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

B.

What are we doing on Ellie’s Island? We’re waiting for our family and friends to come from the city so they can vouch for us in writing. They questioned us over and over before we boarded the ship, while we were on the ship itself, and when we just disembarked from the ship. And it’s always the same questions: Who are we? Where are we going? Whom do we have in America?

We tell them there was a man named Peysi the cantor and he died. He left a widow, our mother. She has a son named Elyahu, who has a wife named Bruche and a friend named Pinni, who has a wife named Teibl. And I am the youngest, named Motl. This is my friend named Mendl, and because he is large, Bruche named him the Colt.

Whom do we have in America? We know everybody in America and all the Jews are our friends. First of all, there is Moishe the bookbinder and his wife Fat Pessi — our neighbor with a whole gang of children. Each one has a name and a nickname. We tick them off on our fingers: Pinni Barrel, Velvl Tomcat, Mendl Stork, Chaim Buffalo, Hershl with the birthmark on his forehead, so we call him Vashti—

They interrupt us, “Enough — enough children. Give us grown-ups.” So we give them the grown-ups, tick off their names: Yoneh the baker, an angry man, that’s one. His wife Rivele, a woman with a fur cape — that’s two. Actually, she once had a fur cape but it was stolen at the border. The word border reminds my mother of how our things were stolen at the border. She asks if it’s possible to get these things back — and she starts crying, at which point Elyahu reprimands her. She says that now she is in America, she is no longer worried about her eyes and can cry and cry.

C.

That they allowed her through with those eyes is a miracle, as is the fact that we survived the ocean crossing. Was it not a miracle of miracles? How many times did we see the Angel of Death with our own eyes? How many times did we think our lives were over?

At first when we boarded the ship Prince Albert, everything was fine. I and my friend Mendl measured the Prince Albert from stem to stern with our strides. No one had it as good as we did. Never had we had accommodations to match what we had on the ship. It was a three-story house on the water. Just picture it — you’re sitting in your house, or walking around outside, hands in your pockets, and you’re moving! You’re eating and — you’re moving! You’re drinking and — you’re moving! And the people you see — a world of people, an entire city — are traveling with you on one ship and going to the same place, America. You can get to know all of them, and they you. You find out in one day so many things that in another place you wouldn’t learn in a year.

D.

Oh my, how many friends my mother and my sister-in-law Bruche and Pinni’s wife Teibl make among the women! But that’s nothing compared with the friends my brother Elyahu and his friend Pinni make among the men. No matter how much any of us talks, they can never talk enough. The women talk about kitchens, cupboards, linens, laundry, bedding, stockings, sheets, and fur capes. The men talk about America, business, Columbus, edicts, and pogroms.

They can’t live without talking about edicts and pogroms. As you know, I hate to talk about those things. When they start talking about them, I leave. I take my friend Mendl by the hand, and together we stroll through the streets of Prince Albert.

E.

Prince Albert is big enough — and beautiful. It has marble stairs, brass railings, and steel and iron wherever you look. And the crew — some are called stewards and nurses; others are sailors, who run back and forth like the wind. Mendl and I envy them. We promise each other that when we grow up, we will enlist as sailors.

But Price Albert has one big fault — we’re not allowed to go wherever we wish. As soon as we try to go beyond our assigned quarters, the mean sailors drive us away. The upper-class passengers are just as mean, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t let the sailors chase us away. What harm could we do — take a bite out of them? My friend Mendl is irate. He doesn’t understand why you need to have different classes. He says that in America there are no classes. If you don’t believe me, he says, you can ask your brother Elyahu. But my brother hates to be asked dumb questions. I prefer to ask our friend Pinni, who loves to talk about such things — he can bury you in words. And if you get him started, he’s like a wound-up alarm clock — he won’t quit until the wheels stop turning.

F.

I find Pinni sitting on the deck with his nose in a book. Because he is nearsighted, he doesn’t read with his eyes but with the tip of his nose.

I come up close to him. “Reb Pinni, I have to ask you something.”

Pinni takes his nose out of the book. “What did you say, Peewee?” Peewee is what he calls me when he’s in a good mood, which is almost always, even when he bickers with my brother, and even when his Teibl pouts.

I tell him what I have in mind: is it true there are no classes in America?

You should have seen Pinni flare up with fiery, lofty expressions. America is the only country where true freedom and equality reign, he says. And here’s where Pinni pours out his favorite words. In America, he says, you can be sitting here, and right next to you the president, and next to him a beggar, a tramp, a shlepper . And a little farther on — a count, an earl, a millionaire! Civilization! Progress! Columbus!

An emigrant, a complete stranger, interrupts him. “If it’s such a fortunate land as you say, where everyone is equal, then where do all these shleppers, counts, beggars, and earls come from?”

Let’s leave Pinni to fight it out with the stranger and a few others. We now know that in America there are no classes. Mendl is right — he says you have to hate the upper classes, which means we have to hate those who sit in the ship’s higher classes. I don’t understand — what do I have against them? Mendl points out that “they’ve locked themselves up in first and second class among their fancy mirrors. Why? Aren’t we good enough for them? Aren’t we human beings just like they are? Isn’t our God the same as their God?”

In the end, Mendl has his revenge. One night the snobs from first and second class come down to us in third class, and we all become equals.

It’s the eve of Yom Kippur for the Kol Nidrei prayer.

G.

Because the Prince Albert sailed after Rosh Hashanah, we had to observe Yom Kippur on the ship. On the eve of Yom Kippur, we prepare for the fast by eating roasted potatoes. There is no kosher kitchen on Prince Albert, so we’ve been living on potatoes plus lots of bread, tea, and sugar every day. It’s not so bad — you could live all year like that. But Bruche says that your stomach swells if you eat too many potatoes. Is there anything she likes? She finds fault with everything! For instance, she doesn’t like Prince Albert because it moves so slowly. Who ever heard that a journey should last ten days? she says. We tell her it isn’t the ship’s fault, but the ocean’s fault. And our Pinni explains that there is three times as much ocean as dry land. My brother Elyahu says it’s only two times as much. Whatever you may say, he knows his geography better. The world, he says, consists of two-thirds water and a third dry land, so therefore the ocean is twice as much as dry land.

“Three times!”

“Two times!”

They quarrel but quickly make up.

H.

Who will conduct the service? Who will sing Kol Nidrei? Naturally, it must be my brother Elyahu. Though he was never a cantor, his father was a cantor and a famous one. Elyahu has a good voice for chanting and knows the prayers. What more do you need? Pinni suggests that my brother be invited to sing Kol Nidrei. He spreads a rumor throughout the ship, whispering in people’s ears that this young man with the red beard (Elyahu) is a fantastic singer, and his praying extraordinary! And if his little brother (me) could help out with his soprano, we’d have a Yom Kippur for which God and man would envy us.