Sholem Aleichem - Stempenyu - A Jewish Romance

Ziporah went on pouring out the words as from a full sack, as was usual with her when she was once started talking. But, Stempenyu would not hear her out. He left the room, and betook himself to his fiddle, as was his habit when his heart was heavy, and when his soul was full to overflowing with anger and resentment and regrets. He forgot, soon after he had started playing, all about his wife, and his mother-in-law, and his load of miseries.

And, once again there stood before him the image of Rochalle…

“She fills my heart’s heart with aching,” he murmured, while his mind was busy trying to devise some means of seeing her in the flesh once more. “How and where is it possible to see her, even if only for a single instant?”

But, these are all empty dreams — vanity, and weariness of the flesh.

Stempenyu does not know that his little song is nearly sung, and that his little world has almost come to an end. He does not know that his black locks are getting thinner day by day, and that his burning eyes are slowly but surely losing their fiery glances, and that his white brow is falling into wrinkles. He has ceased to take the least interest in what befalls him. He is so deeply absorbed in his visions that he has neither eyes nor ears nor senses. He is stupid, and blind, and deaf before his time.

Foolish giant! Do not forget yourself. At your side stands your Delilah — the Delilah that lured you into her arms, and took you on her knee, and rocked you to sleep. And, while you slept, she cut off your locks of hair in which lay the source and origin of your great strength — all your abilities that lifted you up above other men. Your Delilah did unto you just as the Delilah of old did unto her husband, Samson the Strong, after which he was lost and ruined, and fell into the hands of the Philistines…

You have only one consolation left you in the world — only one — your little fiddle. Then play, Stempenyu — play on your fiddle, and we will listen…

Sholom Aleichemwas born Solomon Rabinowitz in 1859, the son of a merchant in the Ukrainian village of Pereyaslav. At 14, he wrote his first book: a dictionary of Yiddish curses overheard at home. Despite jobs teaching Russian and writing for Hebrew newspapers, it was his writings in Yiddish — humorous stories about village life — that brought him fame. Using the Yiddish greeting (“Peace unto you”) as his pseudonym, he published 40 volumes of stories and plays, single-handedly creating a literature for what had been primarily a spoken language. Pogroms forced Aleichem to flee Russia in 1905, eventually landing him in New York City, his fame undiminished — introduced to Mark Twain as “the Yiddish Mark Twain,” Twain interrupted to call himself the “American Sholom Aleichem.” Upon Aleichem’s death in 1916, 100,000 mourneres flooded the streets of Manhattan for his funeral. His will, however, asked friends to remember him by an annual reading of one of his funny stories. “Let my name be recalled in laughter,” Aleichem wrote, “or not at all.”

Hannah Berman(1883–1955) was an English novelist ( Melutovna ), and early translator of significant works in Yiddish.