a cow to sell.”

As you know, matchmakers can talk you into anything. It was decided that after Shabbes, God willing, I would bring Hodl to Boiberik. All sorts of good, sweet thoughts came to my mind, and I was picturing her riding in a carriage pulled by a pair of spirited horses, and everybody envying me, not so much for the carriage and the horses as for the favors I would be doing for everybody through my daughter, the rich man’s wife. I would help out the needy with a loan of twenty-five rubles, or fifty rubles, or maybe a hundred — they have souls too. So I was thinking as I was riding home before nightfall, whipping my horse and having a little talk with him in his own language: “Go on, my little horse, giddyap! If you move your legs a little faster, you’ll get your oats sooner because, as it says in the Pirkei Avot, If there is no flour in the bin, there is no Torah —if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

And as I was chatting with my horse, I saw emerging from the woods a man and a woman, their heads close together, whispering to each other affectionately. Who could they be, I wondered, and peered through the bright rays of the sun. I could swear it was Fefferl! With whom was he walking so late, that shlimazel ? I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand and looked closer. Who was that woman? Oy! I thought. Hodl? Yes, it was she, as I am a Jew, it was she! So that was the way they were studying grammar and reading books! Oy, Tevye, what a fool you are, I thought.

I pulled up the horse and called out to them, “A good evening to you. What news do you hear about the war? How do you come to be out here?” I said. “What could you be looking for out here?”

Hearing that welcome, my couple remained standing, as it is said : Not in heaven nor on earth, which means neither here nor there, but embarrassed and awkward. They stood speechless for a few moments, lowered their eyes, and raised them and looked at me as I looked at them. Then they looked at each other.

“Nu?” I said. “Somehow you are looking at me as if you hadn’t seen me in a long time. I am, I imagine, the same Tevye as always, not changed a hair.” I said this half-jokingly and half-annoyed.

My daughter spoke to me, blushing even redder than before: “Papa, give us a mazel tov .”

“ Mazel tov to you,” I said, “may you have good luck. What’s this all about? Did you find a treasure in the woods? Or were you rescued from great danger?”

“Give us a mazel tov, ” Fefferl said. “We’re engaged.”

“What do you mean, you’re engaged?”

“We’re engaged,” he said. “Don’t you know what engaged means? It means I will be her husband and she will be my wife.” Fefferl looked me straight in the eyes.

I looked him straight back in his eyes. “When was the contract signed? And why wasn’t I invited to the celebration? I imagine I would be somewhat involved as an in-law, don’t you think?”

You can understand that while I was talking, worms were gnawing at my innards. But I said nothing. Tevye is not a woman. Tevye likes to hear everything out to the end. I said to them, “I don’t quite understand — a match without a matchmaker, without an engagement party?”

“Why do we need a matchmaker?” Fefferl said. “We have long been engaged.”

“Is that so? God’s miracles! Why then,” I said, “didn’t you say anything till now?”

“Why should we shout it out? We wouldn’t have told you about it now except that we soon will be separated, and so we decided to get married first.”

That really hurt. As it is written in the Psalms: The waters have risen unto my soul —cut right to the bone! Well, it was bad enough that they were engaged — he wants her, she wants him. But to get married? What kind of gibberish was that?

My future son-in-law realized I was confused and said, “You understand, Reb Tevye, this is what is happening: I am leaving here.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Very soon.”

“Where are you going?”

“That,” he said, “I cannot tell you. It’s a secret.”

Do you hear that? It’s a secret! How do you like that? Along comes a Fefferl, a puny, dark, homely fellow, makes himself out to be a bridegroom, and wants to put up the wedding canopy, but he’s about to go away and won’t say where to! Isn’t that enough to make a person explode?

“Oh well,” I said to him, “a secret is a secret. Everything you do is a secret. But just explain something to me: you are an honorable person and are steeped in justice from top to bottom. How can you,” I said, “come here and suddenly take away Tevye’s daughter and then abandon her? Is that what you call honor? Justice? I’m just lucky you didn’t rob me or set my house on fire!”

“Papa!” Hodl cried out. “You have no idea how relieved we are that we told you our secret. A stone has been lifted from my heart. Come here, and let’s kiss.” And not thinking about it too long, both of them embraced me, she from one side, he from the other, and they began kissing and hugging me as well as each other. It was like a play on the stage, I tell you.