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

That something tore at my insides and tugged at my heart. I was about to jump off the wagon, but I restrained myself and pulled the horse to the left. My daughter also moved to the left and looked at me wildly, her face ashen. What was I to do? Continue on, or stop? And before I realized it, she was holding the horse by the bridle. “Papa!” she cried. “I will die if you move from this spot! I beg you, hear me out, Papa, Papa!”

So, I thought, you want to force me. No, my darling! If that’s so, it’s a sign you don’t know your father. I whipped the horse for all he was worth, and he obeyed. But as he sprang forward, he turned his head back, his ears flattened. “Giddyap!” I said to him. “ Judge not the vessel but its contents! — don’t look, my clever boy, where you aren’t supposed to.” And you must know how much I wanted to turn and look back at the spot where she was standing.

But no, Tevye is not a woman. Tevye knows how to conduct himself before Satan the Tempter.

In a word — I won’t go on at length, why waste your time? — I may indeed suffer the punishments of the damned after death, but I have surely atoned for my sins already. If you want to have a taste of gehennam and know the rest of the agonies of those roasted and boiled in the holy books, ask me, and I will tell you all about them! All along the way I imagined she was running after the wagon, shouting, “Listen to me, Papa, Papa!” For a moment I wondered what would be so bad if I stopped for a while and listened to what she had to say. Maybe she had something to tell me that I needed to know. Maybe, who knew, she’d changed her mind and wanted to turn back. Maybe he’d rejected her and she was asking me to help her get out of gehennam . Maybe and maybe and many more maybes flew through my mind, and I still imagined her as a small child. I was reminded of the verse As a father pitieth his children —to a father there is no such thing as a bad child. And I blamed myself and said I was not deserving of pity —not worth the ground that bore me!

What are you getting so worked up about, you stubborn madman? I reproached myself. Why are you carrying on? Go, you brute, turn the wagon around and make it up with her! She is your child, not anyone else’s! And all sorts of strange thoughts came to my mind: What did it mean to be a Jew, and what did it mean to be a non-Jew? And why did God create Jews and non-Jews, and why were they so set apart from one another, unable to get along, as if one had been created by God and the other not? To my regret, not being as learned as others in books and religious texts, I could not find an answer to these questions.

To drive away my thoughts, I began to chant the evening prayer, the ashrei: Blessed are they who dwell in Thy house, and they shall continue to praise Thee . And I was chanting the mincha out loud and singing as God had commanded. But praying and chanting were of no use when my heart was singing another tune: “Cha-va! Cha-va! Cha-va!” And the louder I chanted the ashrei, the louder I sang “Chava,” and the more I wanted to forget her, the clearer she stood before my eyes. Over and over I imagined her voice calling to me: “Hear me out, Papa, Papa!” I covered my ears so as not to hear her and shut my eyes so as not to see her as I recited the Eighteen Benedictions. I couldn’t hear my own praying until I beat my breast and I chanted, For we have sinned, ashamnu, but I didn’t know how I had sinned. All I knew was that my life was in turmoil, and I was in turmoil.

I told no one of my seeing Chava, and I spoke to no one of her, and I asked no one about her, although I knew quite well where she was and where he was and what they were doing. But they could croak before I’d let anyone know. My enemies would never live to see me complain. That’s the kind of person Tevye is!

Are all men like that, or am I the only crazy one? For instance, it sometimes happens — you won’t laugh at me? I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me — it sometimes happens that I put on my Shabbes caftan and go to the railway station, planning to get on a train to them, where I know they live. I go up to the ticket window and ask for a ticket. He asks, “Where to?” I tell him, “To Yehupetz.” He says, “There’s no such place.” I say, “That’s not my fault,” and I turn around and go home. I take off the Shabbes caftan and get back to work, to the little dairy and the horse and wagon. As it is written, Man goeth forth unto his work and unto his labor —the tailor to the shears and the cobbler to the last.

Aha, you are laughing at me? What did I tell you? I even know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, That Tevye is really a big imbecile!

And as we say on Shabbes, it’s time to call it a day. Be well and strong and write me letters. But for God’s sake, don’t forget what I asked of you. I mean, don’t make a book out of this, and if it should happen that you do, write like it’s someone else, not me. Forget about me. As it says in the Bible: And he was forgotten —no more Tevye the dairyman!

WRITTEN IN 1907.

I owe you a big, hearty sholem aleichem, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you and your children! It’s been a good long time since we’ve seen each other! My, my, how much water has flowed under the bridge since then, how many troubles both of us and all of Israel have endured in these years — a Kishinev, a constitutzia, more pogroms, more sorrows and disasters — ach, Father of the Universe, God in Heaven! I am simply amazed, forgive me for saying so, but you haven’t changed so much as a hair, kayn eyn horeh, kayn eyn horeh ! But look at me: Behold! I am like unto a man of seventy —and I am not yet sixty and see how white Tevye has become! There’s a saying about the heartaches one has from children, and who has had as many heartaches from children as I have? A new catastrophe befell me with my daughter Shprintze, and it outdoes all the other troubles I’ve told you about. But look at me! I am still alive as if nothing had happened. As it is written : Against thy own will, thou livest —even though you fall apart and this song comes to your lips: what worth is life, what worth the world, without luck, without money?

In short, how does the verse go: The Holy One, Blessed be He, wishes to bestow favor —God wanted to do something for His Jews, and so a misfortune befell us, a disaster, a constitutzia ! Ay, a constitutzia ! Suddenly our rich people panicked and stampeded out of Yehupetz, heading abroad, supposedly to the spas to take the waters, to the mineral baths to calm their nerves — pure nonsense. As soon as they fled Yehupetz, Boiberik, with its fresh air, its pine woods, and its dachas, was in deep trouble. As we say in the morning prayers: Blessed be He who hath mercy upon the earth . What happened to Boiberik? Our mighty God sees to it that His poor people have to struggle on this earth, and so we had quite a summer — ay ay ay! People poured into Boiberik in droves from Odessa, from Rostov, Katerineslav, Mohliv, and Kishenev — thousands of rich folks! Apparently the constitutzia came down harder on them than on us in Yehupetz. That’s why they kept running here. Why were those rich folks running here ? Why were our rich folks running there ? It has become a custom among us, blessed be His name, that when there is a rumor of a pogrom, Jews run from one city to another, as it says in the verse: And they journeyed and they encamped and they encamped and they journeyed —which means: you come to me, and I’ll go to you.

Meanwhile Boiberik became terribly crowded, packed with men, women, and children. And since children like to eat and they need milk, where do you get milk if not from Tevye? I can tell you, Tevye became all the rage. Wherever you went it was Reb Tevye and again Tevye! Reb Tevye, come here! No, Reb Tevye, come to me! If God wills it, who am I to say no?