Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son

KOTONTI–I AM UNWORTHY

A letter from Tevye the dairyman to the author

WRITTEN IN 1895.

In honor of my dear, beloved friend Reb Sholem Aleichem, may God grant you health and prosperity together with your wife and children, and may you have great fulfillment whatever you do and wherever you go. Amen. Selah!

Kotonti! — I am unworthy! This I tell you in the language our Father Jacob spoke to God in the portion Vayishlach, when he went to meet Esau. But if this is not entirely appropriate, I beg you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, not to be upset with me, as I am an ordinary man and you certainly know more than I do — who can question that? After all, living one’s whole life in a little village, one is ignorant. Who has time to look into a holy book or to learn a verse of the Bible or Rashi? Luckily when summer comes around, the Yehupetz rich folk take off to their dachas in Boiberik, and every now and then I can get together with an educated person to hear some wisdom. Believe me when I tell you how well I remember that day when you sat with me in the woods listening to my foolish tales. That meant more to me than anything in the world!

I don’t know what you found so interesting that you would devote your time to an insignificant person like myself, to write me letters and, unbelievably, to put my name in a book, make a big fuss over me, as if I were who knows who. For that I can certainly say, Kotonti! — I am unworthy! True, I am a good friend of yours, may God grant me a hundredth portion of what I wish for you! You know very well that I served you in bygone years when you were still living in the big dacha — do you remember? I bought you a cow for fifty rubles that I bargained down from fifty-five. It was a steal. So she died on the third day? It wasn’t my fault. Why did the other cow I gave you also die? You know very well how that upset me. I was beside myself! Do I know why she died? Even with the best intentions things like that can happen!

May God help me and you in the new year. It should be — how is it said? — Bless us as in days of old. May God help me in my livelihood, may I and my horse be well, and may my cows give enough milk that, with my cheese and butter, I will be able to serve you for a long time to come. May God grant you and all the Yehupetz rich folk success and prosperity. May your lives be filled with great joy. And for the trouble you’ve gone through for my sake, and for the honor you do me through your book, I can only say again: Kotonti! — I am unworthy!

How do I deserve the honor of having a world of people suddenly learning that on the other side of Boiberik, not far from Anatevka, lives a Jew called Tevye the dairyman? But you must know what you are doing. I don’t need to teach you anything. How to write, you certainly know. As for the rest, I rely on your noble character to see to it that I might earn a little something from your book, because it is sorely needed now. I soon have to think about marrying off a daughter, God willing. And if God grants us life, we might have two to marry off at the same time.

In the meanwhile, be well and have a happy life, as I wish you with all my heart, from me, your best friend,

TEVYE

Yes, one more thing! When the book is finished and you are ready to send me some money, would you please send it to Anatevka, in care of the town ritual slaughterer? I will be staying with him in the fall before Pokraveh, and another time around Novegod when I have to be in shul to say kaddish, which means at those times I am a city Jew. Otherwise, you can send me letters right to Boiberik in my name, Tevye.

THE GREAT WINDFALL

A wondrous tale of how Tevye the dairyman, a poor Jew burdened with many children, suddenly became rich through a most unusual circumstance, as told by Tevye himself and set down word for word.

WRITTEN IN 1895.

If you are meant to receive a great windfall, do you hear, Pani Sholem Aleichem, it will fall right into your lap. As they say, it never rains but it pours. A stroke of good luck doesn’t take brains or ability. But should it be the other way around — God forbid, you can talk until you are blue in the face, and it will do as much good as last winter’s snow. The Talmud says: Without wisdom and a good idea—you might as well ride a dead horse. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. A man toils, a man suffers; he might as well save time and die right on the spot! And then all of a sudden, who knows why, who knows how — money pours in from all sides. As it is written: Enlargement and deliverance shall arise for the Jews. I don’t have to tell you where that comes from, but this is the interpretation: a Jew, so long as he has a breath of life in him, cannot give up hope. I can tell you from my own experience how the Almighty set me up in my own livelihood. After all, how else would I come to be selling cheese and butter when, as far back as my grandmother’s grandmother, no one in my family ever sold dairy? It’s really worth your while to hear the whole story from beginning to end. Let’s sit down here on the grass a bit. Let the horse nibble a little in the meantime, for as they say, “It’s also one of God’s creatures.”

It was around Shevuos, or maybe, I don’t want you to think I’m lying, even a week or two before Shevuos and. . wait a minute, perhaps a few weeks after Shevuos. . Hold on a bit, it was, let me think a minute. . It was exactly nine or ten years ago and maybe a little bit more. At that time I wasn’t at all the man you see today. Of course, I was the same Tevye but not really the same. How do they say: the same yente but sporting a different hat. In what way was I different? May it not happen to you, but I was a beggar in rags. Come to think of it, I’m still far from being rich. The difference between me and Brodsky the millionaire, may you and I both earn between summer and Succos. But compared to that time, today I am a wealthy man. I own a horse and wagon, kayn eyn horeh, two milk cows, and another one about to calve. Forgive me for boasting, but we have cheese and butter and fresh sour cream every day, and we make it all ourselves. Everyone works, no one sits idle. My wife, long life to her, milks the cows, the children carry the milk pails and churn the butter, and I myself, as you can see, go out early every morning to the market, then drive from dacha to dacha in Boiberik. I drop in on this one, on that one, the biggest businessmen from Yehupetz, chat a little with each one like I’m also somebody and not, as they say, a lame tailor. And when Shabbes, the Sabbath, comes — then I am a king! I glance into a Yiddish book, read a portion of the Torah and a few commentaries, the Psalms, a chapter of Mishnah — a little of this, a little of that, and a bit of something else. You’re looking at me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, and probably thinking to yourself, Aha! This Tevye is really some Jew!

So let’s see now, what did I start to tell you? Oh yes! With a little help from God, there I was penniless, poor as a beggar, with a wife and kids, starving to death three times a day, not counting suppers, may it not happen to any Jew. I slaved like a jackass lugging full wagonloads of logs from the woods to the railroad station. I am embarrassed to tell you all I got was half a ruble a day, and not every day at that. Just try to feed, kayn eyn horeh, a houseful of hungry mouths, may they stay healthy, and, please forgive the comparison, a freeloading boarder of a horse like a starving yeshiva boy, but one who doesn’t know from Rashi and insists on having his belly filled every day, no excuses accepted.

So how did God arrange it? He is, how do you say, a great and all-powerful God who nourishes and supports all living creatures. He manages this little world wisely and well. He sees how I’m struggling for a crust of bread and says to me, “Do you think,

Tevye, the end of days has come and the sky has fallen on you? Feh, you’re a big fool! Soon you’ll see how, if I so decree, your luck can change in a split second, and where there was darkness there will be light. It will be decided, exactly as it says in the Yom Kippur prayer U’netaneh tokef, God decides who will ride and who will go on foot. The main thing is — hope.” A Jew must hope, must keep on hoping. So what if he goes under in the meantime? What better reason is there for being a Jew? As it is said: Thou hast chosen us—there’s good reason for the whole world to envy us. Why am I telling you all this? So you’ll see how God dealt with me, performed great wonders and miracles. It won’t hurt you to hear about it.

As it is said, And there came the day. It was a summer evening, and I was riding back home through the woods having just finished delivering logs. I was downcast, my heart heavy with worry. The little horse, poor thing, was on its last legs, barely stumbling along, no matter how hard I beat it or flayed its hide.

“Crawl on your belly,” I shouted, “shlimazel! Suffer like I suffer! If you’re going to be Tevye’s horse, you also have to know what it’s like to starve on a long hot summer day.” In the silence all around us, every crack of the whip echoed through the woods. The sun was setting, the day fading. The shadows of the trees grew longer like our Jewish exile. It turned darker and gloomier. Many strange thoughts and old memories ran through my head, and all kinds of images of people long dead came to me. Then I thought of my own home, God pity me! Inside the little hut it was dark, dismal; the poor children, may they stay healthy, were naked and barefoot, awaiting their father, that shlimazel, hoping he’d bring home a fresh loaf of bread or at least a baked roll. And she, my old lady, was grumbling, just like a woman, “I had to bear him children, and seven at that! I might as well throw them into the river, may God not punish me for these words!”

Do you like to hear such words? After all, a man is no more than a man. As they say, “We are all either of flesh or of fish.” You can’t fill the stomach with words. If you eat a piece of herring, you have a yen for tea. With the tea you need some sugar, and sugar, you’ll say, only Brodsky has. “A crust of bread the stomach can manage to do without,” says my wife, long life to her, “but without a glass of tea in the morning, I’m as good as dead. The baby,” she says, “drains me dry all night!”

Still and all, a Jew is a Jew, and when it’s time for the evening prayers, pray you must. Imagine what kind of praying it was. I was standing alongside the wagon reciting the shmone esre, the Eighteen Benedictions, and right smack in the middle of them my horse goes crazy and takes off. There I am running after the wagon, hanging on to the reins for dear life and chanting, “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” What a way to recite the Eighteen Benedictions! And wouldn’t you know, just then of all times, I really had the desire to pray!

So there I was, tearing after the wagon and chanting at the top of my lungs as if I were, pardon the comparison, a cantor chanting in shul, “Thou sustaineth the living with loving kindness and keepest thy faith with them that lie in the dust and are brought low.” We have our own way of saying it: “Even those who lie in the earth and bake bagels.” Oy, I think to myself, do we lie in the dust! Oy, are we brought low! I’m not talking about those rich people from Yehupetz, you understand, who while away the whole summer in Boiberik in their dachas, eating and drinking and swimming and enjoying the good life. Oy, God in heaven, why do I deserve this? Am I not a Jew the same as any other Jew? For heaven’s sake, dear God, see our affliction. Look down, I said, and see how we are struggling. Stand by the unfortunate, the poor. Who else will look after them if not You? Heal us, and we shall be healed. Send us the cure — the affliction we already have. Bless us with a good year. May crops flourish — the corn, the wheat, and the barley. As I think of it, what good will all that flourishing do a shlimazel like me? Does my horse care whether oats are expensive or cheap?

But feh, God doesn’t ask for advice, and a Jew in particular has to accept everything on faith and say, “That too is for the best. God probably wants it that way. And for the slanderers,” I sang on, “and for the slanderers and the high and mighty who say there is no God, just wait till they arrive over there. They will pay for their scoffing with interest because He hath a long memory, He keeps His word. You don’t trifle with Him, with Him you walk humbly, you pray to Him, cry out to Him, “‘Oh merciful Father! Compassionate Father! Hear our cries. Have pity on us. Have pity on my wife and children. They are, alas, hungry! Accept Your beloved people Israel, as in olden days of the Holy Temple, as Thou didst with the Priests and the Levites.’ ”

Suddenly — halt! The horse stopped in its tracks. I polished off the Eighteen Benedictions, lifted my eyes, and saw coming straight toward me out of the woods two strange-looking figures, their faces covered, and dressed oddly. . Robbers! flew through my mind, but I quickly caught myself: Feh, Tevye, you’re an idiot! Really, how many years had I been driving through these woods by day and by night? Why would I suddenly start worrying about thieves? “Giddyap!” I said to the horse, giving him a few extra smart blows on his rump, making as if I didn’t see them.

“Wait! Listen, I see you’re a Jew,” one of the two exclaimed in a woman’s voice, and waved to me with a corner of her shawl. “Stop for a minute! Don’t run off. We won’t harm you, God forbid!”

Aha! An evil spirit! I figured, but then reconsidered. Stupid, ignorant ass! Why did ghosts and demons suddenly fall onto my head out of nowhere? And I pulled up the horse and took a careful look at the two figures. They were ordinary women, the older one wearing a silk kerchief on her head, the younger one wearing a wig. Both were flushed red as beets and perspiring heavily.

“Good evening!” I tried to sound cheerful. “What can I do for you? If you want to buy something, you’re out of luck, unless you’re looking for bellyaches fit only for my enemies, heartaches enough for a full week, headaches, wracking pains, killing anguish, rehashed troubles—”

“Hush, hush!” they replied. “Just listen to how he goes on! Say one word to some Jews, and you’re not sure of your life! We don’t want to buy anything. We just wanted to ask if you know the way to Boiberik.”

“To Boiberik?” I almost burst out laughing. “That,” I said, “is like asking me if I know my name is Tevye.”

“Is that your name, Tevye?” one said. “A good evening to you, Reb Tevye! We don’t see what there is to laugh about. We’re strangers from Yehupetz staying at a dacha in Boiberik. We started out early this morning for a little stroll, and we’ve been going slowly around in circles in these woods all day, getting more and more lost. We can’t seem to get back on the right path. And then we heard this singing in the woods. At first we thought, What if it’s, God forbid, a highwayman? But then when we came closer and saw you were a Jew, thank God, we felt relieved. Now do you understand?”

“Ha ha ha, a fine highwayman!” I laughed. “Have you heard the story about the Jewish highwayman who fell upon a wayfarer and demanded a pinch of snuff? If you’d like, I can tell you the whole story—”

“The story,” they said, “you can leave for another time. Better just show us the road to Boiberik.”

“To Boiberik?” I said. “Look, you’re already on the road to Boiberik! Even if you don’t want it, this road will take you straight to Boiberik.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Why should I shout it?”

“If that’s the case,” they said, “you must know how far we are from Boiberik.”

“To Boiberik,” I said, “it isn’t too far, a few versts, that is, five or six. Maybe seven versts, or maybe even all of eight.”

“Eight versts?!” both women cried out at the same time, wringing their hands and verging on tears. “Do you know what you’re saying? ‘Eight versts,’ he says, as if it were nothing!”

“Nu, what can I do about it?” said I. “If it were up to me, I’d make it a little shorter. A person has to find things out for himself. It can happen on the road that you drag yourself up a hill through the mud and it’s almost Shabbes. The rain is beating in your face, your hands are numb, your heart is pounding, and then — crash! An axle breaks—”

“You’re rattling on like a madman,” they said to me. “You can’t be in your right mind! All these nonsensical old wives’ tales from A Thousand and One Nights! We hardly have the strength to stand on our feet. Except for a glass of coffee and a butter roll, we haven’t had a morsel of food in our mouths all day, and here you come along with crazy tales!”

“If that’s the way it is,” said I, “that’s a different story. How do they say—you don’t go dancing before you eat. The taste of hunger I understand very well, you don’t need to tell me. I haven’t tasted or even laid my eyes on coffee or a butter roll for a year.” And as I was speaking, I envisioned a glass of hot coffee with cream and a fresh butter roll along with other delicious foods. Shlimazel, I was scolding myself, is that how I was raised, on coffee and butter rolls? A piece of bread and herring isn’t good enough for me? And he, the Tempter, may he be banished from our thoughts, insisted on coffee, insisted on a butter roll! I smelled the aroma of coffee, tasted the flavor of butter rolls — fresh, delicious, soul-satisfying.

“Do you know what, Reb Tevye?” both women said to me. “Since we’re both standing here, would it be such a bad idea if we got up on your wagon and you kindly took us home to Boiberik? How does that idea strike you?”

“That’s a fine how-do-you-do! I’m coming from Boiberik, and you want to go to Boiberik! How can I go both ways at once?”

“What’s the problem?” they said. “A clever Jew could figure it out. He’d turn the wagon around and go the other way. Don’t worry, Reb Tevye,” they added. “Rest assured that, if God is willing and sees us home safely, we’ll make it worth your while. May we suffer as much as you’ll suffer for it!”

What were they trying to tell me? I wondered. Something out of the ordinary was going on here! There leaped into my mind ghosts, witches, demons, and who knows what else. Oh, what a blockhead I am, I thought, standing there like a bump on a log. I should show the horse the whip and make tracks for home!

But against my will, as bad luck would have it, out of my mouth came: “Climb into the wagon!”

My new friends jumped right on — they didn’t wait to be asked twice. I turned the wagon around, cracked the whip — one two three, giddyap!

Nothing doing! We weren’t going anywhere. The horse wouldn’t budge from the spot, even if you cut him in half. Nu, now I understood what women could do. What had made me stop in the middle of nowhere to carry on a conversation with women? Just picture it — the woods on all sides, the stillness and gloom, night falling, and then these two creatures approaching, women. The imagination could really play tricks on a person. I recalled the story of a coachman who was once riding through the woods all alone when he saw a sack of oats lying on the road. He didn’t waste any time — he quickly got off the wagon, hoisted the heavy sack onto his back with great effort, loaded it onto his wagon, and continued on his way. He drove for about a verst, then turned around to look at the sack. It was gone — no more oats. Instead a goat with a little beard was lying in the wagon. He tried to touch her with his hand, but she stuck out her long tongue at him, let out a weird, wild laugh, and vanished.

“Why aren’t we moving?” the women said to me.

“Why aren’t we moving? Don’t you see?” I said. “The horse won’t cooperate. He’s not in the mood.”

“Show him your whip,” they suggested. “You have a whip.”

“I thank you for your advice,” I said. “It’s a good thing you reminded me. But my boy here isn’t frightened of a whip. He’s as used to it as I am to poverty.” I threw in a little saying to make light of it, but inside I was shaking with frustration.

Why should I bore you? I let out my bitter heart on the poor horse till finally God helped me. The horse decided to move and we were able to continue through the woods.

Oh what a numbskull I was, I thought. I always was a pauper, and I’d always remain a pauper. God had arranged this encounter, something that happens maybe once in a hundred years — and I didn’t settle on a price beforehand. What was I going to get out of it? I was acting according to fairness, decency, righteousness, and law, according to edict, and according to anything I could think of under the sun. But even so, what would have been the harm in earning a little something while I was at it? I should pull up the horse, idiot that I was, and tell them what was what. I should say, “If I am paid so much and so much, all right, and if not, I beg you, if you don’t mind, please get out of the wagon!” But then I saw that I was being an ass. It’s not a good idea to sell the bear’s hide till you’ve caught the bear! I’d wait till we got there.

“Why aren’t you going a little faster?” The women were poking me from behind.

“What’s the rush? Haste makes waste.” I glanced at them out of the corner of my eye. They were ordinary women, one wearing a silk head scarf, the other a wig.

They looked at each other, whispering together. “Is it still far to go?” they asked me.

“As close,” said I, “as from here to there. Soon we’ll be going down a hill and then up a hill. After that, again down a hill and again up a hill, and then comes the really big hill, and from there on the road is straight ahead to Boiberik.”

“What a shlimazel!” one of them exclaimed.

“It’ll take us forever!” said the other.

“It’s the last straw!”

“Strikes me he’s a bit crazy!”

She could say that again, I thought. I had to be crazy to let myself be led around by the nose!

“Where, pray tell, my dear ladies, would you like me to drop you?” I called out to them.

“What do you mean?” they said in alarm. “You’re going to drop us?”

“It’s an expression,” I said, “that coachmen use. Someone who’s not a coachman would say, ‘Where would you like me to deliver you when we come to Boiberik safe and sound, if God will grant enough life?’ How is it said: ‘Better to ask twice than to err once.’”

“Ah, so that’s what you mean. If you would be so kind,” they said, “take us to the green dacha near the lake on the other side of the woods. Do you know where that is?”

“Why shouldn’t I know?” I said. “I know Boiberik like I know my own town. May I have as many thousands as I have delivered logs to people there. Why, just a year ago last summer I delivered to that same green dacha two loads of wood. This rich man from Yehupetz was staying there, a millionaire worth at least a thousand rubles and maybe even tens of thousands.”

“He’s still there,” both women told me, glancing at each other, whispering together and giggling.

“Wait,” I said. “Do you have some kind of connection to him? What I’m doing for you is no small thing. Would it be such a bad idea to put in a good word on my behalf, to do me a little favor, throw some business my way, a position maybe, or whatever? I knew a young man, Yisroyel was his name, who lived not far from our town, who was a good-for-nothing. He came to our town. To make a long story short, today he’s a regular big shot, makes maybe twenty rubles a week, if not forty, who knows? Some people have all the luck! Or take for example our ritual slaughterer’s son-in-law. What would have become of him if he hadn’t gone to Yehupetz? True, the first few years he starved, almost died of hunger, may it not happen to anyone. But now he even sends money home. He’s planning to bring his wife and children over, but they can’t live there without a permit. So, you might ask, how is he surviving? He’s really struggling. Never mind, where there’s life, there’s hope.

“Here we are at the river,” I announced, “and there’s the large dacha.” I drove boldly right up to the front porch.

As soon as the people inside saw us coming, there was great excitement; they shouted, made a real commotion! “Oy, Bubbe!

Mama! Auntie! Here they are! Mazel tov! My God, where were you?. . We’ve been out of our minds all day!. . We sent out scouts looking for you in every direction!. . We thought — who can tell? — maybe wolves, robbers, heaven protect us! What happened?”

“What happened makes a good story. We got lost in the woods and wandered quite far away, maybe ten versts. Out of nowhere a Jew turned up. And what a Jew! A real shlimazel of a Jew, with a horse and wagon. We barely talked him into taking us home.”

“What a terrible nightmare. . You ventured out alone, without escorts? What a story! Be grateful to God!”

To make a long story short, they brought lamps out onto the porch and set the table. They carried out hot samovars with glasses of tea, sugar and preserves, delicious omelets, fresh, wonderful-smelling butter cakes, and afterward all kinds of food, the most expensive treats, rich, fatty soups, roasts, geese, along with the finest wines and tarts. I stood off to the side and marveled at the way, kayn eyn horeh, the rich folks from Yehupetz eat and drink, God bless them. I’d pawn everything I own, I was thinking, if only I could be rich. The crumbs that fell off their table would have fed my children for a week, at least till Saturday. God Almighty, compassionate, faithful one, is a great God and a good God, a God of mercy and justice. Why did He grant this one everything and the other nothing? This one got butter rolls, the other the ten plagues. But then I thought I was a great fool. I was giving Him advice on how to run the world? Most likely, if He wanted it that way, that was how it should be. The proof was that if it were meant to be otherwise, it would be otherwise. Ay! Well, why shouldn’t it be otherwise? The answer is this: Slaves we were once in Pharaoh’s day, and that’s why we are the Chosen People. A Jew must exist on hope and faith. He has to believe, above all, that there is a God, and he has to have faith in Him who lives forever and hope that someday, with His help, perhaps things will be better.

“Sha, where did that Jew go?” I heard someone say, “Did that shlimazel take off?”

“God forbid!” I called out from the shadows. “Do you think I’d leave just like that, without so much as a goodbye? Sholem aleichem! ” I said. “A good evening to you all. Blessed be those who dwell in this house. May you all enjoy your food and prosper!”

“Come on over here,” they said to me. “Why are you standing there in the dark? Let’s at least have a good look at you, see your face. How about a little brandy?”

“A little brandy? Ach,” I said, “who would turn down a little brandy? How does it say in the Talmud: Who giveth life giveth also the fruit of the vine. Rashi interprets it as: God may be God, but brandy is brandy. L’chayim!” I said, and knocked back a glassful. “May God grant that you always be rich and enjoy life. Jews,” I said, “should always remain Jews. God should grant them health and the strength so they can withstand all their troubles—”

“What’s your name?” the rich man, a fine-looking Jew wearing a yarmulke, interrupted me. “Where are you from? Where do you live? What is your livelihood? Are you married? Do you have any children, and how many?”

“Children? I can’t complain. If each child,” I said, “were worth, as my wife Golde tells me, a million, I’d be richer than the richest man in Yehupetz. The problem is that poor isn’t rich and crooked isn’t straight, as it is said in the havdalah service: He separateth the sacred from the profane—whoever has the cash has it good. Gold the Brodskys have. Daughters I have. And if you have daughters, it’s no laughing matter. But never mind, God is our father and He prevails. He sits on high, and we struggle down below. You plod, you haul logs, what choice do you have? As the Gemorah says: What place doth man have? The tragedy is that you have to eat. As my grandmother, of blessed memory, used to say: ‘If the mouth did not exist, the mind would be free.’ Pardon me, but there’s nothing straight about a crooked ladder and nothing crooked about a straightforward word, especially when drinking brandy on an empty stomach.”

“Give the man something to eat!” the wealthy man called out, and there suddenly appeared before me every kind of food — fish and meat and roasts, quarters of chicken and gizzards and chicken livers in vast amounts.

“Won’t you eat something?” they said to me. “Go wash up.”

“A sick person you ask, a healthy one you give. But never mind,” I said. “I thank you. A little brandy with pleasure, but to sit down here and enjoy a whole feast while at home my wife and children, may they be well. . you understand. .”

They apparently got my meaning because each of them began packing food into my wagon. This one brought a baked roll, that one a fish, this one a roast, that one a quarter of a chicken, this one tea and sugar, that one a crock of chicken shmaltz and a jar of preserves.

“This you will take home as gifts for your wife and children,” they said. “And now tell us what you want to be paid for the trouble you went through on our behalf.”

“You’re asking me,” I said, “to put a price on it? As much as you want to give, that’s what you should pay. How do they say, ‘One coin more or less won’t make me much poorer than I already am.’”

“No,” they said, “we want to hear what you want, Reb Tevye! Don’t be afraid. No one will chop your head off, heaven forbid.”

What was I to do? This was bad. If I said one ruble, I might get two, but that would be a shame. Then again, if I said two, they might look at me as if I were crazy — they’d wonder where I got off asking for two.

“Three rubles!” popped out of my mouth, and such great laughter broke out among them that I wanted to sink into the ground.

“Please don’t be offended,” I said. “That just slipped out. Even a horse with four legs stumbles, so what can you expect of a man with one tongue?” The laughter grew louder.

“Enough laughing!” the rich man called out. He drew from his bosom pocket a large purse and from it removed — How much do you think? Go on, guess! — a ten-ruble note, may you and I live so long! And he said, “This is from me. And now the rest of you, give from your pockets as much as you think is right.”

What more can I say? Flying onto the table came fives and threes and ones. My arms and legs were shaking, and I thought I was going to faint right then and there.

“Nu, why are you still standing there?” the rich man said to me. “Pick up your few rubles from the table and go home in good health to your wife and children.”

“May God reward you,” I said, “many times over. May you have ten times, a hundred times over what you possess now. May you have all that is good and enjoy great happiness!” I gathered up the money with both hands — Count it? Who had time to count? — and stuffed it into all my pockets. “Goodnight,” I said. “May you always be happy and healthy and enjoy much pleasure, you and your children and your children’s children and your whole family.” And I started toward the wagon.

Then the rich man’s wife called out to me, she of the silk kerchief: “Wait a moment, Reb Tevye! I want to give you a gift of my own. God willing, come back tomorrow. I have a milk cow. She was once a wonderful animal, used to give twenty-four glasses of milk a day, but lately, maybe we bragged too much, she stopped giving milk. I mean,” she said, “she lets herself be milked, but there’s no milk.”

“Long life to you,” I said. “May you never have any troubles. At my house your cow will let herself be milked and will give milk. My wife, God bless her, is so capable that out of thin air she makes noodles, with empty hands she concocts delicacies. With miracles she prepares the Shabbes, and with nothing but a box on the ear for supper she puts the children to bed. Forgive me,” I said, “if without thinking I ran on too long. Goodnight and God be with you and be well.” And I was on my way.

I came out into the courtyard, went over to my wagon, and put my hand out to stroke my horse. Oy vey! A calamity, a disaster, a catastrophe! No horse! Nu, Tevye, I thought, now you’re really in trouble! I’d read somewhere an awful tale about a gang that spirited away a pious Jew, a Chasid, one evening. They took him to a castle outside the city, gave him food and drink, and then suddenly vanished, leaving him alone with a beautiful woman. The woman soon turned into a wild beast, the wild beast became a cat, and the cat a dragon. I’d better be careful, I thought, and make sure they weren’t putting something over on me!

“Why are you grumbling and fumbling around out there?” they asked.

“An awful thing has happened!” I answered. “I’ve suffered a terrible loss — my horse. .”

“Your horse,” they said, “is in the stable. Over there.”

I went into the stable and looked around. Yes, as I am a Jew! My handsome fellow was standing there very cozily among the aristocratic horses, deeply absorbed in munching, burying his muzzle in the oats with great relish.

“Listen, smart aleck,” I said to him, “it’s time to go home. Don’t eat so much too quickly — it’ll make you sick.”

I finally convinced him to kindly allow me to hitch him up to the wagon. We headed home, both of us, in a lively, happy frame of mind, I singing “God Our King” tipsily. My little horse was not the same as before — he seemed to have grown a new coat of fur. He didn’t even wait for the whip but ran like the wind. We arrived late that night, and with great excitement and joy I woke up my wife.

“Good evening!” I said. “Happy holiday, Golde!”

“A dismal happy holiday to you, a miserable one,” she said. “What makes you so jolly, my worthy breadwinner? Are you coming from a wedding or from a bris, my gold spinner?”

“It’s a wedding,” I said, “and a bris! Just wait, my wife, and you’ll soon see the treasure I’ve brought home. But first wake up the children, let the poor things also enjoy the Yehupetz delicacies.”

“Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind or just delirious? You’re talking like a madman, heaven help us!” She treated me to all the curses in the Bible, as a woman can do.

“A woman,” I said, “remains a woman. No wonder King Solomon complained that even among his thousand wives he couldn’t find a proper one. It’s a good thing, believe me, that it’s out of fashion nowadays to have a lot of wives.”

I went out to my wagon, brought in all the wonderful things they had packed for me, and laid them all out on the table. When my little gang set eyes on the breads and sniffed the meats, they fell upon the table like starving wolves, poor things. It turned into a grab-fest, hands trembling, teeth working. As Rashi stated: “Eat!” They chomped away like locusts. Tears came to my eyes.

“Now tell me,” my wife said to me. “Where did you get this fancy banquet, this feast, and how come you’re looking so smug?”

“Be patient, my Golde,” I said. “You’ll soon know everything. Why don’t you blow on the coals under the samovar, and then we can all sit around the table and drink our tea properly? A person,” I said, “only lives once, not twice — especially now that we’ll have our own milk cow that gives twenty-four glasses of milk a day. Tomorrow, God willing, I’ll bring her home. Come on, Golde.” I pulled the banknotes from my pockets. “Come, let’s see if you can guess how much money we have here.”

My wife was dumbstruck, mouth agape.

“God be with you, Golde dear,” I said. “Are you afraid that maybe I stole it or robbed someone? Feh, shame on you! You’re Tevye’s wife so many years, and you can still think that way about me? Silly,” I said, “this is kosher money, honestly earned with my own cleverness and with my own hard work. I rescued two souls from great peril,” I told her. “If not for me, God knows what would have happened to them!”

And I told her everything from A to Z, how God had dealt with me. And then we both counted the money. We counted it over and over again. There was exactly twice eighteen plus one, which comes to no less than thirty-seven rubles! My wife broke down in tears.

“Why are you crying, foolish woman?” I asked.

“How can I help crying when tears come? If your heart is full,” she said, “the eyes overflow. May God help me, my heart told me you’d come back with good news. One time my grandmother Tzeitl came to me in a dream. I was lying in bed asleep, and suddenly I dreamed about a milk pail, a full one. Grandma Tzeitl, may she rest in peace, was carrying the full milk pail under her apron so it wouldn’t tempt the evil eye, and the children were crying, ‘Mama, look!’—”

“Don’t put the cart before the horse, my dear,” I interrupted. “May Grandma Tzeitl have a bright paradise, but I still don’t know if something good will come of this dream. Still, if God could miraculously bring us our own cow, He could also make her give milk. Give me advice, Golde darling — what should we do with the money?”

“Well,” she said, “what do you think we should do with the money, kayn eyn horeh?”

“Well, again and yet again,” I said, “what do you think we should do with this kind of capital?” And we racked our brains trying to come up with an idea. We considered every kind of business: we would buy a pair of horses and sell them for a profit; we would open a grocery store in Boiberik, sell out the stock, and then open a dry-goods store. We would invest in timber, find a buyer, make some money, and get rid of it. We would buy an Anatevka tax-collecting contract and with the profit go into the moneylending business.

“Are you out of your mind?” my wife finally exclaimed. “Do you want to squander these few groschens and be left with nothing but your whip?”

“What, then?” I said. “Is it better to sell grain and go bankrupt?

Everyone is going broke selling wheat. Just see what’s happening in Odessa!”

“What do I care about Odessa?” she said. “My family never was there, and my children will never be there so long as I can stand on my own two feet.”

“What do you want?” I said.

“What do I want?” she said. “I want you to stop talking nonsense.”

“So now you’re the smart one. As they say: ‘If the money comes, the schemes follow, and if you are rich, you’re certainly clever.’ It’s always like that!”

In short, we had a spat but soon made up. We decided on a plan: in addition to the milk cow we’d have tomorrow, we would buy another cow, one that would also give milk.

You will probably ask, Why a cow and not a horse? To which I will answer, Why a horse and not a cow? Every summer all the rich folks from Yehupetz go to their dachas in Boiberik. And these Yehupetz folks are all very refined people who are used to having everything served up to them — wood for the fire, meat and eggs, chickens and onions, peppers and radishes. Why shouldn’t someone make it his business to bring to their doorstep every morning milk, cheese, butter, and sour cream? And as the Yehupetzers like to eat well and don’t give a fig about money, you can charge high prices. But it’s important that the merchandise be of the highest quality, and my merchandise you can’t get even in Yehupetz. May we both have as many blessings as the number of times that people, even high-up Christians, have begged me to sell them my merchandise.

“We hear, Tevel,” they say, “that you’re an honest man even though you’re a filthy Jew.” Would you ever hear a compliment like that from a Jew? May my enemies suffer until that ever happens! You never hear a kind word from our little Jews. They only know about looking into your private business. They see a new cow at Tevye’s, a new cart, and they’re breaking their heads: “Where did it come from? Is this Tevye possibly dealing with counterfeit banknotes? Or might he be cooking up some moonshine in a still?” Ha ha ha! Break your heads, boys, I am thinking!

I don’t know if you believe my story — you’re the first one I’ve told it to, how and what and when, but now I think I’ve gone on too long. Don’t be offended, but one must tend to one’s business. Or as they say, “Each to his own”—you to your books, I to my pots and my jugs. I would like to ask one thing of you, Pani. Don’t write about me in any of your books, and if you do, don’t mention my name. Be well and have a good life.

THE ROOF FALLS IN

WRITTEN IN 1899.

Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart—isn’t that what it says in our holy Torah? I don’t need to interpret that verse for you, Reb Sholem Aleichem. But in Ashkenaz, or plain Yiddish, it means: “The best horse needs a whip, the smartest person — advice.” About what am I telling you this? About myself, in fact, because if I had had the sense not to go to a good friend and tell him thus and so, and this and that, things would surely not have turned out as badly as they did. But what could I do? If God wants to punish a person, he takes away his good sense. How many times have I thought, Think about it, Tevye, you ass. You’re no fool — why do you let yourself be led around by the nose in such a stupid way? I was already making a little living, kayn eyn horeh, with my dairy business, which had a good reputation everywhere, in Boiberik and in Yehupetz and where not. What was so wrong with that? How sweet and good it would have been now if those coins were still lying quietly in the money chest, safely hidden away, because whose business is it, I ask you, whether Tevye has any money or not?

I really mean it. Did the world show any interest in me when I was, may it never happen to a Jew, buried deep in poverty, perishing three times a day of hunger together with my wife and children? Only when God showed his favor to Tevye, suddenly made me rich so I could finally make something of myself, put away a few rubles, only then did the world take notice and Tevye become Reb Tevye — some joke! Many good friends suddenly began to show up, as the verse says: All are beloved, all are elect—when God grants a spoonful, people offer a shovelful. Every person came with his own advice. This one said a dry-goods store, that one a grocery; another one said a house, a good lasting investment. This one said wheat, that one timber, another auctioneering. “Friends!” I cried. “Back off! You are making a great mistake. Do you think I’m Brodsky? May we all have the amount less than three hundred, even two hundred and even one hundred and fifty, that I really have. It’s easy to imagine that another’s wealth glitters like gold, but when you get closer, it turns out to be a brass button.”

In short, our little Jews — don’t even mention them — gave me the evil eye! God sent me a relative, Menachem-Mendl was his name — a fly-by-night, a who knows what, a wheeler-dealer, a manipulator, may he never find a resting place! He roped me in and spun my head around with dreams of things that never were and never could be. You will ask how I met Menachem-Mendl. I will give you an answer: Slaves we were—it was fated to be. Listen to this story.

One day at the beginning of winter I arrived in Yehupetz with my little bit of dairy — some twenty or so pounds of the best fresh butter you can buy, and two fine wheels of cheese worth their weight in gold and silver, may we both have as much! Of course, I sold out my merchandise completely, nothing at all was left even if my life depended on it. I was so busy, I had no time to chat with my summer customers, the Boiberik dacha owners, who wait for me as if I were the Messiah because the Yehupetz merchants’ produce can’t hold a candle to Tevye’s. I needn’t tell you, as the prophet said: Let other men praise thee—good products praise themselves.

Having sold everything and thrown some hay to my horse, I decided to take a stroll around town. As it is said, Man is but dust—a man is only human. I wanted to see a bit of the world, breathe the air, and look at the fine goods that Yehupetz displays in its shopwindows, which seem to say, “Look with your eyes as much as you like, but to touch — don’t dare!” Standing just like that at a large shopwindow with a pocketful of coins and ruble notes, I thought, God in heaven! If I had a tenth of what I see here, I would never complain to God again. I’d make a match for my eldest daughter and give her a good dowry, besides wedding presents, a wardrobe, and wedding expenses. I’d sell the horse and wagon and the little cows and move right into town, buy a seat by the eastern wall of the shul. I’d get pearls for my wife, long may she live, and distribute charity like the biggest property owner. I’d see to it that the house of study had a metal roof, not a roof about to collapse any minute. I’d open a religious school in town and a hospital and a shelter like in other respectable cities so poor people wouldn’t have to lie around on the bare floor of the house of study. I’d get rid of Yenkl Sheygetz, the head of the burial society — enough drinking brandy and eating gizzards and chicken livers at the community’s expense.

“Sholem aleichem, Reb Tevye!” I heard someone call from behind me. “How are you?”

I turned and could have sworn I knew him. “Aleichem sholem,” I said. “Where do I know you from?”

“From where? From Kasrilevka,” the man said to me. “I’m a friend of yours. I mean, I’m your second cousin once removed. Your wife Golde is my second cousin.”

“Say now,” I said, “can you be Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s son-in-law?”

“You got that right,” he said to me. “I am a son-in-law of Leah-Dvossi’s, and my wife’s name is Sheyne-Sheyndl Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s son-in-law. Now do you remember who I am?”

“Be quiet a minute,” I said. “I believe your mother-in-law’s grandmother Sora-Yente and my wife’s aunt Frume-Zlate were cousins, and if I’m not mistaken, you are the middle son-in-law of Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s. But do you know, I’ve forgotten your name, it’s just flown out of my head. What is your name? What do they actually call you?”

“They call me Menachem-Mendl Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s — that’s what they call me at home in Kasrilevka.”

“If that’s so, my dear Menachem-Mendl,” I said to him, “I really have to give you a proper sholem aleichem! Tell me, my dear Menachem-Mendl, what are you doing here? How are your mother-in-law and father-in-law, long life to them? How are things going for you? How is your health, and how is business?”

“Well,” he said, “as for my health, thank God, one lives, but business is not so rosy these days.”

“God will help.” I stole a glance at his shabby clothes, patched in many places, the shoes almost worn through. “You can be sure God will help you and things will get better. As it says in the Bible: All is vanity. Money,” I said, “is round, one day it rolls this way, another day it rolls that way, so long as you are alive. The most important thing is faith. A Jew must have hope. Ay, what if things really go bad? For that reason we are Jews. As they say, if you’re a soldier, smell gunpowder. The whole world is but a dream. But better tell me, my dear Menachem-Mendl, what brings you to, of all places, Yehupetz?”

“What do you mean? I’ve been here for a year and a half.”

“Is that so? Are you a native? A Yehupetzer?”

“Sshhh,” he said, looking around. “Don’t shout so loudly, Reb Tevye. I am living here, but it must remain between us.”

I stared at him as if he were crazy. “You’re here illegally,” I said, “and you’re out in the open in the Yehupetz market square?”

“Don’t ask, Reb Tevye,” he said. “That’s the way it is. You obviously aren’t acquainted with Yehupetz regulations. Come, I’ll tell you, and you’ll understand what it means to be a resident and not a resident.” And he gave me a long, drawn-out account of how you go crazy trying to get a permit to live there.

“Listen to me, Menachem-Mendl,” I said, “come to my place for a day, and you can at least rest your bones. You’ll be my guest,” I said, “and a welcome one too. My wife will be happy to have you.”

In short, he agreed. We drove home together, and everyone was delighted to see him — a guest! Here was our own second cousin, no small matter. As they say, “One’s own are not strangers.” Golde’s grilling began: “How are things in Kasrilevka? How is Uncle Boruch-Hersh? How are Aunt Leah-Dvossi and Uncle Yossil-Menashe and Aunt Dobrish? And how are their children? Who died? Who got married? Who got divorced? Who has given birth and who is expecting?”

“Why do you need to know about other people’s weddings and other people’s brises?” I said. “Better see that there is something to eat. Let all who are hungry come and partake—you can’t dance on an empty stomach. If you have a borscht, good, and if not, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’ll have knishes or kreplach or knaidlach or maybe even blintzes. You can decide, but be quick about it.”

We all washed our hands and ate well, as Rashi said: And thou shalt eat, as God commanded. “Eat, Menachem-Mendl,” I said to him. “As King David said: ‘It’s a foolish world and a false one.’ Health, as my grandmother Nechama, of blessed memory, used to say — she was a wise woman, sharp as a tack—‘seek health and pleasure in the dish before you.’ ” My poor guest’s hands were trembling, and he couldn’t praise my wife’s cooking enough, swearing to God he could not remember the time he had eaten such a delicious dairy meal, such tasty knishes, and such savory knaidlach. “Nonsense,” I said. “You should taste her taiglach, her poppyseed cookies, and then you’d know what paradise really is!”

After we finished eating and saying the blessings, we chatted, I about my business, he about his, telling stories about Odessa and Yehupetz, how one day he’s rich and the next a pauper. He was using strange, complicated words that I had never in my life heard of, like stocks and shares, selling high and buying low, options, the devil only knows, and accounts and reckonings, ten thousand, twenty thousand — money like water!

“To tell the truth, Menachem-Mendl,” I said to him, “what you are telling me about your financial dealings is impressive. You must know a lot about such things. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. I’m surprised your wife lets you run around like this and doesn’t come after you riding on a broomstick.”

“Ah,” he said to me with a sigh, “don’t remind me of it, Reb Tevye. I have enough problems with her. You should see what she writes me. You yourself would say I’m a saint to take it. But that’s a small matter. That’s what a wife is for, to put you down. I have a much worse problem. I have, you understand me, a mother-in-law to deal with! I don’t need to tell you. You know her!”

“You are telling me it’s like in the Bible: streaked, speckled, and spotted, which means a blister on a boil on an abscess.”

“Yes, Reb Tevye,” he said, “you said it exactly. A boil is a boil, but the abscess, oy, the abscess is worse than the boil!”

We went on chatting idly this way till late into the night. His stories of wild business deals involving thousands of rubles flying up and down in value, and the fortune that Brodsky was earning, made my head spin. My dreams that night were a tangle of Yehupetz shopwindows, half shares, Brodsky, Menachem-Mendl, and his mother-in-law. Not until morning did he finally get to the point: “Here’s how it’s been going for us in Yehupetz for some time now. Money is scarce, and goods are just sitting there not sold,” he said to me. “You now have the chance, Reb Tevye, to make quite a few groschens and also save my life, literally bring me back from the dead.”

“You’re talking like a child,” I said. “The difference between what I have and what Brodsky has, we should both earn between now and Passover.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know that. But you really don’t need a great deal of money. If you were to give me a hundred rubles right now, in three or four days I would make it into two hundred, three hundred, six or seven hundred, and why not a thousand?”

“That’s certainly possible,” I said, “but what would make it possible? You must have something to invest. But if there aren’t a hundred rubles, then as Rashi says: If thou investeth in an illness, thy profit shall be the ague.”

“Really now,” he said, “are you telling me you can’t find a mere hundred, Reb Tevye, with your business, and your reputation, kayn eyn horeh?”

“What good comes from a reputation?” I said. “A reputation is certainly a good thing, but what of it? I have my reputation, and Brodsky still has the money. If you want to know, I can barely pull together a hundred, and there are eighteen holes to fill with it. First of all, I have to marry off a daughter—”

“Listen to me,” he said, “that’s the point I’m making! When, Reb Tevye, will you have another chance to put in a hundred and take out, God willing, so much that you will have enough to marry off your daughter and then some?” And in the next three hours he gave me a song and dance about how he had made from one ruble three and from three ten. “First of all,” he said, “you take a hundred, and you tell them to buy ten shares” or whatever he called them. “You wait a few days till they go up. You send a telegram and tell them to sell, and for that money you buy twice as many. Then you start all over again and again send off a telegram, until finally from the hundred you have two; from the two, four; and from the four, eight; from the eight, sixteen — wonder of wonders! There are,” he said, “in Yehupetz those who were not too long ago going around without shoes, were nobodies, servants, porters. Today they have their own houses made of stone surrounded by high walls. Their wives complain about their indigestion and go abroad for a cure, while they ride around Yehupetz on rubber wheels and pretend not to know anyone!”

To make a long story short — why should I carry on? — I developed a yearning, and it was no laughing matter. Who could tell? I asked myself. Maybe he was a heaven-sent messenger. I was hearing that ordinary people get lucky in Yehupetz, so why should I have been worse than they? He didn’t strike me as a liar, making up tall tales out of his head. And what if things did turn around as he had said, and Tevye could become a bit of a mensch in his old age? How long could a person struggle and slave day after day, again and again the horse and wagon, again cheese and butter? It’s time, Tevye, I said to myself, for you to rest, to become a respectable man among respectable men, to step into the synagogue once in a while and look into a Jewish book. Why should I not? Was I afraid that it wouldn’t work out, that the bread would fall butter side down? I could argue the other way around.

I asked my old lady, “What do you say? How do you like his plan, Golde?”

“What can I say about it? I know Menachem-Mendl isn’t someone who would cheat you,” she said. “He isn’t, God forbid, from a family of tailors or shoemakers! He has a fine father, and his grandfather was very brilliant, studied Torah day and night, even when he went blind. And Grandma Tzeitl, may she rest in peace, was also not a common sort.”

“What has all this got to do with the business we’re talking about? What do your Grandma Tzeitl, who baked lekach, and your grandfather have to do with it?” A woman remains a woman. Not for nothing did King Solomon travel all over the world without finding a single woman with a brain in her head.

And so it was decided that we would become partners. I would put up the money, and Menachem-Mendl the brains, and whatever God granted us we would share fifty-fifty. “Believe me, Reb Tevye,” he said, “with God’s help you will do well with me, really well, and I will make lots of money for you.”

“Amen, the same to you,” I said. “From your mouth into God’s ear. But I must ask you, how does that cat get across the river? I am here, you are there. Money,” I said, “is a very delicate material, you understand. Don’t be offended — I’m not trying to criticize you, God forbid. It’s simply, as Abraham our Father said, They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. It’s better to be warned than to weep.”

“Ach!” he said to me. “Maybe you think we should put it down in writing? With great pleasure!”

“Wait,” I said, “let’s look at it another way. What difference will that make? If you want to ruin me, what good will a piece of paper do? It’s not the piece of paper that pays, it’s the person, and if I am already hanging by one foot, I might as well hang by both.”

“You can believe me, Reb Tevye,” he said. “I swear to you, let God punish me if I cheat you. I will honestly share everything with you, right down the middle — for me a hundred, for you a hundred, for me two hundred, for you two hundred, for me three hundred, for you three hundred, for me four hundred, for you four hundred, for me a thousand, for you a thousand.”

To make a long story short, I took out my few rubles and counted them over three times with trembling hands. I called over my wife as a witness and once more made it clear to Menachem-Mendl that this was money I sweated blood for. I gave it to him, sewed it into his bosom pocket so no one could steal it, and arranged with him that no later than a week from Saturday he would write me a letter with every detail. We parted like the best of friends and kissed affectionately, as is usual between relatives. Standing by myself after he left, lively thoughts and daydreams raced through my head, such sweet dreams that I wanted them never to end, to go on forever. I imagined we lived right in the middle of town in a mansion covered with a tin roof, with stables and rooms and pantries full of good things. My wife Golde, a regular lady, keys in hand, goes from room to room, in charge of the household. She’s not to be recognized, I tell you. She has a different face, the face of a rich man’s wife, with a double chin and pearls around her neck. She’s all puffed up and curses the servants. My children are all wearing their Shabbes clothes, no longer needing to do chores. The courtyard is packed with chickens, geese, and ducks. Indoors it is well lit, a fire burns in the stove, supper is cooking, and the samovar is boiling as if possessed! At the head of the table sits the head of the household, Tevye himself, in a frock coat and yarmulke. Around him sit the most prominent Jews in town, flattering him: Pardon me, Reb Tevye, no offense, Reb Tevye—“Ay,” I say out loud, “so this is what money can do for you!”

“What are you talking about?” my Golde asks.

“Nothing,” I reply. “My mind’s just wandered — thoughts, dreams — forget about it. Tell me, Golde my love, do you know what your relative Menachem-Mendl does for a living?”

“May all my nightmares fall on my enemies’ heads! Do you mean to tell me you sat up all day and night with him talking and talking, and you are asking me what he does for a living? You two just made a deal,” she said, “didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, “we made a deal, but what we made I don’t really understand, even if you took my head off! There’s nothing about it I can grab hold of. But that has nothing to do with it. Don’t worry, my wife, my heart tells me it’s all right. God willing, I imagine we will make money, and a lot of it. Say amen and go cook supper!”

In short, a week passed, and two and three — no letter from my partner! I was going out of my mind, walking around in a daze, not knowing what to think. He couldn’t have just forgotten to write, I thought. He knew very well that we were waiting to hear from him. Then I began to wonder what I could do to him if he were to skim off the cream and tell me we hadn’t earned anything. Would I call him a liar? I told myself it couldn’t be, it wasn’t possible. I’d treated the man like one of my own, been ready to take on his troubles. How could he play a trick like that on me?! And then I thought, The profit be damned. Deliverance will come from the Lord. May God at least keep the principal intact! A cold chill ran through my body. Old fool! I said to myself. You made your bed, now lie in it, you ass! How much better it would have been to buy a pair of horses for my hundred rubles, the kind my ancestors never had, and to trade the wagon in for a carriage with springs.

“Tevye, why don’t you think of something?” my wife said.

“What do you mean?” My head was splitting from thinking, and she was asking me to think!

“Something must have happened to him on the way home,” she said. “Maybe thieves attacked him and robbed him blind. Or maybe he fell sick, God forbid, or may my mouth not say it, he may be dead.”

“What will you think of next, my dear soul?” I said. “Robbers!” Still, you could never tell what might happen to a man while traveling. “Why do you always think the worst?” I asked Golde.

“He has that kind of family. His mother,” she said, “may she protect us before God, died not long ago, still young. He had three sisters, may our fate be different from theirs. One died young, another did marry but caught a cold in the bath and died, and the third went out of her mind after her first childbirth, struggled and struggled and finally died.”

“You live and you die. We will all die,” I said to Golde. “A carpenter lives, and in the end he still dies. And how is any man different from a carpenter?”

And so it was decided that I would go to Yehupetz. In the meantime the dairy business had grown a bit. We had a nice little shop in which we sold cheese, butter, and sour cream, first-class merchandise. My wife harnessed the horse and wagon, and as Rashi says: And so they journeyed forth. On to Yehupetz! As I was riding along, melancholy and downcast, as you might imagine, with a bitter heart, alone in the woods, all kinds of fears and thoughts beset me. It would be a fine thing, I thought, if, once I got there and asked about my man, I was told, “Menachem-Mendl? Oh ho, he’s really made it big, has the world by the tail, owns his own house, rides in a carriage. He’s not to be recognized!”

In my imagination I pulled myself together and then courageously took myself straight to his house. A servant would receive me rudely at the door with an elbow in the ribs. “Don’t push yourself in that way, Uncle,” he’d snarl. “Around here you don’t push.” “But I’m a relative,” I’d say. “Menachem-Mendl is my wife’s second cousin once removed.” “Congratulations!” he’d say. “Happy to make your acquaintance, but you still must wait here at the door. It won’t do you any harm.” He was hinting to have his palm greased. Well, grease the wheel, and you’ll ride. I was taken up to see my cousin right away.

“Good morning to you, Reb Menachem-Mendl!” I said in my imagination. But he made no speech or utterance. He did not recognize me! “What do you want?” I imagined him asking me. I almost fainted. “What is this, Pani,” I’d say. “You don’t know your own relative? I’m Tevye!” “Ah?” he’d say. “Tevye? That’s a familiar name.” “Familiar?” I’d say. “Maybe my wife’s blintzes are familiar! Do you remember her knishes, her knaidlach, her blintzes?”

Then I imagined that the very opposite happened. I would go in, and he’d greet me with a broad “Sholem aleichem.” A guest! A guest! “Sit, Reb Tevye,” he’d say. “How are you, how is your wife? I’ve been expecting you. I want to settle accounts with you.” And he’d fill my hat with money. “This,” he’d say, “is the earnings, and the principal remains the same. Whatever we earn, we will divide in half, fifty-fifty, half for me, half for you. For me a hundred, for you a hundred, for me two hundred, for you two hundred, for me three hundred, for you three hundred, for me four hundred, for you four hundred.”

I dozed off as my imaginary relative was speaking and didn’t notice that my horse had wandered off the path and somehow hooked the wagon onto a tree branch. Seeing stars, I felt as if I had been kicked from behind. Everything turns out for the best, I said to myself. Thank God an axle didn’t break.

Well, I arrived in Yehupetz and, as usual, quickly sold my dairy products. Then I began to look for my man. I looked around for an hour and two and then three — the man was not to be found! I stopped people along the way and asked them if they had seen or heard of Menachem-Mendl. “If,” they said, “his name is Menachem-Mendl, that’s not enough. There are lots of Menachem-Mendls around here. What’s his last name?”

“I haven’t any idea,” I said. “At home in Kasrilevka he’s known by his mother-in-law’s name, Menachem-Mendl Leah-Dvossi’s. What more do you need? His father-in-law, an elderly Jew, also goes by her name — Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s, and even she, Leah-Dvossi, is called Leah-Dvossi Boruch-Hersh Leah-Dvossi’s. Now do you understand?”

“We understand,” they said, “but that’s still not enough. What is his business? What does he deal in, your Menachem-Mendl?”

“What does he deal in? He deals in gold imperials,” I said, “and options, and he sends off telegrams to Saint Petersburg, to Warsaw.”

“Oh?” They began to laugh, then laughed louder and louder. “You mean the crook Menachem-Mendl! Why don’t you just go across the street? There you’ll find brokers running around like rabbits, and yours is probably one of them.” The longer you lived, the more you learned, I thought. Rabbits — what were they talking about?

I crossed the street. Everywhere were Jews, kayn eyn horeh, like at a fair. It was crowded, impossible to push through. People were tearing around like madmen, this one here, that one there, one on top of the other — it was chaos. They were talking, screaming, waving their hands in the air: “Shares, stocks. . he gave me his word. . I need a down payment. . a fee. . you’re an idiot. . I’ll bash your head in. . spit in his face. . what a speculator. . chiseler. . your father’s father!” They almost came to blows. And Jacob fled. I thought I should run before they turned on me! But God is a Father, I am His servant, Yehupetz is a city, and Menachem-Mendl made money! Right here was where people got lucky with gold imperials. Was this what they meant by “doing business”? Woe unto me, Tevye, and my business, God help me.

To make a long story short, I stopped at a large shopwindow displaying trousers and saw in the reflection my so-called benefactor, Menachem-Mendl. My heart hurt when I saw him, so sorry did I feel for him! If ever I had an enemy, and if ever you had an enemy, may we hope to see them in the same state as Menachem-Mendl. His coat, his boots, were in terrible shape. And his face — God in heaven, a healthier face would have been delivered to the grave. So, if I died, that would be the end of me, I could kiss the few groschens goodbye. As they say: “Neither hide nor hair of them”—no merchandise, no money, only troubles.

For his part, Menachem-Mendl seemed abashed to see me, and we both stood as if frozen, unable to speak, just looking into each other’s eyes like two roosters, as if to say, We’re both miserable and cleaned out. We might as well take tin cups and go from house to house!

“Reb Tevye,” he said to me quietly, barely audibly, tears choking him, “Reb Tevye! Without luck, a man shouldn’t have been born! Rather than living like this, it is better to hang.” More he could not say.

“Surely,” I said to him, “for what you did, Mendl, you deserve to be laid out right in the center of Yehupetz and whipped so soundly you’d see Grandma Tzeitl from the Other World. Just think of what you’ve done. You took a household full of living souls, poor creatures, as innocent as lambs, and slit their throats without a knife! God in heaven,” I said, “how can I face my wife and children? Go on, tell me, you slaughterer, swindler, thief!”

“True,” he said, leaning against a wall. “True, Reb Tevye, may God help me.”

“Gehennam,” I said, “gehennam, you idiot, is too good for you, fool!”

“True, Reb Tevye,” he said, “true, may God help me. Rather than living like this, Reb Tevye. .” He lowered his head. The shlimazel hung his head down and leaned against the wall, his hat sliding down his head. I heard every sigh and groan. My heart went out to him.

“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!

TODAY’S CHILDREN

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.

“You’re always there with a quote from the Gemorah,” he said to me. “Good for you, Reb Tevye, that you can read all that small print. But why waste time on all this learning and these quotations? Better let us talk about our business at hand. Sit, Reb Tevye,” he said, then yelled out, “Let’s have tea!” The snub-nosed woman appeared from nowhere, grabbed the samovar, and disappeared into the kitchen. “Now that we’re alone,” he said, “just the two of us, we can get down to business. This is the way it is: I have wanted to talk to you, Reb Tevye, for a long time now. I have asked your daughter many times to tell you, if you would be so kind to come talk to me. You understand I have had my eye on—”

“I know that you’ve had your eye on her, but it won’t work,” I said, “it won’t work, Reb Lazer-Wolf, it won’t work!”

“Why not?” He looked surprised.

“I have time to wait,” I said. “Where’s the fire?”

“Why should you wait,” he said, “when we can work things out right now?”

“I just gave you a reason. Second of all,” I said, “it’s simply a shame, a pity on a living creature.”

“Look at you putting on airs.” Lazer-Wolf gave a little laugh. “Someone would swear she was your only one! I imagine you have, kayn eyn horeh, enough, Reb Tevye!”

“Let those who envy me not have anything themselves,” I quoted.

“Envy? Who’s talking of envy?” he said. “On the contrary, it’s because she is so attractive, that’s the reason I want her, do you understand? Don’t forget, Reb Tevye, the advantage that could come out of this for you!”

“Sure, sure,” I said, “I know your favors, Reb Lazer-Wolf. You give ice in winter. We all know about that from before.”

“Eh! Why are you comparing then and now?” he said, as sweet as sugar. “Then was one story, but today is a different one. We’re practically in-laws, ha?”

“In-laws?” I said, surprised.

“Yes, in-laws!”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Reb Lazer-Wolf, what are we talking about?”

“On the contrary,” he said, “you tell me, Reb Tevye, what we’re talking about.”

“What else?” I said. “We’re talking about the milk cow you want to buy from me!”

“Ha ha ha!” he broke out laughing. “That’s some cow and a milk cow into the bargain, ha ha ha!”

“What, then, were you thinking, Reb Lazer-Wolf? Tell me so I can laugh too.”

“About your daughter!” he said to me. “I was speaking about your Tzeitl all this time! You know, Reb Tevye, I am a widower, may it not happen to you. I thought it over and decided, Why should I look elsewhere for a wife, bother with matchmakers and all that? After all, here we both are. I know you, you know me. And I’ve also taken to her. I see her every Thursday in the butcher shop, I’ve spoken with her several times, and she seems a quiet girl, not bad at all. I myself am, kayn eyn horeh, as you see, a bit of a success. I own my house, a few stores, and nice furnishings, as you can see, not to complain. I have some hides in the attic and money in the chest. Why should we have to haggle like gypsies? Let’s shake hands on it, one two three, do you get my meaning?”

Well, once he explained what he had in mind, I was speechless at the unexpected news. At first I thought, Lazer-Wolf? Tzeitl? He has children her age. But then I reminded myself that it was a stroke of luck for her. A stroke of luck! She would have everything she wanted! So he wasn’t the most generous man. Nowadays that wasn’t the greatest virtue. As the rabbis said: A man is dearest to his own self—if you were good to others, you were bad to yourself. He had one fault — he was somewhat common. Oh well, could everyone be a scholar? There were plenty of rich folks, fine people in Anatevka, in Mazepevka, and even in Yehupetz who didn’t know one letter from another. Still and all, if it was destined, that wouldn’t keep them from getting plenty of respect. As it is written: If there is no flour in the bin, there is no Torah— which means, the Torah lies in the chest, and wisdom in the purse.

“So, Reb Tevye,” he said, “why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Do you want me to shout?” I said, as if considering the matter further. “This is, Reb Lazer-Wolf, you understand me, a delicate question that has to be considered from all sides. It’s not a laughing matter. My first child!”

“It’s really the other way around,” he said. “It’s important because she’s your first child. Afterward,” he said, “God willing, you’ll be able to marry off your second daughter too, and later, in good time, the third, do you understand?”

“Amen!” said I. “Marrying them off is no trick if the One Above sends each one her intended.”

“No,” he said, “that’s not what I mean, Reb Tevye. I mean something altogether different. I mean that for your Tzeitl, you no longer need a dowry, thank God. Her wedding dress and everything a girl needs, I will take on myself. And you,” he said, “will also find a little something in your purse.”

“Feh,” I said, “you’re talking, please forgive me, as if you were in your butcher shop! What do you mean, in my purse? Feh! My Tzeitl is not for sale, God forbid! Feh feh!”

“If it’s feh, it’s feh,” he said to me. “That’s not really what I meant. I meant it quite otherwise. But if you say feh, let it be feh! If you’re satisfied, I’m satisfied. The most important thing,” he said, “is it should be soon. I mean right away. As they say: ‘A house needs a mistress.’ Do you understand?”

“All right,” I said, “I have no objections. But I have to talk it over with my wife. In these matters she has her say. It’s no small matter. As Rashi says: Rachel weepeth for her children—a mother is not a pot lid. And Tzeitl herself,” I said, “has to be asked. As it is said: All the relatives came to the wedding and they left the bridegroom at home.”

“Nonsense,” he said, “why do you need to ask? You tell her, Reb Tevye. You go home and tell her this is the way it is and put up the wedding canopy. One word from you, and it’s done!”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t say that, Reb Lazer-Wolf. The girl is not, God forbid, a widow impatient for a match.”

“You’re right,” he said, “a girl is a girl, not a widow, and that’s why you must talk to her soon, about dresses, about the trousseau and her wardrobe. And in the meantime,” he said, “Reb Tevye, let’s drink a l’chayim, ha, no?”

“That’s fine with me,” I said. “Why not? Isn’t peace always better than arguing? As it is said: ‘A man is a man, but brandy is brandy.’ There’s a saying in the Gemorah. .” And I gave him a string of Gemorah quotes, one after another, on and on, from the Song of Songs and “Chad Gadyo.”

We drank the bitter drop, as God commanded. The snub-nosed maid brought out the samovar, and we drank glasses of punch, enjoyed ourselves, wished each other well, and chatted about the match many times over.

“Do you know, Reb Lazer-Wolf,” I said, “what a jewel of a girl she is?”

“I know,” he said, “believe me, I know. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have spoken!”

We continued our conversation. I shouted out, “A jewel, a diamond! You must take good care of her, not act like the butcher you are.”

“Don’t be afraid, Reb Tevye,” he said. “What she will eat by me during the week will be more than she ate by you on a holiday.”

“So,” I said, “what she eats is also your affair? The rich man,” I said, “doesn’t eat gold coins, and the poor man doesn’t eat stones. You’re a crude person, and you cannot appreciate her talents, her challah-baking, her fish, Reb Lazer-Wolf, her gefilte fish! It is a privilege to eat it.”

“Reb Tevye, you are, pardon me, really old-fashioned. You don’t know people, Reb Tevye, and you don’t know me!”

“On one side of a scale, put gold. On the other, Tzeitl. Do you hear, Reb Lazer-Wolf, even if you had thousands,” I said, “you still aren’t worth the sole of her foot!”

“Believe me, Reb Tevye, you are a big fool, even though you’re older than I am!”

We carried on this way for quite a while, louder and louder and getting tipsier and tipsier. When I arrived home, it was late, and my legs felt like lead. My wife, may she be well, saw I was drunk and gave me a proper welcome.

“Sha, don’t be angry, Golde!” I said to her cheerily, and I actually felt like dancing. “Don’t yell at me, my soul. We have a mazel tov coming!”

“Mazel tov? A mazel tov for selling that poor milk cow to Lazer-Wolf?”

“Worse than that!” I said.

“You traded her for another?” she said. “You tricked that poor Lazer-Wolf? A pity on him.”

“Even worse!” I said.

“Enough! Speak!” she said. “Look how I have to pry out every word!”

“Mazel tov to you, Golde,” I said again. “Mazel tov to both of us. Our Tzeitl is a bride!”

“Now I know you’re really in your cups,” she said. “You’re talking out of your head! You must have had quite a few glassfuls.”

“I did have a few with Lazer-Wolf, and some punch,” I said, “but I still have all my wits about me. I want you to know, my darling Golde, that our Tzeitl has been blessed with good fortune and is engaged to marry no one else but Lazer-Wolf!” And I told her the whole story from beginning to end, how and what and when and about everything we talked about, not leaving out a word.

“Do you want to hear something, Tevye?” my wife said to me. “May God be with me wherever I go, but my heart told me that when Lazer-Wolf called for you, it was not for nothing. But what could he want? I was afraid to think of it. Maybe, God forbid, it would come to nothing. Thank you, dear God,” she said, “thank you, dearest, benevolent Father. May she have good luck, may it be all for the best. May she grow old with him in honor and respect, not like his first wife, Frume-Sarah, may I not suffer her fate. She did not have too happy a life with him. She was, please forgive me, an embittered woman, couldn’t get along with anyone, not at all like our Tzeitl, may God grant her many years. Thank you, thank you, dear God! Nu, Tevye,” she said. “What did I tell you, you dummy? Does a person have to worry? If it’s meant to be,” she said, “it will come right to your doorstep.”

“For sure,” I said, “there’s a particular passage about that—”

“Don’t bother me now with passages,” she said. “We have to start getting ready for the wedding. First of all, we have to make out a list for Lazer-Wolf of what Tzeitl needs to have for the wedding, starting with linens. She doesn’t have enough underthings, or even so much as a pair of stockings. And,” she said, “dresses — a silk one for the wedding ceremony and a woolen one for winter, another for summer, and housedresses, and petticoats, and cloaks. I want her to have two of them: one cape with a cat-fur hood for weekdays, and another good one with ruffles for Shabbes. And she needs little boots with straps and buttons, a corset, gloves, handkerchiefs, a parasol, and all the things a girl has to have nowadays.”

“How come, Golde, my sweetheart,” I said, “you know about all these fancy things?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “Haven’t I been out in the world? And haven’t I seen in Kasrilevka how the fine people dress? Leave it to me,” she said, “and I’ll do the talking with him. Lazer-Wolf, you can be sure, is a wealthy man and will not like others to talk about him. If you must eat pig, at least let the fat run down your beard.”

That’s how we spent the rest of the night, talking almost till dawn. “It’s time to pack up the bit of cheese and butter, my wife,” I said to her, “and let me start out for Boiberik. True, everything is wonderful and good all around, but the business,” I said, “cannot be laid aside. As it is written in the Psalms: The heavens are the Lord’s—but life down here must go on.”

And while it was still dark, I hitched up my horse and wagon and was off to Boiberik. I arrived at the market and — aha! Can you keep a secret from Jews? The word was out. I was getting mazel tovs from all sides: “Mazel tov to you, Reb Tevye. When is the wedding?”

“May you all have luck as well,” I said. “It’s as they say: ‘Even before you can enjoy your own good luck, the whole world wants to join in.’ ”

“Nonsense,” they said. “You can’t get away with it, Reb Tevye. You must buy us all a drink. After all, what a lucky break — you’ve stumbled on a gold mine.”

“The gold runs out,” I said, “and leaves a deep hole behind. But still,” I said, “you can’t be selfish and exclude your friends. As soon as I finish my Yehupetz deliveries, we will have a glass of whiskey and a bite to eat, live it up, and to hell with it. Rejoice and be glad.” Celebrate, you beggars! I said to myself.

And so, as quickly as always, I finished my rounds, and together, as it is supposed to be, my good friends and I had a few drinks, wished one another well, and I rode home in my wagon, lively and happy, if a bit tipsy. As I rode along in the woods on a lovely summer day, the aroma of the pines quickened the soul, and the sun beat down; the trees on either side of the road softened it with their shadows. I leaned back like a count and eased up on the reins. “Go on by yourself, my boy,” I said to my horse. “You know the way by now.” I sang a little tune. My heart was full. I was in a holiday mood. But for some reason I was singing bits from the High Holidays service.

I looked up toward the heavens, but my thoughts were a confused tangle here on earth. The heavens are the Lord’s, but the Earth He hath given to the children of Adam—so they would fight like cats for the honor of being called up to recite the opening and closing prayers for the Torah reading, and for the honor of mourning at the grave. The dead cannot praise God—they can’t appreciate that you must praise Him for the favors He does for you, while we, the living, the poor and destitute, when we have one good day, we thank and praise Him. I love my God because when He hears my voice and my entreaties He bends His ear to me, even as the sorrows of death doth encompass me. I am besieged on all sides with suffering, with sorrows, with afflictions. Here a cow suddenly drops dead in midday, here I am suddenly visited by a shlimazel of a relative, this Menachem-Mendl from Yehupetz, who cheats me out of my last bit of life, and I am thinking the world has come to an end. All men deceiveth—there is no honesty on earth.

But what does God do? He puts a thought into Lazer-Wolf’s head that he should take my daughter Tzeitl without a dowry. For that I say again and again, I praise Thee for Thou hast answered me—I thank you, dear God, for looking down on Tevye and coming to his aid so that he might have a bit of gratification from his child. May I visit her, if I live to see it, and find her a well-to-do mistress of her home with everything she needs, chests full of linens, cupboards full of Passover shmaltz and preserves, coops full of chickens, ducks, and geese.

Suddenly my horse went tearing down the hill, and before I could see where I was, I was lying on the ground with all the empty pots and jugs and the wagon on top of me! With a great effort I crawled out and stood up, battered and bruised, and let out my bitter heart on the horse: “May you sink into the earth! Who asked you, shlimazel, to show off and go galloping downhill? You almost killed me, you Satan!” I gave it to him for all he was worth. My boy seemed to understand what he had done and bowed his head in shame. Still cursing, I righted the wagon, gathered the pots and jugs, and we continued on our way. It was not a good sign, though, and I feared that something bad had happened at home.

And so it was. I drove on for a verst or two, when not far from home I saw in the middle of the road coming toward me a figure in the shape of a woman. I drove closer and saw it was — Tzeitl! I don’t know why, but I felt a pang in my heart when I saw her. I sprang down from the wagon. “Tzeitl, is that you? What are you doing here?”

And didn’t she fall on my neck sobbing! “God be with you,” I said, “my daughter, why are you crying?”

“Oy,” she said, “Papa, Papa!” and her face was drenched in tears. My heart sank, and I imagined the worst.

“What is it, daughter?” I said. “Tell me what has happened to you.” I embraced her, patted her, and kissed her.

“Papa, Papa, dear, beloved father,” she wailed. “Have pity on me, on my youth!” She dissolved in tears, unable to speak another word.

Woe is me, I was thinking. I was preparing myself for the worst! What evil spirit had taken me to Boiberik?

“Why do you cry?” I said to her, stroking her head. “Little silly, why do you cry? Never mind,” I said. “If you say no, it’s no. No one will force you, God forbid. We only meant it for the best, for your own good,” I said. “But if that’s not what your heart tells you, what can we do? Most likely,” I said, “it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Thank you, Papa,” she said, “long life to you.” And she fell on my neck and again kissed me and wept, the tears gushing.

“But enough crying,” I said. “All is vanity—even eating kreplach can be tiresome. Climb into the wagon, and let’s go home. Your mother will begin to think who knows what!”

Well, we seated ourselves in the wagon, and I began to calm her down with whatever came to mind. I told her we had meant no harm. God knew the truth, that we wanted only to spare our child from need. “Ay, it seems God does not want that,” I said. “It’s not meant to be, my daughter, that you marry without a dowry, that you have riches and all the comforts of life with a fine household, and that we have joy in our old age after all our hard work, day and night, harnessed to a wagon, without a happy moment, only suffering, poverty, squalor, only bad, bad luck in every way!”

“Oy, Papa,” she said, again weeping, “I’ll hire myself out to haul rocks, dig ditches!”

“Why are you still crying, silly girl?” I said. “Am I complaining? Am I blaming you? It’s just that whenever I feel miserable and wretched, I pour my heart out to the ruler of the universe about the way he deals with me. He is a merciful Father. He has pity on me, but He also turns against me, may I not be punished for these words. I try to reason with Him as with a father, but you might as well cry out to the heavens! But most likely,” I said, “that’s the way it has to be. He is high above, and we are here below, forever bound to the earth on which we lie, so we must say that He is right and that His judgment is just.

“But think about it another way. Am I not a great fool? Why am I crying out? Why am I making such a fuss? Who am I,” I said, “to confront Him with my foolish reasoning and try to give Him advice on how to run His little world? I’m no more than a worm crawling on the earth whom the slightest little breeze, if God so wills it, will destroy in the wink of an eye. If He says so, that’s the way it has to be. What good are complaints? Forty days,” I said, “it is written in our holy books that forty days before the child is created in the mother’s womb, an angel comes and cries: ‘Let Tevye’s daughter take this one or that one, and you, Lazer-Wolf, be so kind as to go somewhere else to find someone fit for you. She is waiting for you.’ And you, Tzeitl,” I said, “may God send you your intended, but the right one, and the sooner the better, amen, may it be so. Let’s hope your mother doesn’t take out after me — I know what I’ll get from her!”

And so we came home. I unhitched the horse and sat down on the grass near the house to try to figure out how to tell my wife a Thousand and One Nights tale in order to avoid trouble. It was evening, and the sun was setting, a lovely time of summer. The frogs were croaking in the distance while the horse, his legs hobbled, was nibbling grass. The cows, having just come in from the pasture with the herd, were standing in their stalls waiting to be milked. The delicious aroma of grass filled the air all around — a paradise! I sat and drank it all in as I was thinking how cleverly the Creator of the universe had made His little world so that every creature, from a man to a cow, forgive the comparison, should earn its keep — nothing comes free! If you, cow, want to eat, then you must give milk, provide a livelihood for a man with a wife and little children! You, horse, do you want to chew? Then run back and forth day in and day out with pots to Boiberik! And the same goes for you, O man. Do you want a crust of bread? Then go toil, milk the cows, carry the jugs, churn butter, make cheese, harness the horse, and drag yourself every morning to the Boiberik dachas, bow and scrape to the Yehupetz rich folks, smile for them, charm each one, and be sure they are satisfied and that their pride hasn’t been hurt!

Ah, but the question from the Haggadah still remains: Wherefore is this night different? Where was it written that Tevye had to labor for them, to wake up so early that God Himself was still asleep? Why? Was it so the rich folks could have a fresh piece of cheese and butter in time for their coffee? Where was it written that I had to break my back for some thin soup and a loaf of barley bread while the Yehupetz tycoons rested their bones in their dachas, didn’t have to lift a finger, and ate only roasted duck and hot knishes, blintzes, and varnishkes? Was I not as much a person as they were? Wouldn’t it be just if Tevye could stay just one summer in a dacha? Ay, but then where would people get their cheese and butter? Who would milk the cows? The Yehupetz aristocrats? I laughed at that insane thought. There is a saying: “If God were to listen to fools, the world would look altogether different.”

“Good evening, Reb Tevye!” someone called me. I turned around and looked — a familiar face. It was Motl Komzoil, a young tailor from Anatevka.

“And to you,” I said. “Look who’s here! Sit, Motl, on God’s earth. What brings you here?”

“What brings me here? My feet,” he said, and sat down beside me on the grass, all the time looking toward where my daughters were working with the pots and jugs. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you for a long time, Reb Tevye,” he said, “but I haven’t had the time. As soon as I finish one piece of work, I have to start another. Nowadays I work for myself as a tailor. There is, thank God, plenty of work — all the tailors have as much work as they can handle. It’s a continuous summer of weddings: Berl Fonfatch is marrying off a daughter, Yenkl Sheygetz is marrying off a daughter, Mendl Zaika is marrying off a daughter, Yenkl Piskatch is marrying off a daughter. Moishe Gorgel is marrying off a daughter.

Meyer Kropeve is marrying off a daughter. Chayim Loshek is marrying off a daughter, and even Trihubeche the widow is marrying off a daughter!”

“Everyone is marrying off daughters,” I said. “But I’m not at that point yet. Perhaps I’m not worthy in God’s eyes.”

“No, you are mistaken, Reb Tevye,” he said, looking toward where the girls were. “If you wanted, you would also be marrying off a daughter. It depends on you.”

“Really?” I said. “In what way Perhaps you have a match for my Tzeitl?”

“A perfect fit!” he said.

“Is it at least the right match?” I was thinking that it would be funny if he meant Lazer-Wolf the butcher.

“Like a glove!” he answered in tailor-talk, still looking toward the girls.

“Where is your match from? Do I know him? If he smells of a butcher shop,” I said, “I don’t want to hear of it!”

“God forbid! He doesn’t begin to smell of a butcher shop. You know him, Reb Tevye, very well!”

“Is it really a good match?”

“It’s made to measure! It’s custom made, one-of-a-kind, cut and sewn to order!”

“Who is it, this match?” I asked.

“Who is it?” His eyes always looked toward the girls. “The match is, please understand me, Reb Tevye, I myself.”

When he uttered those words, I leaped up as if scalded, as did he, and we stood facing each other like two bristling roosters. “Are you crazy?” I said. “Or are you just out of your mind? You are the matchmaker and the bridegroom? Will you be playing the music too at your own wedding? I’ve never heard of such a thing — a young man arranging a match for himself!”

“Are you saying, Reb Tevye, that I’m crazy?” he said. “May our enemies be as crazy. I am, you may believe me, in my right mind. No one has to be crazy to want to marry your Tzeitl. The proof is that Lazer-Wolf, the richest man in our town, wants to marry her without any conditions. Do you think it’s a secret? The whole town knows about it! You surprise me when you’re shocked that I am my own matchmaker,” he said. “You are, after all, Reb Tevye, a man who doesn’t need things spelled out for him. But what good is talking? This is the way it is: I and your daughter Tzeitl pledged to marry over a year ago.”

Had someone plunged a knife into my heart, it would have been less painful than those words. First of all, where did he, Motl, a tailor, come off wanting to be Tevye’s son-in-law? And second of all, what kind of talk is that, pledging to marry? Nu, and where did I come in? “Don’t I have a little something to say about my child,” I said, “or don’t you ask anymore?”

“God forbid,” he said. “That’s why, when I heard Lazer-Wolf was asking to marry your daughter, whom I have loved for over a year, I came to talk it over with you.”

“All I know is,” I said, “Tevye has a daughter Tzeitl, and your name is Motl Komzoil, and you are just a tailor. What do you have against her? Why do you hate her?”

“No, that’s not the way it is at all,” he said. “It’s quite the other way around. I love your daughter, and your daughter loves me, and it’s been over a year since we gave each other our pledge to marry. Several times I wanted to discuss it with you, and I kept putting it off until I had saved up some money for a sewing machine and was able to get some proper clothes for myself. Nowadays every young man has two suits and several shirts.”

“I don’t want to listen to this childish nonsense,” I said to him. “What will you do after the wedding, pawn your teeth for food? Or are you going to support her by sewing shirts?”

“Ah, I am surprised that you, Reb Tevye, would speak that way,” he said. “When you got married, I imagine you didn’t have a mansion yet. Nevertheless you can see for yourself. The whole world manages, and I will manage too. Now more business is coming my way.”

To make a long story short — why should I bore you? — he convinced me. Why should we fool ourselves? How do all Jewish children get married? In our walk of life, if we were to worry about how young people could make it, none of us would ever have married. But one thing still stuck in my craw that I could not understand, no matter what. They made a pledge to marry? What was our world coming to? A young man met a girl and said to her, “Let’s pledge to marry.” That was not done!

But Motl standing there, his head bowed like a sinner, looked so earnest, so guileless that I reconsidered. Let’s look at it another way. What was holding me back, and why was I lording it over him? Did I have such a great lineage myself — Reb Tzotzele’s grandson? Would I be giving my daughter a huge dowry and trousseau, for God’s sake? True, Motl Komzoil was a tailor, but he was a fine young man, a hard worker who would support a wife, and besides, he was an honest man too, so what did I have against him?

Tevye, I said to myself, stop your foolish arguing and say yes. As it is written: I have pardoned according to Thy word—may you have lots of luck! Yes, but what would I do about my wife? I would get it in the neck from her. How could I make her accept this decision?

“Do you know what, Motl?” I said to my soon-to-be son-in-law. “You go home, and I’ll take care of everything here. I’ll talk it over with this one, with that one, as it says in the Megillah: And the drinking was according to the custom—one must do everything properly. And God willing, tomorrow, if you don’t change your mind, we will meet.”

“Change my mind?” he cried. “I, change my mind? May I not live to leave this spot, may I turn into a stone or a bone if I do!”

“Why do you swear oaths?” I said to him. “I believe you without swearing. Go home,” I said, “and goodnight, and may you dream pleasant dreams.”

I too went to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. My head was splitting thinking up one plan and then another, and then I came up with just the right one. What was the plan? Listen, and I’ll tell you what a brainstorm Tevye had!

It was the middle of the night, everyone was sound asleep, this one was snoring, that one was whistling. I suddenly sat up and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Help! Help! Help!” Naturally the entire household awoke, first of all Golde.

“God be with you, Tevye,” she said, and shook me. “Wake up! What’s the matter with you? Why are you screaming like that?”

I opened my eyes, looked all around, and said with a shaking voice: “Where is she?”

“Where is who? Who are you looking for?”

“Frume-Sarah,” I said. “Frume-Sarah, Lazer-Wolf’s wife, was standing right here.”

“You must have a fever,” my wife said to me. “God be with you, Tevye! Frume-Sarah, Lazer-Wolf’s wife, may she be far from us, is no longer in this world.”

“I know she died,” I said, “but she was just right here by my bed talking to me. She grabbed me by the throat and tried to strangle me!”

“God be with you, Tevye, what are you babbling about?” she said. “You must have had a bad dream. Spit three times and tell me what you dreamed and I’ll tell you what it meant.”

“Long life to you, Golde, for waking me up,” I said to her, “or else I would have died of fright right on the spot. Give me a drink of water and I’ll tell you my dream, but I warn you, Golde, don’t be scared, and don’t start thinking who knows what because in our holy books it says that only three parts of a dream can come true and the rest means nothing, absolutely nothing at all. First of all,” I said, “I dreamed we were having a celebration. I don’t know if it was an engagement party or a wedding. There were a lot of people, men and women, the rabbi and the slaughterer, even musicians. Then the door opened, and in came your Grandma Tzeitl, God rest her soul.”

When my wife heard “Grandma Tzeitl,” she turned pale as a ghost. “How did she look and what was she wearing?”

“How did she look?” I said. “May my enemies have such a face — as yellow as wax. And she was dressed, as you would expect, in white shrouds. ‘Mazel tov!’ Grandma Tzeitl said to me. ‘I am so happy that you’ve chosen for your Tzeitl, my namesake, such a fine, upstanding bridegroom. He is named Motl Komzoil, after my father, Mordecai, and even though he’s a tailor, still he’s a very honest boy.’ ”

“How did we get mixed up with a tailor?” cried Golde. “In our family we have teachers, cantors, beadles, cemetery officials, and just plain poor people. But not, God forbid, any tailors or cobblers.”

“Don’t interrupt me, Golde,” I said to her. “Maybe your Grandma Tzeitl knows better than you. When I heard such a mazel tov from Grandma Tzeitl, I said to her: ‘Why are you saying, Bubbe’nyu, that Tzeitl’s betrothed is called Motl and he’s a tailor? You mean his name is Lazer-Wolf and he’s a butcher.’

“ ‘No,’ Grandma said again, ‘no, Tevye, your Tzeitl’s betrothed is called Motl. He is a tailor, and with him, God willing, she will grow old in wealth and in honor.’

“ ‘But Bubbe’nyu,’ I said to her again, ‘what shall we do with Lazer-Wolf? After all, just yesterday I gave him my word!’ As I spoke those words, I looked up, and Grandma Tzeitl was gone! In her place stood Frume-Sarah, Lazer-Wolf’s wife, and she said to me these words:

“ ‘Reb Tevye! I always thought of you as an honest man, a man of learning. How then can you do this to me, let your daughter take my place, live in my house, carry my keys, wear my clothes, my jewels, my pearls?’

“ ‘It’s not my fault,’ I said to her. ‘Your Lazer-Wolf wanted it that way.’

“ ‘Lazer-Wolf?’ she said. ‘Lazer-Wolf will come to a terrible end. And your poor Tzeitl, a pity on her, Reb Tevye, she will not live with him for more than three weeks. And when the three weeks are up, I will come to her by night and take her by the throat, like this. . ’ And with those words Frume-Sarah grabbed me by the throat and began to choke me so hard that if you hadn’t woken me up, I would by now be far, far from here!”

“Tfu! Tfu! Tfu!” my wife said, and spit three times three. “May that dream fall into the river, may it sink into the earth, may it crawl over roofs, may it lie in the forest, but may it not harm us or our children! May that butcher be visited by such a dark, angry dream! May it fill his head and paralyze his arms and legs! He isn’t worth Motl Komzoil’s littlest fingernail, even though he is a tailor, because if he was named after my Uncle Mordecai, he is certainly not a tailor by birth, and if Grandma, may she rest in peace, took the trouble to come here from the Other World to give us a mazel tov, then we must say it is all for the best and could not be better. Amen selah!”

To make a long story short — why should I go on? — I had to be stronger than iron that night, lying under the blanket, to hold myself in and not burst into laughter. Blessed be God that He did not make me a woman—a woman remains a woman. The very next day we held the engagement party and soon afterward the wedding. The couple, blessed be His name, is living happily. He is a tailor, goes around Boiberik from one dacha to the next picking up work, while she is busy day and night cooking and baking and washing and scrubbing, carrying water from the well, barely a piece of bread in the house. If I didn’t occasionally bring her some milk and cheese, sometimes a few groschens, it would be very bad. I talk with her, and she says she is happy as can be as long as her Motl is healthy.

Nu, can you argue with today’s children? It turns out, as I told you in the beginning: I have nourished and brought up children—you labor for your children’s sake, knock your head on the wall, and as Isaiah says: They have rebelled against me—they say they know better. No, say what you will, today’s children are too smart!

But I have a feeling I’ve filled your ear more than I usually do. Please forgive me, be well, and have a good life!

HODL

WRITTEN IN 1904.

Are you wondering, Pani Sholem Aleichem, why you haven’t seen Tevye lately? Doesn’t he look like he’s suddenly aged, turned gray? Ah, if you knew what troubles, what heartache Tevye carries with him wherever he goes! How is it written—Man is but dust and dust is all that remains of him—a man is weaker than a fly and stronger than iron. That describes me perfectly! Wherever you find a misfortune, a problem, an affliction — it is not permitted to bypass me. Do you have any idea why this is so? Maybe it’s because I am by nature an overly trusting simpleton. Tevye forgets what our sages told us a thousand times: Respect him and suspect him—in Ashkenaz that means a man can’t trust his own dog. But what can I do, I ask you, if that’s the way I am? As you know, I am a trusting soul and never complain about the ways of Him the everlasting. Whatever He ordains is good. Just try it the other way around and do complain. Will it do you any good? As we say in the Slichos during the High Holiday prayers: The soul is Thine and the body is Thine—what does a person know and what worth has he?

I always argue with my Golde: “Golde,” I say, “you are sinning! We have a midrash—”

“Who cares about a midrash?” she says. “We have a daughter to marry off, and after that daughter, kayn eyn horeh, there are two more, and after the two — three more, may no evil eye befall them!”

“Ah, don’t worry your head about it, Golde! Our sages also prepared us for that. We have a midrash on that too—”

She doesn’t let me speak. “Grown daughters,” she says, “are midrash enough.” Try to argue with a woman!

Anyway, from what I was just saying, you can see I possess goods to choose from, one prettier than the other, kayn eyn horeh, may I not be sinning with these words. It isn’t proper for me to praise my children, but I hear what everyone calls them: “Beauties!” Especially Hodl — the eldest after Tzeitl, the one who fell in love with the tailor. Hodl is beautiful, believe me. As it is written in the holy Megillah: For she was fair to look on—pretty as a picture! And to make it worse, she has a head on her shoulders, writes and reads Yiddish and Russian, devours books like dumplings. You will ask, How does Tevye’s daughter come to books when her father deals in cheese and butter? Listen, that’s what I ask those fine lads who don’t own so much as a pair of trousers, begging your pardon, and all they want to do is study. As we say in the Haggadah: We are all wise, we are all learned—everybody wants to learn, everybody wants to study. Ask them: “What are you studying? Why are you studying?” They know the answer about as well as goats know why they jump into other people’s gardens! Especially when they aren’t even allowed to look at a book. Guard the cream from the cat! Still and all, you should see how hard they study! And who are they? Workers’ children, children of tailors and shoemakers, may God help me! They go off to Yehupetz or to Odessa, they sprawl in attics, they live on the ten plagues of Egypt, and for months on end they never see a piece of meat. Six of them can dine on a single loaf of bread and one herring, and as it is written, Thou shalt rejoice in thy feast—live it up, you paupers!

One of that crew made his way into our corner of the world, some shlimazel who didn’t live far from us. I knew his father, he was a cigarette-maker; there are no poorer. Well, I don’t blame the young man for that, because if the great rabbi Yochanan Hasandler could sew boots, why should this young man be above having a father who rolled cigarettes? There’s one thing that bothers me: why should a pauper be eager to study, to learn? True, to give him credit, he has a good head, a very good head on his shoulders. Perchik is his name, the shlimazel, but we called him Fefferl in Yiddish, and he actually looked like a little pepper. You should see him — like a little squirrel, small, dark-haired, homely, with a quick sharp tongue, but bursting with confidence.

Well, one day I was riding home from Boiberik, having sold my wares, a whole wagonload of cheese, butter, sour cream, and greens. I was deep in thought about man and God, about this and that, of course not leaving out the Yehupetz rich folks, how well they live, kayn eyn horeh, and about Tevye the shlimazel and his horse, who becomes more wretched every day. It was summer, the sun was hot, the flies were biting, and the world was in every way pleasant, ample. You felt like flying in the air, swimming in the river!

I raised my eyes — and saw a young man trudging along the path with a bundle under one arm, sweating profusely and panting heavily. “Rise, O son of Reb Yuckel ben Fleckel!” I said to him. “Sit down up here and I’ll give you a lift. I have plenty of room. If you come across your friend’s donkey it is written: Thou shalt surely help him and not abandon him—then why not a fellow human being?”

He laughed, the shlimazel, and didn’t need to be asked again before hopping onto the wagon. “Where is a young man like you coming from?” I said.

“From Yehupetz.”

“What,” I said, “is a young man like you doing in Yehupetz?”

“A young man like myself,” he said, “is preparing for his entrance exam.”

“What,” I said, “is a young man like you studying?”

“A young man like myself,” he said, “doesn’t know yet what he is studying.”

“If so,” I said, “why is a young man like you bothering your head for nothing?”

“Don’t worry, Reb Tevye. A young man like myself,” he said, “already knows what he has to do.”

“Then tell me, since you know who I am, tell me who you are.”

“Who am I? I am a person.”

“I see you’re not a horse. I mean whose are you?”

“Whose should I be? I am God’s.”

“I know,” I said, “you are God’s. It is written: All creatures and all cattle. I mean where do you come from. Are you one of ours or maybe from Lithuania?”

“I come from Adam, the first man,” he said, “but am from around here. You know me.”

“Who then is your father? Tell me already!”

“My father was called Perchik.”

“Damn!” I spat. “Did you have to string me along all this time? So you are Perchik the cigarette-maker’s son?”

“I am,” he said, “Perchik the cigarette-maker’s son.”

“And you are taking classes?”

“And I am taking classes.”

“Well, well, very nice,” I said. “A man and a bird and a duck all try to move ahead in this world. Tell me, my young rascal, what do you live on?”

“I live on what I eat.”

“Aha, that’s good. But what,” I said, “do you eat?”

“Everything,” he said, “that they give me.”

“I understand,” I said, “you aren’t fussy. If there is enough to eat, you eat, and if there isn’t enough to eat, you bite your lip and go to bed hungry. But it’s worth it so long as you are studying. You’re comparing yourself,” I said, “to the Yehupetz rich folks. As it says in the morning prayers: All are beloved, all are elect.” I quoted a portion to him, as only Tevye can.

Do you think he took this lying down? “May the rich not live to see the day when I compare myself to them! Let them all go to hell!”

“You seem all worked up about the rich folks. Have they divided up your father’s inheritance among themselves?”

“You should know,” he said, “that you and I and all of us have a large share in their inheritance.”

“Let your enemies talk like that,” I said. “I see only one thing, that you are not a hopeless young man and that you know how to use your tongue. If,” I said, “you have time, why don’t you come to my house tonight, and we’ll talk some more and, while we’re at it, have a little supper?”

You can be sure I did not have to repeat the invitation. He arrived exactly at the moment the borscht was on the table and the cheese knishes were baking in the oven. “You have perfect timing. Everything is all set for you,” I said. “You can wash your hands or not, it’s up to you. I am not God’s watchman and will not be punished in the next world for your sins.” As I talked with this young fellow, for some reason I felt drawn to him. Maybe it’s because I like a person with whom I can talk, with whom I can discuss a biblical commentary, have a philosophical argument, speculate about life, on this, on that, and who knows what else. That’s the kind of person Tevye is.

From that time on, my young friend began coming to my house almost every day. After he was finished with his tutoring job, he would come for a rest and a visit. You can imagine how little he earned from that tutoring when you realize that the richest man in town would pay him eighteen kopeks an hour for teaching his sons while also helping him read telegrams, write addresses, and even run errands. And why not? As the passage goes: With all thy heart and with all thy soul—if you eat bread, you have to pay for it. Luckily he ate at my house, and in exchange he tutored my daughters. As it is said: An eye for an eye—a slap for a slap. He became like a member of our family. The children would bring him a glass of milk, and my wife made sure he had a shirt on his back and a pair of mended socks. We started calling him Fefferl, the Yiddish version of the Russian Perchik, and it is safe to say we all loved him as one of our own because he was by nature a fine person, simple, outgoing, a down-to-earth man, and generous, what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine.

But there was one thing I did not like about him: he kept disappearing. He would suddenly get up and leave, and as it is written in Genesis: The child is not there—Fefferl was gone! “Where have you been, my dear fly-by-night?” I would ask when he came the next day. But he was as mute as a fish. I don’t know about you, but I hate a person with secrets. I like a person who talks to you and tells you things. But he did have this virtue: once he started talking, it was a passionate, unstoppable stream, like fire and water. What a tongue — not to be stopped! He spoke out against God, against the Messiah, and against injustice, conjuring up wild schemes, all upside down, all crazy. For instance, a rich man, according to his backward reasoning, was less worthy than a poor man, who to him was a jewel. A man who was a worker was beyond estimation because he worked.

“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but will that get you any money?”

He became angry and tried to convince me that money was the root of all evil. “Money,” he said, “is the source of the world’s falsehood, and everything not done in the world out of a sense of justice.” He gave me a thousand examples and illustrations that made no sense to me at all.

“Then according to your crazy way of thinking,” I said, “it is unjust to milk my cow, and for my horse to pull my wagon?” That’s how I would confront him after every foolish statement, and I challenged his every opinion, as only Tevye can! But my Fefferl could also argue, and did he argue! I wish that he didn’t argue so well. If he has something to say, he speaks up!

One evening we were sitting in front of my house talking about philosophy. Fefferl said to me, “Do you know, Reb Tevye, that you have very capable daughters?”

“Is that so?” I said. “Thank you for that news. They have whom to take after.”

“One of them,” he went on, “the eldest, is really very bright, very mature.”

“I know that without your telling me,” I said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” My heart swelled with pride, for what father, I ask you, does not love it when someone praises his children? How was I to have been a prophet and known that from that praise would spring a passionate love affair? May God protect me! You must hear this.

In short, and there was evening and there was morning, as it says in Genesis — it was between day and night when I was making my rounds of the Boiberik dachas with my wagon when someone stopped me. I looked and saw Ephraim the matchmaker. Ephraim, you must know, is a matchmaker like all matchmakers and makes matches. When Ephraim saw me in Boiberik, he stopped me and said, “If you please, Reb Tevye, I have to ask you something.”

“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.

“That’s enough kissing,” I said. “It’s time to talk about practical matters.”

“What practical matters?” they said.

“About the dowry,” I said, “clothes, wedding expenses, this, that, and the other.”

“We don’t need anything,” they said.

“Then what do you need?”

“All we need is the wedding ceremony.” Have you ever heard of anything like that?

In short — I won’t bore you — but there was nothing I could do about it. They had a wedding, if you can call that a wedding! It certainly wasn’t the sort of wedding that befits Tevye. It was a very quiet wedding, God help us. Besides, I had my wife to deal with. She kept demanding to know why it had to be done in such haste. Try to explain to a woman what that rush was all about! Don’t you think I had to invent a story, a marvelous, wondrous story about an inheritance, a rich aunt from Yehupetz — anything so she would leave me in peace.

And sure enough, a few hours after that wonderful wedding I hitched up the horse and wagon, and the three of us got in, and off we went to the Boiberik train station. As I rode along with my young couple, I glanced at them from the corner of my eye. What a great God we have, and how cleverly He runs His world! I thought. What strange souls, wild creatures He has created! Here was this brand-new married couple: he was going away, who knew whereto, while she remained here without so much as a tear, not even for appearance’s sake! But I am not a woman. Tevye has time, watches, bites his tongue, and waits to see what will happen.

At the station several young fellows, good Kasrileukes with worn-down boots, came to say goodbye to my fly-by-night. One of them was dressed like a Russian peasant, forgive me, with his shirt over his trousers. They were whispering together quietly. Look out, Tevye, I was thinking. You may have gotten mixed up with a band of horse thieves, pickpockets, housebreakers, or counterfeiters!

On the way home from Boiberik with my Hodl, I could not restrain myself and spoke openly to her of my suspicions. She burst out laughing and assured me that they were honest, decent men whose lives were dedicated to helping others, without any concern for their own welfare. “The one with the shirt,” she said, “is the son of a rich man. He rejected his wealthy parents in Yehupetz and refuses to accept a groschen from them.”

“How about that! God’s wonders!” I said. “Quite a fine boy. If God would add to the shirt he was wearing over his trousers and his long hair a harmonica or a dog to follow him, he would really be quite a sight!” I tried to settle the score with her, as well as with him, by letting out my bitter heart at her — poor thing. And her response? Nothing! And Esther spoke not—she pretended not to understand what I was saying. I talked about Fefferl, and she talked about the well-being of the community, the workers, and other such things. “What do I care,” I said, “about the well-being of your community and your workers if you keep it all a secret? There is a proverb: Where there are secrets, there is thievery. So tell me straight out — where did Fefferl go, and why?”

“I’ll tell you anything,” she said, “but not that. Better not to ask. Believe me,” she said, “in time you will know everything. God willing, you will soon hear much good news!”

“Amen, let us hope so,” I said. “From your lips to God’s ears! May our enemies,” I said, “have as much good health as I understand what is happening with you and what this game is about!”

“That,” she said, “is the trouble. You won’t understand.”

“Tell me, is it so complicated? It seems to me that with God’s help, I understand far more complicated things.”

“It’s not something you can understand with your mind alone. This is something you must feel, feel with your heart,” Hodl said to me, her face shining and her eyes glowing. These daughters of mine, I tell you, when they get involved in something, it is with body and soul and heart!

I can tell you, a week and two and three and four and five and six and seven passed, and there was neither voice nor money—no letter, no news. “Fefferl is gone!” I said, and glanced at my Hodl. Her poor face was drained of color. She kept doing small chores around the house, trying to forget her great sorrow, but never once did she mention his name, as if Fefferl had never existed!

But one day I came home and found my Hodl walking around with eyes swollen from weeping. Not long before a shlimazel with long hair had come and taken her aside and had whispered something to her. Aha! I thought, it was that young fellow who rejected his parents and who wore his shirt over his trousers. So now I called my Hodl out into the yard and confronted her: “You must tell me, daughter, do you have news from him?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he, your husband?”

“He is far away,” she said.

“What is he doing?”

“He’s in prison!”

“He’s in prison?”

“He’s in prison.”

“Where is he in prison? Why is he in prison?”

She looked me straight in the eyes and remained silent.

“Tell me, my daughter, I assume it is not for theft. I don’t understand. If he isn’t a thief or a swindler, why is he in prison, for what good reason?”

She was silent. And Esther spoke not. She said not a word.

“If you don’t want to speak,” I said, “you don’t have to. He’s your headache, not mine. Serves him right!” But inside my heart was breaking for her. I am, after all, a father, as they say in the prayers: Like as a father pitieth his children—a father remains a father.

Well, it was the evening of Hoshana Raba, the last day of Succos. On holidays it’s a custom of mine to rest, and my horse also rests, as it says in the Torah: Neither thou nor thine ox nor thine ass—you and your wife and your horse. Also at that time of year in Boiberik there was almost nothing to do. One blow of the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur and off they all ran, the dachniks, like mice during a famine, and Boiberik was emptied out. At those times I like to sit on my stoop in front of my house. For me it’s the best time of the year. The days are rare gifts. The sun isn’t as hot as an oven but warms you gently, delightfully. The woods are still green, the pines give off their pungent tar aroma, and the woods look like they’re dressed for the holidays, like God’s succah. Right here, I thought, is where God celebrates Succos, not in town where it is noisy with people running around, panting for breath, chasing after a crust of bread, and all you hear is money, money, money!

I have not yet talked about the nights of Hoshana Raba. They are like paradise. The sky is dark blue, and the stars twinkle, shimmer, shine, and blink like human eyes. And sometimes a star shoots through the sky like an arrow, leaving behind a momentary green trail. It is a falling star — someone’s luck has fallen. As many stars as there are, that is how many Jewish fates there are. May it not be my bad luck, I thought, and Hodl came to mind. In the last few days she seemed to revive, to become livelier — her face changed. Someone had brought her a letter from him, her shlimazel. I really wanted to know what he was writing, but I didn’t want to ask. If she wouldn’t talk, I wouldn’t talk. Sha! Tevye is not a woman. Tevye has time.

As I was thinking about Hodl, along she came. She sat down next to me on the stoop, looked to all sides, and said to me quietly: “Listen to me, Papa. I have something to tell you. I must say goodbye to you now — forever.”

She said it so quietly, I could barely hear her. I will never forget the way she looked at me. I thought she meant she was going to drown herself. Why? Recently, may it not happen to anyone, a girl living not far from us fell in love with a village Gentile, and because of him — well, you know what happened. On account of that her mother became sick and died, and her father let his business go and became a pauper. The village Gentile thought it over and decided to go off with someone else. The girl then went to the river, threw herself in, and drowned herself.

“What do you mean?” I said. “You are saying goodbye to me forever?” And I looked down so she would not see my stricken face.

“It means,” she said, “I am going away tomorrow, very early, and we will never see each other. . never again.”

Ah, she was not thinking of harming herself — my heart was eased. It could have been worse, but it could also have been better. “Whereto,” I said, “if I may have the honor of knowing?”

“I am going to him.”

“To him? Where is he now?”

“For the time being,” she said, “he is in prison, but soon they will be sending him away.”

“Are you going to say goodbye to him?” I was playing dumb.

“No, I am going to follow him there.”

“There? Where is that? What do they call the place?”

“We don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it’s far away, terribly far, and the way is dangerous.”

She seemed to be speaking with pride, as if he had done some great deed for which he deserved a medal made from a pound of iron! What could I say? Most fathers would have scolded her, slapped her, punished her, or they would have imagined all the worst that could happen to her. But Tevye is not a woman. I am of the opinion that anger is the work of the devil. And so I replied as usual with a commentary: “I see, my daughter, that you have made your decision. As it says in the Holy Torah, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother. Because of Fefferl you are abandoning your parents and going off to a place you don’t know, somewhere — as I once read in a storybook — over a desert beyond the frozen sea, where Alexander of Macedonia sailed and was lost on a distant island among wild savages.”

I said it half-jokingly, half in anger, as my heart was breaking. But Tevye is not a woman, Tevye kept it inside himself.

Nor did Hodl lose her dignity. She answered every question I asked, quietly, unhurriedly, thoughtfully. Tevye’s daughters know how to speak.

And though my head was bowed and my eyes were lowered, I could see Hodl — her face was like the moon, pale and round, and her voice was muted, trembling. Should I throw my arms around her, beg her, plead with her not to leave? But it would be useless. Those daughters of mine — when they fall in love, it’s with body and soul and heart and life itself!

As you can imagine, we sat on the stoop quite a while, almost through the night, more silent than speaking, and when we spoke, it was almost like not speaking — no more than a word here, a word there. I asked her, whoever heard of a girl getting married to a boy for the sake of following him to the ends of the earth?

And she answered me: “With him it doesn’t matter. I will go anywhere with him, even to the ends of the earth.” I tried to explain with logic, as usual, how foolish that was. Then she explained to me with her logic that I will never understand. So I told her a parable about a hen that hatched ducklings. As soon as the ducklings were able to stand on their legs, they jumped into the water and swam away, while the poor hen stood there clucking. “What do you say to that, my dear daughter?”

“What can I say? It’s certainly a pity for the hen. But because the hen stood there clucking, is that a reason the ducklings shouldn’t swim?”

Do you appreciate those words? Tevye’s daughter spoke to the point.

Meanwhile time wasn’t standing still. Day was breaking, and my wife was stirring in the house. Several times she sent someone out to us, to say it was time for bed, but it did no good. So she stuck her head out of the window and said to me, with her usual fine blessing, “Tevye, what are you still doing out there?”

“Be quiet, Golde,” I said. “As it says in the Psalms: Why do the heathens rage! — you’ve forgotten that it’s Hoshana Raba today? That’s the day when our fates are decided and the verdict is sealed. So you must stay up. Listen to me, Golde,” I said, “please go and light the samovar, and let us have tea while I hitch up the wagon. I am going with Hodl to the train.”

And once again I manufactured for her a lie, saying that Hodl was going off to Yehupetz, and from there somewhere else, on account of you-know-who’s inheritance. “And it’s possible,” I said, “she’ll remain there all winter and perhaps over winter and summer and another winter. And so we have to give her provisions — some linens, a dress, a pair of pillows, pillowcases, a little of this and that.”

That’s what I ordered Golde to do, and I insisted Hodl and her sisters were not to cry. It was Hoshana Raba. “On this day,” I said, “you’re not allowed to cry. The law definitely prohibits it!” But they paid no attention to the law and did cry, and when it came time to say goodbye, they were all wailing — the mother, the children, and even Hodl herself. And my eldest daughter Tzeitl was also there — she comes to us for the holidays with her Motl Komzoil. Both sisters clasped each other closely — they could hardly be separated.

I alone was like steel and iron. That’s easy to say, steel and iron. Inside I was more like a boiling samovar, but for anyone to see it — feh! Tevye is not a woman.

All the way to Boiberik we were silent, but when we were approaching the train station, I asked her once and for all to tell me what Fefferl had done. “Everything has to have a reason.”

She swore that he was innocent. “He never cares about himself. Everything he does is for the sake of others, for the sake of humanity, especially for those who toil with their hands, the workers.” Now be a sage and try to figure that out!

“So he worries about humanity. Why then,” I said, “doesn’t humanity worry about him if he is such a wonderful person? Please give him my regards, your Alexander of Macedonia. Tell him that I am relying on him as an honorable man not to mistreat my daughter and to make sure she writes an occasional letter to an old father.”

And as I spoke, didn’t she suddenly throw her arms around my neck and start to cry? “Let us say goodbye,” she said. “Be well, Papa. God only knows when we shall see each other again.”

Well, that was too much for me. I could no longer control myself. I remembered this same Hodl when she was still a baby and I held her in my arms. . in my arms. .

Forgive me, Pani, for acting like a woman. I must tell you what sort of daughter Hodl is! You should see the letters she writes. She is a gift from God! She is right here. . right here. . deep, deep. . I cannot begin to say it. .

Do you know what, Pani Sholem Aleichem? Let’s better speak of something happier. What do you hear about the cholera in Odessa?

CHAVA

WRITTEN IN 1906.

Give thanks unto the Lord for He is good. Whatever He ordains is for the best. It has to be for the best, because just try being wiser and making it better! I thought I would be clever, twisting the meaning of the commentaries this way and that, but it made no difference whatsoever. I took my hand away from my heart and said to myself, Tevye, you’re a fool! You can’t change the world. The One Above gave us the great sorrows of child-raising, which means: when children cause you grief, you must count it as love. As an example, take my eldest daughter, Tzeitl, who fell in love with the tailor Motl Komzoil. I have nothing against him. True, he’s a simple soul, doesn’t understand any of the fine points in a text, can’t master the small print. But what can I do? Not everyone can be learned! Still and all, he is an honest person and works hard. They already have a full house of little ones, you should see, kayn eyn horeh, while they both struggle to survive in honor and dignity. When you talk to Tzeitl, she says that she is happy as can be, it couldn’t be better, but there is not enough food. There you have daughter number one.

Well, about my second daughter, Hodl, I don’t need to tell you, you know about her. I lost her — she’s gone forever! Only God knows if my eyes will ever look upon her, unless it’s in the world to come, may it be in a hundred twenty years. To this day, when I talk about Hodl, I cannot calm myself, it’s the end of me! I should forget her, you say? How can you forget a living person, especially a child like Hodl? You should see the letters she writes me; they would make your heart melt. She says things are going very well for them. He is in prison, and she is earning money. She takes in laundry, reads books, and sees him every week. She hopes things will calm down between us, she says. One day the sun will rise and it will be light, and he, along with many others like himself, will be set free, and then they will get down to the real business of turning the world on its head. Nu? How do you like that? Good? Ha! What does the Master of the Universe decide to do? He is, after all, as you say, a merciful and compassionate God. He says to me: “Wait, Tevye, I will make it so you forget all your past troubles!”

And so it was — just listen. I would not tell this to anyone else because the pain is great and the shame is even greater! But as it is written: Shall I hide from Abraham? — do I have any secrets from you? Whatever I live through, I tell you. What then is the problem? I ask but one thing of you: let it remain between us. I tell you again, the pain is great, but the shame, the shame is even greater!

In a word, as it is written in the chapter: The Holy One, blessed be He, wished to grant merit—God wanted to do Tevye a favor, and so He blessed him with seven daughters, all pretty, gifted, healthy, and clever, I tell you, like slender young pine trees! Oy, how I wish they were ugly and bad-tempered. It might have been better for them and healthier for me. What is the good, I ask you, of having a good horse if it stays in its stall? What is the good of having pretty daughters if you are stuck with them in the middle of nowhere? We hardly see a living person except Ivan Poperilo, the Gentile mayor of the town; the writer Chvedka Galagan, a tall Gentile boy with thick hair and high boots; and the priest, may his name be eradicated. I cannot bear to hear his name. Not because I am a Jew and he a priest — on the contrary, we’ve been on friendly terms for many years, not that we would invite each other for celebrations or holidays. It’s just that if we meet, we say good morning, have a good year, what’s new.

I avoid long discussions with this priest because right away we get into the whole business of your God and our God. I cut him off with a proverb and tell him we have a fitting commentary. Then he cuts me off and says he knows the commentaries as well as I do and perhaps better, and then he begins to recite from memory from our Bible, pronouncing it just like a Christian: “Bereshit bara alokim”—every time, every time the same. So I interrupt him and tell him we have a midrash. “A midrash,” he says, “is the same as Talmud,” and he dislikes Talmud because Talmud is, he says, “nothing but a swindle.” I get very angry and pour out whatever comes out of my mouth. Do you think that bothers him? Not at all. He looks at me and laughs as he smooths his beard. I tell you, there is nothing worse in the world than when you insult someone, make mud out of him, and he doesn’t say a word. Your blood is boiling, and he is sitting and smiling! At that time I didn’t understand that little smile, but now I know what it meant.

One evening before nightfall I came home and encountered the writer Chvedka standing outside with my Chava, my third daughter, the one after Hodl. Seeing me, the young man spun around, tipped his hat, and left. I asked Chava, “What is Chvedka doing here?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“We were just talking.”

“What business do you have with Chvedka?”

“We’ve known each other a long time.”

“Mazel tov to you for that friendship! A fine friend, Chvedka!”

“Do you know him? Do you know who he is?”

“Who he is, I don’t know, I haven’t seen his family tree,” I said. “But he must have a great line. His father had to be a shepherd, or a janitor, or just a plain drunkard.”

“What his father was I don’t know and don’t want to know, because to me all people are equal. But he is not an ordinary person, of that I am sure,” she said.

“Well then, what sort of person is he? Let’s hear.”

“If I told you,” she said, “you wouldn’t understand. Chvedka is a second Gorky.”

“A second Gorky? Who then was the first Gorky?”

“Gorky,” she said, “is almost the most important man in the world.”

“Where does he live,” I said, “this sage of yours? What is his occupation, and what words of wisdom has he uttered lately?”

“Gorky is a famous author, a person who writes books, and a dear, rare, honest person who comes from simple people. He never studied anywhere but is self-taught. Here is his portrait.” She removed a small photograph from her pocket.

“So this is your sage Reb Gorky?” I said. “I could swear I’ve seen him somewhere, either at the train station carrying sacks or in the woods hauling logs.”

“Is it a fault in your eyes,” she said, “that a person works with his hands? Don’t you yourself work? And don’t we work?”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. We have a special verse in the Bible: For thou shall eat the labor of thy hands—if you don’t work, you won’t eat. But still and all, I don’t understand what Chvedka is doing here. I would be happier,” I said, “if you knew him from a distance. You mustn’t forget whence you come and whither you go—who you are and who he is.”

“God created all people equal,” she said to me.

“Yes, yes, God created Adam in His own image,” I said. “But you mustn’t forget that everyone must seek his own, as it says, To every man as he is able.”

“Amazing!” she said. “You have a quotation for everything! Maybe you can find one about how people separated themselves into Jews and Gentiles, into masters and slaves, into landowners and beggars?”

“Now, now! I think you’ve gone too far, my daughter!” And I gave her to understand that the world had been that way since the Creation.

“Why should the world be like that?” she asked me.

“Because that’s the way God created it.”

“Why did He create it like that?”

“Eh! If we begin asking questions, why this and why that, it’s a story without an end!” I said.

“That’s why God gave us reason, so we could ask questions.”

“We have a custom that when a hen begins to crow like a rooster, you should take it immediately to the slaughterer. As we say in the prayers: He giveth the rooster knowledge to discern the dawn from the night.”

“Haven’t you two prattled enough?” my Golde called from the house. “The borscht is on the table for an hour, and he’s chanting prayers!”

“Another voice heard from!” I said. “Not for nothing did our sages say, The fool has seven traits—a woman has nine yards of talk. We are talking about serious matters, and along she comes with her dairy borscht!”

“The dairy borscht,” she said, “is as important as all your serious talk.”

“Mazel tov! We have here a new philosopher, fresh from the oven!” I said. “As if I didn’t have enough enlightened daughters, now Tevye’s wife has also started to spread her wings and fly!”

“If that’s the case,” she said, “drop dead!” How’s that for a fine dinner invitation to a hungry man?

So let us leave the princess and get to the prince, meaning the priest, may his name be blotted out! One evening I was coming home with the empty milk cans rattling around, and I met him in his iron carriage. He was driving his horses by himself, his combed beard blowing in the wind. And he was the last person I wanted to meet.

“Good evening!” he called to me. “Didn’t you recognize me?”

“It’s a sign you’ll get rich soon.” I doffed my hat and hurried on.

“Stay awhile, Tevel, what’s the hurry? I need to say a few words to you.”

“So long as they are good words, all right, and if not,” I said, “let it wait for another time.”

“What do you mean, ‘for another time’?”

“ ‘Another time’ to me means when the Messiah comes.”

“The Messiah,” he said, “has already come.”

“So I’ve heard from you, more than once,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me, little father, something new?”

“That’s what I wanted to do. I want to have a talk with you about your daughter.”

My heart started pounding. What did he have to do with my daughter?

“My daughters are, God forbid, not the kind who need someone to talk for them. They can speak for themselves.”

“But this is the sort of thing,” he said, “that she herself cannot speak about. Someone else must speak for her because it is a very important matter concerning her future.”

“What concern is my daughter’s future to you?” I said. “As long as we are discussing my child’s future, am I not my child’s father till a hundred and twenty?”

“Indeed, you are your child’s father,” he said, “but you are blind to what she is doing. She is moving into another world, and you do not understand her, or you don’t want to understand her.”

“Whether I don’t understand her,” I said, “or don’t want to understand her, that’s something else again. We can discuss it a bit. But what does that have to do with you, little father?”

“It has quite a bit to do with me,” he said, “because she is now in my custody.”

“What do you mean, she’s in your custody?”

“It means she is now in my care.” He looked me straight in the eyes and stroked his fine old beard.

I sprang back. “My child is under your care? By what right?” I was about to lose my temper.

“Now don’t get excited, Tevel!” he replied rather coldly, with a little smile. “We can discuss this calmly. You know I’m not your enemy, God forbid, even though you are a Jew. You know that I admire Jews and that my heart aches because of their obstinacy, their stubborn refusal to accept the fact that we mean everything only for their own good.”

“Do not speak to me about my own good, little father,” I said. “Every word you say now is a drop of poison, a bullet in my heart. If you are as good a friend of mine as you say, I will ask you but one favor — leave my daughter alone.”

“You are a foolish man,” he said. “Nothing bad will happen to your daughter. Something good now lies ahead of her. She is taking a bridegroom — and what a bridegroom.”

“Amen!” I laughed ironically, but in my heart a hellish fire was burning. “And who, may I have the honor of asking, is the bridegroom. Am I permitted to know that?”

“You surely know him,” he said. “He is a very gallant young man, very honest and well educated, though self-taught. He is deeply in love with your daughter and wants to marry her, but he cannot because he is not a Jew.”

Chvedka! I thought, the blood rushing to my head. I broke into a cold sweat and could barely hold myself together. But to let him see that — no, he would not live to see the day! I grabbed the horse’s reins, gave them a snap, and fled without a goodbye.

When I arrived home — ay ay ay, the house was in turmoil! The children were in bed crying into their pillows, and my Golde looked more dead than alive. I searched for Chava. Where was she? No Chava! I did not want to ask where she was. I did not need to ask, God help me! I felt like a tortured sinner suffering in his grave. A fiery rage was burning in me, toward whom I did not know. I wanted to find something with which to whip myself, but instead I yelled at the children and let out my bitter heart at my wife.

I could not settle down, so I went outside to the horse’s stall to feed him — and found him with one leg twisted around a block of wood. I took a stick and beat him with it. “May you fall dead, shlimazel of mine!” I shouted. “You won’t get as much as one oat from me! Trouble, if that’s what you want, I can give you plenty, along with anguish, heartache, grief, and suffering!”

But even as I was yelling at the horse, I realized it was a poor innocent creature — what did I have against him? So I spread some chopped-up straw before him and promised that on Shabbes, God willing, he would have more to eat.

I went back into the house and lay down in a state of misery, my head splitting with contemplating what this all meant. What is my trespass? What is my sin? — how had I, Tevye, sinned more than anyone else, that I had been punished more than all other Jews? Oy, God in heaven, God in heaven! What are we and what is our life? — who am I that You always have me in mind? You never forget about me when it comes to disaster, catastrophe, or affliction!

Thinking all this, lying as if on hot coals, I heard my pitiful wife groan. It tore at my heart. “Golde, are you asleep?”

“No. What is it?”

“We are as good as dead,” I said. “Do you have any ideas about what we can do?”

“You are asking me,” she said, “what we can do? So it has come to this? A child gets up in the morning, healthy and strong. She gets dressed, hugs and kisses me — and begins weeping without saying why. I thought, God forbid, she had lost her mind! ‘What is it, daughter?’ I asked her. She said only that she would go out for a while to the cows. Then she vanished. I waited an hour, I waited two, I waited three — where was Chava? Chava was gone! I called to the children to run over to the priest’s.”

“How did you know she was at the priest’s?”

“How did I know?” she said. “Woe is me. Do you think I don’t have eyes or that I am not her mother?”

“If you have eyes and you are her mother, why did you keep quiet and not tell me?”

“I should tell you? When are you at home?” she said. “And if I tell you something, do you listen to me? No, right away you answer with a commentary or a quote. You stuff my head with biblical quotes and think you’ve solved every problem.”

While Golde was saying this, she was crying in the dark. She has a point, I thought, but what does a woman understand? My heart ached for her, and I could not bear to hear her groaning and weeping.

I said to her, “Golde, you are angry because I have a commentary on everything. But I must answer you with another one. It is written, Like as a father pitieth his children—a father loves his child. Why isn’t it written, Like as a mother pitieth her children? Because a mother is not a father. A father can talk to a child in a different way. You’ll see. Tomorrow morning, God willing, I’ll go see her.”

“Let’s hope,” she said, “you can see her, and him too. He’s not a bad person, even though he is a priest — he does have compassion for people. You’ll beg him, fall at his feet. Maybe he’ll take pity on us.”

“Who — the priest, cursed be his name? You expect me to bow down to the priest? Are you crazy or just out of your mind? Do not open your mouth to the devil! My enemies will not live to see that day!”

“Ach! See what I mean? You’re starting in again!”

“What, did you think I’d let myself be pushed around by a woman? I should live by your female reasoning?”

And with such conversations the night passed for us. At last came the first crow of the rooster. I got up, said my prayers, took my whip, and went directly to the priest’s house. A woman is truly a woman, but where else could I go? Should I bury myself alive?

To make a long story short, his dogs welcomed me with a fine good morning by preparing to ruin my caftan and taste my Jewish calves to see if they were good enough for their dogs’ teeth. Luckily I had brought along my whip and gave them to understand the quote Not a dog shall bark—a dog should have something to bark about. Hearing their barking and my shouting, the priest and his wife ran out, shooed off the happy throng, and invited me into the house. They received me as a guest and offered tea. I said the samovar wasn’t necessary, I had something to say to him, between the two of us. The priest understood and signaled to his wife to kindly shut the door behind her. I came to the point without any fanfare, asking him, first of all, if he believed in God. Then I asked him whether he knew how it felt to separate a father from a beloved child. Also I asked him what in his opinion was right and what was wrong, and what he would think of a person who stole into someone’s house and wrecked it.

Naturally he was confused by all my questions. “Tevel, you are an intelligent person — why do you ask so many questions at a time and expect me to answer them all at once? Be patient, and I will answer them all, the first one first and the last one last.”

“No,” I said to him, “you will never answer them, little father. Do you know why? Because I already know all your answers. Just tell me this: is there any hope I will get my child back?”

He sat up. “What do you mean, back? Nothing bad, God forbid, will happen to your daughter. On the contrary!”

“I know, I know you want to make her happy! I am not speaking of that,” I said. “I want to know where my child is and if I can see her.”

“Everything yes,” he said, “but not that.”

“At least you are being frank,” I said, “speaking the truth as it really is! Farewell, and may God repay you in equal measure and twice as much!”

I came home and found my Golde curled up like a black ball of yarn in bed, having no more tears to shed. “Get up, my wife. Take off your shoes and let us sit shiva, as God commanded. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—we are neither the first nor the last. Let us imagine,” I said, “that we never had a Chava, or let us imagine that, like Hodl, she left for the ends of the earth, and who knows if we shall ever see her again. God is compassionate and good and knows what He is doing!”

Thus I bared my heart as the tears choked me like a bone stuck in my throat. But Tevye is no woman, Tevye controls himself! As you know, that’s easy to say, because, first of all, the shame! But how could I control myself when I was losing a living child, a precious gem of a child who was deeply embedded in my heart and her mother’s heart, almost more than the other children, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because she was sickly as a child and went through so much. We often sat up with her entire nights, several times snatching her from the jaws of death, reviving her as you would revive a crushed chick, because if God wills it, He brings the dead to life. As we say in the Hallel: I shall not die, but I will live—if you are not fated to die, you won’t die. Or maybe it was because she was such a good child, so devoted, who always loved us both. So the question was, how could she do this to us?

It was, first of all, our bad luck. I don’t know about you, but I believe in Providence. And second of all, it was something evil, foreordained, do you hear? A kind of sorcery! You may laugh at me — and I am not so great a fool as to believe in elves, demons, ghosts, and other such nonsense. But I do believe in magic, you see, because what else would explain it if not magic? Just listen further, and you will say the same.

When the holy books say, Regardless of thy will, thou livest, they know what they are talking about. A person does not take his own life. There is no affliction that does not in time heal, and no sorrow that is not forgotten. What can you do about it? Man is like the beasts that perish—a man must work, toil, slave, and suffer for a piece of bread.

What else was there to do? We all went back to work, my wife and children to the milk jugs, I to the horse and wagon. The world goes on its accustomed course—the world does not stand still. I told everyone in the household that Chava was not to be remembered or mentioned — no more Chava! erased! — and that was it. I gathered up some dairy, fresh merchandise, and went off to my customers in Boiberik.

When I arrived in Boiberik, my customers celebrated and rejoiced to see me. “How is our Reb Tevye? Why don’t we see you anymore?”

“How should I be?” I said. “We renew our days as of old—the same shlimazel as before. One of my calves died.”

“Why is it,” they said, “that all the miracles happen to you?” And the crowd, one after another, grilled me about what kind of calf had died, and how much it cost me. How many calves did I have left? They laughed and were cheerful as usual. Rich folks enjoy teasing a poor man, a shlimazel, after a meal, when they are in good spirits and the weather is fine and it is hot and green and they feel like snoozing. But Tevye can take a joke. I would rather die than let on what is going on in my heart!

I finished up with my customers and started back for home with the empty milk jugs. While riding through the woods, I loosened the horse’s reins, to let him go slowly and enjoy nibbling grass. And I sank into my own thoughts, meditating on what you will — life and death, this world and the next, the meaning of life, and other such thoughts — in order to distract myself from her, my Chava. But just for spite, all I could think about was Chava.

I pictured her as she was now, tall and pretty and fresh as a young pine, or even as she was as a small child, sickly and frail as a little chick in my hands, her little head lying on my shoulder. “What do you want, Chava’le? A piece of candy?” I’d ask. Forgetting for a moment what she had done, my heart was drawn to her, my soul yearned for her, longed for her. But then I remembered, and a rage ignited in my heart against her and against him and against the whole world and against myself because I could not forget for a minute. Why couldn’t I erase her, tear her from my heart? Didn’t she deserve it from me?

So did Tevye really have to be a Jew among Jews? to slave all his days, with his nose to the grindstone, to raise children who would in an instant rip themselves from him, fall like an acorn from a tree, and be swept off by wind and smoke? Here grows a tree, an oak in the woods, I thought, and a man comes along with an ax, chops off a branch, and another branch, and another. What is the tree without the branches? I ask him. Why don’t you go and chop down the tree altogether, let there be an end to it? What good is an oak trunk standing naked and bare in the woods?!

As I was pondering this question, I realized my horse had suddenly stopped. What was going on? I lifted my eyes and looked — Chava! She was the same Chava as before, not changed by a hair, even wearing the same clothes! My first impulse was to jump off the wagon, take her in my arms, and kiss her, but a thought held me back: Tevye, what are you, a woman? So I pulled on the reins—“Giddyap, shlimazel!”—and turned right. I looked, and Chava was also turning right, waving her hand as if to say: “Stop awhile, I have to tell you something.”

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!

SHPRINTZE

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?

And it came to pass—here’s what happened. It was just before Shevuos, and I was delivering dairy to one of my customers, a wealthy young widow from Katerineslav who had arrived in Boiberik for the summer with her son Ahronchik. Naturally I was the first person she became acquainted with in Boiberik.

“You were recommended,” the widow said, “for having the best dairy.”

“How can it be otherwise?” I said to her. “Not for nothing did King Solomon say that a good name is heard like a shofar everywhere, and if you want,” I said, “I will tell you what the commentaries have to say about it.” But she interrupted me and told me she was a widow and was not learned in those matters, didn’t know one commentary from another. The most important thing was for the butter to be fresh and the cheese tasty. Nu, can you talk to a woman?

From then on I came around to the Katerineslaver widow twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, like clockwork, and delivered her small order of dairy without ever asking whether or not she needed it. I became quite friendly with her and naturally looked around at the way she lived, peeked into the kitchen, and a few times said what I thought. The first time, of course, the maid gave me a scolding and told me to stop poking around in other people’s pots. The second time they listened to what I had to say, and the third time the widow asked for my opinion, because she realized who Tevye was. The long and the short of it was that she confided in me her problem, her pain, her sorrow — Ahronchik! This young man of twenty was interested only in horses, bicycles, and fishing, and beyond that he cared for nothing — not for business or for making money. His father had left him a fine inheritance, almost a million, but he didn’t bother to look after it! All he knew, she said, was to spend money with a free hand! “Where is the boy?” I asked. “Just let me at him. I’ll have a talk with him about morals, quote a few verses, and read him a midrash.”

“You would do better to bring him a horse than a midrash!” she laughed.

Just as we were talking about him, Ahronchik himself arrived, a slender, tall, healthy young man, full of energy, wearing a broad sash around his waist and a pocket watch stuck into his belt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

“Where have you been?” his mother asked.

“I went sailing,” he said, “and caught fish.”

“Fine work,” I said, “for a fellow like yourself. Back home your money is dwindling away, and you’re here catching fish!”

My widow turned red as a beet. She surely expected her son to grab me by the collar with one strong arm and smite me as the Lord smote the Egyptians, with signs and symbols—that is, give me two smacks and toss me out like a broken potsherd. But no! Tevye is not frightened of such things! When I have something to say, I say it!

Here’s what happened. When the boy heard my words, he stepped back, clasped his hands behind him, regarded me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, and let out a strange whistle. Suddenly he began laughing so hard that we were both afraid the poor boy had instantly gone mad. What else is there to say? From that moment on we became the best of friends! I must tell you I grew more and more fond of the fellow, even though he was a rake and a spendthrift, too free with money, and something of a fool. For instance, if he ran across a beggar, he would put his hand in his pocket and give away whatever he found there without counting it. Or he would take off a perfectly good new coat and give it to someone. Who did such things?

It was hard on his mother. “What can I do?” she would lament to me, and beg me to have a talk with him. I agreed — why not? Would it cost me anything? I sat down to talk things over with him, threw in examples and some quotations, mixed in a midrash or two, and a few proverbs as only Tevye can.

He seemed to enjoy listening to me and asked what my life was like at home. “I would love,” he said, “to come to you sometimes, Reb Tevye.”

“If you want to come to Tevye,” I said to him, “you just come on over to my farm. You have enough horses and bicycles, and in a pinch you could use your own two legs. It isn’t far, and it’s easy to cut through the woods.”

“When are you at home?”

“You can only find me at home,” I said, “Shabbes or on holidays. Listen, do you know what? God willing, a week from Friday is Shevuos. If you like,” I said, “walk over to us at the farm, and my wife will treat you to cheese blintzes the likes of which your blessed ancestors never partook of in Egypt.”

“What’s this? You know I’m weak in biblical quotations.”

“I know,” I said. “You are weak. If you had gone to cheder, as I did, you too would know what the rabbis know.”

He laughed. “Good, you will have me as a guest! I will come to you, Reb Tevye, on the first day of Shevuos with a few friends for blintzes. But see to it they are hot!”

“Fire and flame inside and out,” I said, “from the frying pan right into your mouth!”

I arrived home. “Golde,” I called out. “We have guests for Shevuos!”

“Mazel tov to you,” she said. “Who are they?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “You just prepare eggs. Cheese and butter, we have enough, praise God. You’ll make blintzes for four extra people.” I said, “They really know how to eat but don’t begin to know about Rashi.”

“I knew it. You went and picked up a shlimazel from the land of the starving.”

“You’re a silly fool, Golde!” I said. “What would be so terrible if we did feed a poor person some Shevuos blintzes? But you should know, my most esteemed, honored, and beloved wife, that one of our Shevuos guests is the widow’s son, the one they call Ahronchik. I told you about him.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s another story.”

The power of millions! Even my Golde, when she sniffs out money, becomes another person. That’s the kind of world it is — what can you do? As it is written in the Hallel: Gold and silver, the work of man’s hands—wealth ruins a person.

The bright spring holiday of Shevuos arrived. I don’t need to tell you how lovely, green, and warm my farm becomes at Shevuos. The richest man in town would wish for such blue skies, such green woods fragrant with pines, and such delicious pasture grass for the cows, which stand and chew and look right into your eyes as if to say, “Always give us grass like this, and we won’t hold back any milk!” No, say what you will, I wouldn’t trade it for the best livelihood in the city. Where in the city do you have this sky? How do we say in the Hallel: The heavens are the Lord’s—it is a God-given sky! In the city if you raise your head, what do you see? A brick wall, a roof, a chimney — but where is there a tree?

When my guests came to my farm for Shevuos, they could not get over it. Four young fellows came on horseback, one behind the other. And Ahronchik, I tell you, sat on an Arabian steed! You couldn’t buy that horse for three hundred rubles!

“Welcome, guests!” I said to them. “I see that in honor of Holy Shevuos you’ve come riding on horseback? That’s all right. Tevye is not one of the pious ones either, and if you are punished for it in the world to come, it won’t hurt me. Ay, Golde! Get the blintzes ready, and let’s carry the table outside. I have nothing to show my guests in the house.”

“Shprintze! Teibl! Beilke! Where are you? Move faster!” I ordered my daughters, who brought out a table with benches, a tablecloth, platters, spoons, forks, and salt. Right after that came Golde with the blintzes, piping hot, steaming, straight from the frying pan, delicious, plump, and sweet as honey! My guests could not praise the blintzes enough.

“Why are you standing there?” I said to Golde, “Go on, say the verse again. Today is Shevuos, and you have to repeat the prayer to welcome the guests.” And my Golde said it, then filled the serving dish again, and Shprintze brought the blintzes to the table. I noticed that this Ahronchik was staring at my Shprintze, not taking his eyes off her! What did he see in her? “Eat,” I said to him. “Why don’t you eat?”

“What do you think I am doing?” he said.

“You’re looking at my Shprintze,” I said. Everyone laughed, and my Shprintze laughed as well. They were all happy, all enjoying themselves. It was a happy Shevuos for all! How could I have guessed that this happiness would turn into great sorrow and torment, that God would wreak punishment on my head, darkening and devastating my life?

A man is a fool! An intelligent man must not allow things to touch his heart and must understand that the way it is, is the way it’s supposed to be, because if it had to be otherwise, it wouldn’t be the way it is! Don’t we say in the Psalms, Put your trust in God? Trust in God, and He will make it so that you lie nine cubits deep in the earth baking bagels in the netherworld, and still you must say, this too is for the best! Listen to what can happen in the world, but listen with understanding, because here is where the real story begins.

And it was evening and it was day. One night I came home exhausted from a day of running from dacha to dacha in Boiberik. Outside my house I found hitched to the door a familiar-looking horse that I could have sworn was Ahronchik’s Arabian, the one I had admired and valued at three hundred rubles. I went up and slapped the horse’s flank with one hand and with the other scratched his neck and ruffled his mane. “Here, my good fellow,” I said to him, “my handsome fellow! What are you doing here?” He turned his fine head to me and looked at me with intelligent eyes, as if to say, “Why are you asking me? Ask my master.”

I went into the house. “Tell me, dearest Golde, what is Ahronchik doing here?” I asked.

“How should I know? He’s one of your friends,” she said.

“Where is he?”

“He went with the children for a stroll in the woods.”

“A stroll? Out of the clear blue sky? Why?” I asked my wife to bring me food. Having finished eating, I wondered why I was so worked up. If a person came to visit, did I really have to be in such a huff? On the contrary.

Just then I looked up. My girls were walking with the young man, carrying bouquets of flowers. First came the two younger ones, Teibl and Beilke, and behind them, my Shprintze with Ahronchik.

“Good evening!”

Ahronchik was standing in a peculiar way, stroking his horse, chewing a blade of grass. Then he declared, “Reb Tevye! I want to do some business with you. Let’s trade horses.”

“You haven’t found anyone else to make fun of?” I said.

“No, I am very serious,” he said.

“You are really serious? How much did your horse cost?”

“How much,” he said, “do you think he’s worth?”

“I’m afraid he’s worth three hundred rubles and maybe a bit more.”

He burst out laughing and said the horse cost more than three times as much. “So? Are we making a trade?” he said.

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. What did he mean, he would trade his steed for my shlimazel! I told him to put it off for another time. Was that the reason he had come here? I asked him jokingly. If so, it was a wasted trip.

He answered me in all seriousness. “I came here, actually, for another reason. Be so kind as to take a little stroll with me.”

What kind of stroll did he have in mind? I wondered, but went along with him to the woods. The sun had long ago set, the green woods were darkening, the frogs from the pond were croaking, and the grass was deliciously fragrant. Ahronchik walked and I walked; he was silent and I was silent. Then he stopped and cleared his throat. “Reb Tevye! What would you say if I told you that I love your Shprintze and want to take her as my wife?”

“What would I say?” I said. “I’d say you could take the place of a madman without anyone noticing.”

“What do you mean?” He stared at me.

“I mean what I said!”

“I don’t understand you.”

“That’s a sign,” I said, “that you aren’t terribly bright. As it is written: The wise man hath eyes in his head—a smart man understands with a wink, but a fool needs a stick.”

“I’m speaking very plainly to you and you answer me with jokes and quotations!” He was angry.

“Every cantor sings the way he can,” I said, “and every preacher preaches his own way. If you want to know what kind of preacher you are, talk it over beforehand with your mother. She will straighten you out.”

“Do you consider me a child who has to ask his mother?”

“Certainly you have to ask your mother, and your mother will surely tell you that you’re an idiot, and she will be right,” I said.

“She’ll be right?”

“Definitely. She will be right because what kind of husband are you for my Shprintze? How is she your equal? And most important,” I said, “what have I to do with your mother?”

“If that’s the case, Reb Tevye, you have made a grave error! I am not a boy of eighteen and am not seeking in-laws for my mother. I know who you are, and I know who your daughter is. I like her, and that’s the way I want it, and that’s the way it will be!”

“Forgive me,” I said. “I see you have taken care of one side of the family. Have you settled with the other side?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean my daughter Shprintze,” I said. “Have you talked this over with her, and what does she have to say about it?”

He looked insulted but gave a little smile. “What kind of question is that? Of course I’ve talked to her about it, and more than once — several times. I come here every day.”

Do you hear that? He comes every day, and I don’t know about it! I’m an ass, not a man! I should be given straw to chew! If that’s the way I let myself be led by the nose, I will be bought and sold! I’m a horse’s ass!

That was what I was thinking as I entered the house with Ahronchik. He said goodbye to my family, jumped on his horse, and rode off to Boiberik.

Now we will, as you say in your books, leave the prince and follow the princess, Shprintze. “Answer me something, my daughter,” I said. “What has this Ahronchik discussed with you of such importance without my knowing about it?”

Does a tree answer? She blushed, lowered her eyes like a bride, swallowed a full mouthful of water, and — silence!

Bah! I thought to myself. If you don’t want to talk now, you’ll talk to me a little later. Tevye is not a woman. He has time! I waited awhile and watched for the moment when we would be alone. Then I said to her, “Shprintze, do you at least know him, this Ahronchik?”

“Of course I know him,” she said.

“Do you know he is nothing but a pennywhistle?”

“What is a pennywhistle?”

“It’s an empty walnut shell that whistles.”

“You are mistaken,” she said. “Arnold is a good person.”

“So now he’s Arnold,” I said, “not Ahronchik the charlatan?”

“Arnold is not a charlatan. Arnold has a good heart. Arnold,” she said, “comes from a house of corrupt people who care only about money and more money.”

“So, Shprintze,” I said, “you’ve also become an enlightened philosopher who despises money?”

I could see that things had gone quite far and that it was too late to go back because I know my daughters. Tevye’s daughters, as I once told you, when they get attached to someone, it’s with their entire life and heart and soul! And I thought to myself, Fool! Why should I want to be wiser than the whole world? Maybe God wished that through this quiet Shprintze I would come out ahead, be repaid for all the blows and pains I’d endured till now, have a good old age, and perhaps also have a decent life. Maybe it was fated that one of my daughters become a millionairess. And why not? Was I too proud? Where was it written that I always had to be a pauper, always dragging around with the horse and cheese and butter to stuff the mouths of the Yehupetz rich folks? Who knew, maybe it was inscribed Above that in my old age I would be a righter of wrongs, a philanthropist, entertain guests, and perhaps sit down with other Jews to study Torah.

Those and other such satisfying thoughts filled my head. As it is written in the Morning Prayers, Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart—or as a Gentile says, “An idea enriches a fool!”

I went into the house, took my old one aside, and had a talk with her. “How would it be,” I said, “if our Shprintze became a millionairess?”

“What’s a millionairess?” she asked.

“A millionairess means a millionaire’s wife.”

“What’s a millionaire?”

“A millionaire is a person who has a million.”

“How much is a million?”

“If you’re such a moron and don’t know how much a million is, what is there to talk about?”

“Who asked you to talk?” She was right.

Another day passed, and I came home and asked, “Has Ahronchik been here?” No, he hadn’t. Another day passed. “Has the young man been here?” No, he hadn’t. To go to the widow for an explanation wasn’t proper. I didn’t want her to think Tevye was pushing for the match. To her this all had to be as a lily among thorns—like a fifth wheel on a wagon, though I didn’t understand why. Was it because I didn’t have a million? I would have an in-law who was a millionairess, but whom would she have as an in-law? An impoverished Jew, a pauper, a Tevye the dairyman! Who, then, had more to be proud of, I or she? To tell the honest truth, I was beginning to want this match, not so much for its own sake as for the triumph of it. To hell with those Yehupetzer rich folks! Let them know who Tevye was! Till now, all you ever heard was Brodsky and again Brodsky, as if no one else existed!

That was what I was thinking as I drove home from Boiberik. Then my wife greeted me with excitement. “A messenger was just here from Boiberik, from the widow, asking you to go right back there, even if it is night! She says you should turn around and hurry back — you are badly needed there!”

“What’s the rush? Don’t they have time?” I took a quick look at my Shprintze, who didn’t say a word, but her eyes spoke — oy, did they speak! No one understood her heart better than I. I had been afraid that nothing would come of his proposal. I spoke my mind to her, told her that he was thus and so, but I was wasting my breath. And my Shprintze was wasting away like a candle.

I rigged up my horse and wagon again and left just before nightfall for Boiberik, wondering what they could want to talk to me about that was so urgent. An engagement? A betrothal? He could have come to me. After all, I was the father of the bride! Then I laughed. Unless the end of the world or the Messiah had come, whoever heard of a rich man going to the poor man? These young folks, the ne’er-do-wells, wanted me to believe that there would soon come a time when the rich man and the poor man would be equals — what was yours would be mine, and what was mine would be yours — anything goes! It’s a clever world we live in, but it has such fools in it!

I arrived in Boiberik, went directly to the widow’s dacha, and tied up my horse. Where was she? No widow at home. Where was the young man? No young man either. Who then had sent for me?

“I sent for you!” said a stout, solidly built Jew with a sparse little beard and a heavy gold chain across his belly.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am the widow’s brother and Ahronchik’s uncle. I was summoned from Katerineslav by telegram and I just arrived,” he said.

“If that is so, here’s a big welcome to you,” I said and sat down.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Thank you, I’m already sitting. How is the constitutzia going for you?”

He didn’t reply but made himself comfortable in a rocking chair. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stuck out the gold chain and his belly and said, “I understand you are Tevye?”

“Yes. When I am called to bless the Torah, they say, ‘Arise, Reb Tevye, son of Shneur Zalman.’ ”

“Listen, Reb Tevye, to what I tell you,” he said. “Why should we waste words? Let’s get right down to business.”

“Fine,” I said. “King Solomon always used to say, For everything there is a time—when it’s time to talk business, it’s business. I am a businessman.”

“It’s plain,” he said, “that you are a businessman, and that’s why I want to talk to you in a businesslike way. Tell me frankly how much it will cost us all told. Be frank about it!”

“Since you ask me to be frank about it,” I said, “I can only say that I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Reb Tevye!” His hands were still in his pockets. “I am asking you how much the wedding will cost us all told.”

“That depends on what kind of wedding you are thinking about,” I said. “If you want a fancy wedding, as befits you, I am not capable of paying for it.”

He glared at me. “Either you are playing dumb or you are an oaf, although you don’t look like one. If you were an oaf, you wouldn’t have dragged my nephew into this mess, inviting him for Shevuos blintzes and tempting him with a pretty girl. I won’t get into whether she is really your daughter. He fell in love with her, and she with him. It’s possible she is a very special child and means well, I won’t get into that. But you mustn’t forget who you are and who we are. You are a man of learning, so how can you even consider that Tevye the dairyman, who delivers cheese and butter to us, could be our in-law? Ay, they gave each other their word, you say? They will take it back! No great tragedy will come of it. If it costs something for her to release him from his promise, that’s fine — we have nothing against that. A girl is not a boy, whether a daughter or not,” he said. “I won’t get into that.”

God in heaven! I wondered. What did this man want? He kept on talking, saying that I shouldn’t even think of making a scandal, of spreading it around that his nephew had made a match with Tevye the dairyman’s daughter, and that I should get it out of my head that his sister was a person whom you could take for a lot of money. If I didn’t make trouble, then I could get a few rubles from her, you know, as charity. They were, after all, decent people; sometimes you had to help someone out.

Well, do you want to know what I answered him? Woe unto me, I said nothing! May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. I was speechless! I got up, turned to the door, and was gone! I fled as if from a fire, from a prison! My head was buzzing, lights flickered in front of my eyes, and that man’s words echoed in my ears: “talk business,” “whether really your daughter,” “take for a lot of money,” “charity.” I walked over to my horse and wagon, laid my face against it, and — you won’t laugh at me? — burst into tears. I cried and cried! When I had cried myself out, I got up on the driver’s seat and laid into my poor horse with as much as he could take. Only then did I ask a question of God, as Job had once asked. What, dear God, did You see in old Job that You never let up on him for even a moment? Aren’t there any other Jews in the world?

I arrived home and found my family, kayn eyn horeh, cheerful. They were eating supper. Shprintze was missing.

“Where is Shprintze?” I asked.

“What happened?” they asked. “Why did they call you there?”

“Where is Shprintze?”

“What happened there?”

“Nothing,” I said. “What should happen? It’s quiet, thank God. There are no pogroms.”

Then Shprintze came in, looked into my eyes, and sat down at the table as if nothing were going on, as if we weren’t talking about her. Her face betrayed nothing, but her stillness was now too much, not natural. I did not like the way she was sitting deep in thought or the way she complied with everything she was told to do. If you told her to sit, she sat. If you told her to eat, she ate. If you told her to go, she went. And if you called her name, she startled. My heart ached for her, and a rage was burning in me, against whom I did not know. O Thou Lord of the Universe, God in heaven! Why do you punish me so? For whose sins?

To make a long story short — do you want to know the end? I would not wish that end on my worst enemy, on anyone, because the curse of children is the worst curse found in the biblical book of curses! How do I know that someone didn’t curse me with children? You don’t believe in these things? How then to explain it? Let’s hear what you have to say. But why should I speculate? Better to hear the ending I have to tell.

One evening I came home from Boiberik with a heavy heart. Imagine the child’s grief, her humiliation. The sheer pity for her! The widow and her son? They went off without so much as a goodbye! It’s an embarrassment to say it, but they left owing me money for cheese and butter! I’m not speaking of that; they probably forgot. I am speaking of their leaving without a goodbye. What that poor child went through no one ever knew except me, because I am a father and a father’s heart understands. Do you think she said so much as a word to me, that she lamented or wept? Eh! Then you don’t know Tevye’s daughters! Quietly, turning inward into herself, she languished and flickered like a dying candle. Once in a while she would utter a sigh, the kind that tears out a piece of your heart.

One day I was riding home, sunk in sorrowful thoughts, asking questions of the Almighty and answering them myself. I wasn’t worried about God — I had more or less made my peace with Him. I was upset about people. Why should people be so bad when they can be good? Why should people embitter the lives of others as well as their own when life could be sweet and happy for all? Is it a given that God created man in order to have him suffer? Of what use was that for Him?

I drove in to my farm and saw, in the distance, a crowd of people, peasants from the village, near the pond. What could it be? There was no fire. Perhaps it was a drowning; someone had been swimming in the pond and met his death. No one knows where the Angel of Death awaits him, as we say in the U’netaneh tokef on Yom Kippur.

Suddenly my Golde came running, her shawl flying, her arms stretched out in front of her, and ahead of her were Teibl and Beilke, and all three were screaming and wailing and weeping, “Daughter! Sister! Shprintze!” I sprang down from the wagon so quickly, I nearly broke apart. But by the time I got to the pond it was too late.

What did I want to ask you? Yes! Have you ever seen a drowned person? Never? When a person dies, most of the time he dies with his eyes shut. A drowned person’s eyes are open. Do you know why? Forgive me for taking up so much of your time. I too am busy. I have to tend to my horse and deliver my goods. The world remains a world. And you must also think of earning money — and to forget what has been, because what the earth has covered up must, they say, be forgotten, and if you are a living human being, you cannot spit out your soul. You can’t get around it, and we must return to the old saying that as long as my soul abides within me—you have to keep on going, Tevye! Be well, and if you do think of me, don’t think ill of me.

TEVYE IS GOING TO ERETZ YISROEL

Told by Tevye the dairyman as he was riding on a train

WRITTEN IN 1909.

Well, what a surprise! I never expected to find you here! That I’d be seeing you! How are you, Reb Sholem Aleichem? I’d been wondering why I haven’t seen you in such a long time, not in Boiberik, not in Yehupetz. Who knows what happens to a person? Maybe he cashed it all in and took himself to that other place where they don’t eat radishes with shmaltz. But then again, I thought to myself, why would you do a foolish thing like that? After all, you’re a reasonable person! So praise His holy name, now I see you again and in good health. As it is said, “Two mountains never meet”—but two men can. You are looking at me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, as if you don’t remember who I am. It’s me, your old friend Tevye. “Look not at the storage jar but at what it stores”—don’t be taken in because a Jew is wearing a new coat. It’s the same shlimazel Tevye as always, not changed a hair. If you put on a Shabbes suit, you look a little better, like a man with money, because if you go out among people, you must look presentable, especially if you are starting out on a long journey as I am, to Eretz Yisroel, that’s no small matter.

You are probably wondering how a fellow like me, who always dealt in dairy, can afford to travel in his old age like a Brodsky. Believe me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, it’s as they say “altogether questionable,” and that quote is right on the mark. Move your suitcase over a bit, if you please, and I’ll sit down next to you and I’ll tell you a story. And you will be in awe at what God can do.

I must tell you first of all that I am a widower, may it not happen to you. My Golde, may she rest in peace, was a simple woman without pretensions or guile, but a true saint, may she intercede on behalf of her children. She suffered plenty for their sakes and perhaps even left this world when she did on account of them. She couldn’t take it anymore, because they had all gone off, scattered to the winds. “My heart is broken,” she said. “What is my life when there isn’t a child about? Even a cow, no comparison intended,” she would say, “grieves if you take away her calf.” That’s what Golde said to me as she wept bitter tears.

The woman was fading like a candle from day to day. I spoke comforting words to her from my heart out of pity and sorrow. “Come now, my darling,” I said. “There is a saying, ‘Judge us as Thy sons or judge us as Thy servants’—it is the same with children as without children. We have,” I said, “a great God and a good God and a strong God, but still may I have as many blessings as the times the One Above did me in, may it befall my enemies.”

But she was, forgive me, a woman, and she said to me, “You sin, Tevye, you mustn’t sin.”

“What did I say wrong?” I said. “Am I saying something against God and His ways? Since He did such a wonderful job of creating this little world of ours, a world in which children don’t behave like children and parents are worth little in their eyes, He most likely knew what He was doing.”

She didn’t understand a word I was saying, and spoke in a whisper. “I am dying, Tevye. Who will cook supper for you?” Her eyes would have moved a stone to tears.

But Tevye is not a woman, and so I answered her with a saying and a commentary and a chapter and another midrash. “Golde,” I said, “you’ve been devoted to me for so many years. Don’t make fun of me in my old age.” I looked at her. She did look dreadful. “What’s the matter with you, Golde?”

“Nothing,” she said, barely able to speak.

Ach! Seeing that the devil was doing his work, I hitched up my horse and sped to town for a doctor, the best doctor I could find. I arrived home — dear God! My Golde was already laid out on the ground with a candle at her head, looking like a small mound of earth that had been swept up and covered with a black cloth. For this is the whole of man, I thought. Is this the way a person ends up? Oh you Lord of the Universe, what have you done to Tevye? What will I do now in my old age, in my miserable old age?

I dropped to the ground beside her, but what good would that do? Do you hear what I’m saying? Once you see death before your eyes, you must become a heretic and begin to reason, for that is the whole of man. What does it all amount to, this world of devils speeding around in trains, running crazily in circles, when even Brodsky with his millions comes to nothing in the end?

To make a long story short, I hired a Jew to say kaddish for her, may she rest in peace, paying him for a whole year in advance. I had no choice since God had punished me by giving me only daughters and more daughters. Not one son, may no Jew know that fate. Do other Jews suffer as much with their daughters as I have? Or am I a miserable shlimazel who simply has no luck? I don’t have anything against my daughters, and luck is in God’s hands. May I have half as much as what my daughters wish for me. If anything, they are too devoted, much too devoted.

Take, for example, my youngest one, Beilke. You have no idea what kind of child she is. You’ve known me forever, it seems, and you know I am not the kind of father who will praise his children. But when I speak of my Beilke, I cannot say more than two words. Ever since God has created Beilkes, He hasn’t created another like my Beilke. Well, of beauty we don’t have to talk. Tevye’s daughters, as you have seen, are known far and wide as the greatest beauties, but she, Beilke, puts them all to shame. There is no comparison! To describe her properly, you would have to use the words of eyshes chayil: Charm is a deception—a woman of valor. I am not speaking so much of beauty as I am of character. Gold, I tell you, pure gold! From the very beginning I was her favorite, but since my Golde passed away, may she have had more years, Beilke’s father became the most important person in her life. Not a speck of dust did she allow to fall on me. I said to myself, as we say in the Rosh Hashanah prayer, The Lord precedes anger with mercy—the One Above sends us the remedy for the affliction He has caused. And do you know, I am not sure which is worse, the remedy or the affliction. Who could be a prophet and guess that Beilke would sell herself to send her father to Eretz Yisroel in his old age? Of course, that’s only a manner of speaking — she is as guilty of selling herself as you are. The one who was entirely guilty is her intended. I don’t wish to curse him, but may a powder keg blow him up. And if I really think about it, ponder it more deeply, I myself may be more to blame than anyone. There is a special saying in the Gemorah: Man is guilt-ridden—but surely I don’t need to tell you what the Gemorah says!

Anyhow, I won’t keep you long. The years went by. My Beilke grew up, became a proper lady, kayn eyn horeh, and Tevye carried on his own business, as always, with his horse and wagon, delivering his wares, summers to Boiberik, winters to Yehupetz, may fire and brimstone befall it like Sodom! I cannot abide that city, and not so much the town as the people, and not so much the people as one person — Ephraim the matchmaker, may a curse befall his father’s father. Listen to what a matchmaker can stir up.

One day in the middle of Elul I arrived in Yehupetz with my meager merchandise. I looked up, and Haman himself — Ephraim the matchmaker — was walking toward me! I once told you about him. Ephraim is a stubborn man, but once you see him, you have to stop. That’s the kind of effect that that Jew has on you.

“Hold up a minute, my sage,” I said to my horse, “and I’ll give you something to chew.” Then I greeted Ephraim the matchmaker. “How’s business?”

He gave a deep sigh. “It’s bitter!”

“In what way?” I asked.

“There’s nothing doing.”

“Really? What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” he said, “is that matches aren’t arranged at home these days.”

“Where then are they arranged?”

“Somewhere abroad.”

“So what would I do when my grandfather’s grandmother never went there?”

“For you, Reb Tevye”—he handed me a pinch of snuff—“I have a special piece of merchandise, right here on the spot.”

“Is that so?”

“A widow lady without children, worth five hundred rubles. She was a cook in all the finest homes.”

I looked at him. “Reb Ephraim, for whom are you making this match?”

“Who else would I be making it for? For you,” he said.

“May all my nightmares fall on my enemies’ heads!” I gave my horse a lash of the whip, wanting to drive on.

Ephraim said, “Don’t get so offended, Reb Tevye. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Who were you thinking of?”

“Who else would I mean if not my youngest daughter?”

He sprang back and slapped his forehead. “Of course! It’s a good thing you reminded me, long life to you, Reb Tevye.”

“Amen, the same to you. May you live until the Messiah comes. But tell me why you are so excited.”

“This is wonderful, Reb Tevye, really good, couldn’t be better!” he said.

“In what way? What’s so good about it?”

“I have for your youngest,” he said, “a match, a perfect choice, a rare find, a stroke of luck, a rich man, a prince, a millionaire, a second Brodsky — a contractor named Podhotsur!”

“Podhotsur? A familiar name from the Bible.”

“What Bible!” he said. “He’s a contractor, this Podhotsur. He builds houses, walls, and factories. He was in Japan during the war and brought back a fortune. He drives around in carriages with fiery steeds, has servants at the door, a private bathtub inside the house, and furniture from Paris. He wears a diamond ring. And he’s not even old — a bachelor, prime goods! He’s looking for a nice girl and will take her as she is, no questions asked, so long as she’s a beauty!”

“Stop!” I said. “If you don’t slow down, Reb Ephraim, we’ll wind up in Hotzenklotz! If I’m not mistaken, you tried to make this same match for my daughter Hodl.”

Ephraim grabbed his sides and laughed so hard, I thought he was having an apoplectic fit. “Aha,” he said, “so you’re remembering a story from ancient times. That one went broke before the war and ran off to America!”

“May his memory be for a blessing,” I said. “Maybe this one will also run off there.”

The matchmaker blew up. “What are you talking about, Reb Tevye? That one was a nothing, a charlatan, a spendthrift! This one is a contractor, with army contracts, with businesses, with shops, with people working for him, with — with—”

What can I say? The matchmaker got so worked up, he pulled me out of the wagon. He grabbed me by the lapels and shook me so hard, a policeman came along and wanted to throw us both in jail. Luckily, I remembered the commentary: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury—you have to know how to deal with the police.

To make a long story short — why should I keep you? — this Podhotsur became engaged to my youngest daughter Beilke. But it took some time before the wedding canopy was raised. Why? Because Beilke would rather die than go through with the marriage. The more Podhotsur showered her with gifts and gold watches and diamond rings, the more he revolted her. She didn’t have to spell it out for me. I saw it in her face and in her eyes and in her silent weeping.

I decided to have a talk with her. “Listen, Beilke, I’m afraid you love Podhotsur about as much as I do.”

Her face turned fiery red. “Who told you that?”

“There’s a lot of crying at night.”

“Am I crying?”

“No, you’re not crying,” I said, “you’re sobbing. Do you think that by hiding your head in the pillow, you hide your tears from me? Do you think your father is a youngster or that his mind has dried up and he doesn’t understand that you’re doing this for his sake? You want to ensure him a comfortable old age so he’ll have somewhere to lay his head and won’t have to go begging in the streets, God forbid. If that’s your intention,” I said, “you are foolish. We have a great God,” I said, “and Tevye would not be the first person to beg for his bread. And money is as dirt, as it says in the Bible. Here is the proof — your sister Hodl is as poor as can be, and yet see how she writes from who knows where, from the ends of the earth, that she considers herself lucky with her shlimazel Fefferl!”

Can you guess what her reply was?

“Don’t compare me to Hodl,” Beilke said. “Hodl lived at a time when the whole world was in chaos, about to turn upside down, and people were worrying about that and forgetting about themselves. But now,” she said, “that the world is calm again, everyone is worried about himself, and they’ve forgotten about the world.”

I couldn’t figure out what she meant! Nu, you are something of an expert on Tevye’s daughters. You should have seen her at her wedding — a princess! I glowed with pride and marveled. Was this really Beilke, Tevye’s daughter? Where had she learned to stand like that, to walk like that, and to hold her head and to dress as if she had been poured into her clothes? But I couldn’t bask in my pride too long, because the same day as the wedding, around half past six in the evening, the couple drove off in a carriage, who knows where, maybe to Italy, as was the custom with the rich, and they didn’t come back till Chanukah, when they sent for me to come as soon as possible to Yehupetz.

All right, if they wanted me to pay them a visit in Yehupetz, they only had to say so, and that would have been the end of it. But why did they want me to come as soon as possible? There had to be a reason! But what was it? Maybe they were fighting like cats and were on the point of divorcing? But I put that idea away, scolding myself for only thinking the worst. How should I know why they wanted me to come as soon as possible? Maybe they missed me and wanted to see me. Or maybe Beilke wanted her father to be near her. Or maybe Podhotsur wanted to give Tevye a job or make him a supervisor in one of his enterprises. In any case, I had to go, and I set out “as soon as possible” for Yehupetz.

As I was driving along, my imagination took over. I pictured myself leaving the village and selling the cows, the horse and wagon, and everything to become a supervisor for Podhotsur, then a treasurer, then the overseer of all his estates, then an equal partner in all his affairs, half and half, fifty-fifty, riding around with him all over with his steeds, one a chestnut, one a dapple gray. But then I thought it over. What is this and what is it all for—what did I, a quiet little fellow like Tevye, have to do with such grand businesses? Who needed all the fuss and bother and noise of the marketplace, all day and all night? As it is said, So that He may set him with princes—rub elbows with millionaires? Leave me be. I want to have a peaceful old age, take time to look into the Holy Book, read a few chapters, a few Psalms. You have to think about the world to come, no? How did King Solomon put it? A person is nothing but a jackass and forgets that however long he lives, he must still die.

When I reached Yehupetz, I went straight to Podhotsur’s place. Well, if I were to brag to you about the multitude of his riches and wealth, his home and its furnishings, I could go on and on. I have never had the honor of going to Brodsky’s, but nothing could have been finer or more beautiful than this Podhotsur’s home. What a mansion it was! When I arrived at the door, the doorman, a huge man with silver buttons, refused to let me in. What was going on? It was a glass door, and I could see him, curse him, brushing clothes. I winked at him, gestured to him in sign language to let me in, trying to get across that his master’s wife was my daughter. But he didn’t understand my meaning, the idiot, and signaled me to go away. What a shlimazel! To think you needed special documents to visit your own daughter! Woe unto you, Tevye, to have lived to see this!

I looked through the glass door again and saw a servant girl dusting. It must have been one of their chambermaids, I thought, because she had mischievous eyes. All chambermaids have mischievous eyes. I have visited many wealthy homes and know about chambermaids. I winked at her. “Open up, little kitten!”

She obeyed, opened the door, and said, surprisingly in Yiddish, “Whom do you want to see?”

“Does Podhotsur live here?” I said.

“Whom do you want to see?” she said more loudly.

I raised my voice. “If someone asks you a question, you should answer the first time. Does Podhotsur live here?”

“Da,” she said.

“Now you’re talking like one of us. Go tell your Madame Podhotsur that she has a guest. Her father Tevye has come to visit and has been waiting outside like a beggar at the door because that lummox with the silver buttons who isn’t worth your little fingernail didn’t consider him worthy of admission!”

With a mischievous laugh, the girl slammed the door in my face. She ran upstairs, then came back down and let me in. It was a palace that my father’s fathers never dreamed of in their wildest dreams: silk and satin and gold and crystal. When you walked, you felt like you were stepping on nothing, because your muddy boots trod on expensive carpets as soft as snow. And the clocks, oh the clocks! On the walls, on the tables — no end of clocks! God Almighty! Why did a person need so many clocks? I wondered, walking on, my hands clasped behind me.

In one room I saw several Tevyes coming toward me and going away from me. Tphoo! Mirrors on all four walls! Only a contractor like this Podhotsur could have afforded so many clocks and mirrors!

Podhotsur was a stout man, round, with a bald head and a loud voice and a squeaky little laugh. I remembered the first time he came to me at home, with his big steeds. He spread himself out in a chair as if he owned it and met my Beilke, then called me over and whispered in my ear, but so loudly you could have heard him on the other side of Yehupetz. What did he whisper? That my daughter was pleasing to him and he wanted to marry her, one two three.

Well, that my daughter was pleasing to him was understandable, but the one two three was like a dull knife in my heart. Where did I come into the picture, and where was Beilke in all of it? Oh, I felt like sticking him with a few good commentaries and interpretations so he would never forget me! But I reconsidered. Why am I thus? — why interfere when it’s something between children? A lot of good it did me with my older daughters when I gave them advice about their matches! I talked and I talked, I advised and advised, poured out the whole Torah — and who ended up the fool? Tevye!

In short, as you say in your books, let’s put aside the hero and get to the heroine. When I visited them in Yehupetz, the fun began.

“Sholem aleichem! Aleichem sholem! How is it going?” Podhotsur greeted me. “What’s the good news? Sit down!”

“Thank you, I can stand.” And we made all the customary niceties.

To ask Why is this day different from other days? — why did you send for me? — could not have been proper. Tevye is not a woman; he has patience. Then a servant wearing large white gloves announced that supper was ready. We rose and went into an oak-paneled room with an oak table, oak chairs, and an oak ceiling, everything trimmed and painted and lacquered and decorated. On the table, fit for a king, were tea and coffee and chocolate, butter pastries, good cognac, the best smoked fish, and platters of fruits and nuts. Embarrassed, I realized that my Beilke had never seen such a spread on her father’s table. They poured glass after glass of wine for toasts to me. I drank and looked over at Beilke. I’d lived to see the day when God helped the poor and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill. But my Beilke was not to be recognized. She looked something like Beilke, but not really. I compared the Beilke of long ago with the Beilke I was seeing now, and it gave me a terrible feeling of regret, as if I had made a big mistake, made a bad bargain, as if I had traded in my prize colt for a nag of a horse, not knowing what it would become.

Ach, Beilke, Beilke, I thought. What has become of you? Do you remember how you used to sit at night under a smoky lamp and sew and sing a song? In the wink of an eye you could milk two cows, or roll up your sleeves and cook a plain dairy borscht, or taiglach with beans, or cheese dumplings, or poppyseed pockets, and say to me, “Papa, go wash up!” That was the best song I ever heard! Now she was sitting with her Podhotsur like a princess, with two servants waiting on the table, dishes clattering. And Beilke — did she speak so much as a word? He, Podhotsur, did the talking for both of them. His mouth never shut! As long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen a person who so loved to yammer a blue streak about who knew what, all the time laughing his funny little laugh. We say of a person like that: “he tells the joke, and he does the laughing.”

Along with the three of us, another person sat at the table: a man with red cheeks whom I didn’t know, but he certainly was a good eater. While Podhotsur was talking and laughing, this man packed away food, as it is written in the chapters: He ate for three. As we ate, Podhotsur talked about boring things in which I had no interest whatsoever: estates, construction contracts, government ministries, specifications, Japan. Actually Japan interested me, because during the war, as you know, horses became very scarce. They had searched me out and confiscated my horse. They took his measurements, rode him back and forth, and then sent him back. I could have told them they’d be wasting their time. As it is said in Proverbs, A righteous man knows the soul of his beast—Tevye’s horse is not made for war. But pardon me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, I’m mixing up two things and might confuse you. As you say, let’s get to the point.

We ate and drank up very nicely as God commanded, and when we got up from the table, Podhotsur took me by the arm and led me into an office fit for a king, with guns and swords on the walls and miniature cannons on the table.

He sat me down on a divan as soft as butter. Removing from a gold humidor two fat aromatic cigars, he lit one for himself and one for me. Then he sat down opposite me, stretched out his legs, and said, “Do you know why I sent for you?”

Aha! I thought. He probably wanted to talk to me about business. But I played dumb. “Am I my brother’s keeper? How should I know?”

“I really wanted to talk to you about yourself,” he said.

A job offer, I thought. “So long as it’s something good, whatever it is, let’s hear,” I said.

Podhotsur removed the cigar from his teeth and began a whole lecture. “You are no fool,” he said, “and won’t be insulted by what I will say frankly. You must know I deal in big businesses, and when you deal in big businesses as I do. .”

Yes, I thought, he meant me. I interrupted him. “Just as it says in the Gemorah in the Shabbes chapter, Many possessions, many worries. Do you know the meaning of that Gemorah?”

“I will tell you the absolute truth,” he said. “I have never studied the Gemorah and don’t even know what it looks like.” He laughed.

Can you imagine? One would think that if God had so punished him and made him an ignoramus, he would at least be ashamed and not boast about it. But I just said, “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

“What I have to say,” he said, “is this. When it comes to my businesses and my reputation and my public position, it doesn’t look good when they call you Tevye the dairyman. You must know,” he said, “that I am a close friend of the governor of the province, and sometimes a Brodsky comes calling at my house, a Polyakov, and maybe even a Rothschild, do you see?”

I looked at his shiny bald head. He might be a close friend of the governor, I thought, and a Rothschild might come to his house, but he talked like an ignoramus.

“What can you do if Rothschild insists on coming?” I said with a little resentment.

Do you think he got that dig? Not a chance!

“I want you to get rid of your dairy business and take up something else,” he said.

“All right, what do you have in mind?”

“Whatever you want,” he said. “There are plenty of businesses in the world. I’ll help you out with money, as much as you need, so long as you quit being Tevye the dairyman. Maybe you could leave one two three for America, huh?” He shoved the cigar between his teeth and looked me right in the eye, his bald head shining.

Nu, what do you say to such a coarse fellow? At first I thought, Why are you sitting here, Tevye, like a block of wood? Get up, kiss the mezuzah, slam the door behind you, and leave without a goodbye! That’s how enraged I was by his comments! The nerve of that contractor! Who did he think he was, telling me to throw away an honest, respectable livelihood and go to America? Because Rothschild might visit him, Tevye the dairyman had to go who knows where?

I had already been upset because of my Beilke, but now my blood was boiling like a kettle. May I have as many blessings, I thought, as Hodl had it better than Beilke! True, Hodl doesn’t have a house like this, with such finery, but still and all she has a husband, a Fefferl, who is a mensch, hardworking, relying only on himself, while all of humanity is his concern. And in addition, he has a head on his shoulders, not a noodle-pot of a bald pate. Fefferl can talk, and what he says is pure gold! If you mention a biblical quote to him, he gives you three interpretations. Just wait, my contractor, I thought, and I’ll give you a quote that will knock you over!

I said to him, “Well, that the Gemorah is for you a secret, I forgive you. For a Jew living in Yehupetz named Podhotsur, a contractor, the Gemorah might just as well lie in the attic. But some quotes can be understood even by an ordinary Gentile. I’m sure you know what the Targum Unkles says about Laban the Aramite?” And I threw him a quotation in mixed Hebrew and Russian.

Looking like a surprised rooster, he said, “What does that mean?” “It means that from a pig’s tail you cannot make a rabbi’s fur hat.”

“What is your point?”

“My point has to do with your telling me to go to America.”

He laughed that silly laugh. “If not to America, maybe go to Eretz Yisroel. All old Jews go to Eretz Yisroel.”

I felt as if an iron spike had been driven into my brain. Sha! Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe it was an idea. Considering the kind of pleasure I’d had from children, I thought, Eretz Yisroel might be better. Idiot! Why was I staying around here, and for whom? My Golde, may she rest in peace, was already in the ground, and I was halfway there. How long could I keep struggling?

Besides, Pani Sholem Aleichem, I’ve always been drawn to Eretz Yisroel. I’ve longed to be at the Wailing Wall and at the tomb of the Patriarchs, at Mother Rachel’s Tomb, and to see the River Jordan, Mount Sinai, the Dead Sea, the cities of Pithom and Ramses, and other such places with my own eyes. My imagination carried me away to the blessed land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey.

Podhotsur cut me off in the middle of my reverie. “Well? Why do you need to think so long? Make it one two three!”

“To you,” I said, “everything is one two three. But for me it’s a big decision, because to pick up and go to Eretz Yisroel I’d need to have the means.”

He snickered, stood up, and went over to a table. Withdrawing a metal box, he counted out one bill after another — just imagine, a fine sum. I wasted no time, gathered up the bills — oh, the power of money — and stuck them deep in my pocket.

I wanted to share at least a couple of commentaries and quotes with him, but he wasn’t about to hear them. “This will be more than enough to get there, and when you arrive and need more money, write a letter, and one two three we will send you money. And about your leaving, I won’t need to remind you again because you are an honorable and honest man.” Then Podhotsur laughed that laugh that made me sick to my stomach.

Maybe I should throw the money back in his face, I thought. You didn’t buy Tevye with money, and with Tevye you didn’t talk of honesty and being honorable. But before I could open my mouth, he rang for Beilke.

“My dear, do you know what?” he said to her. “Your father is abandoning us. He is selling everything he owns and is leaving one two three for Eretz Yisroel.”

As Pharaoh said to Joseph, I dreamed a dream but I did not understand it. This was a nightmare, I thought. I looked at my Beilke. Do you think her face showed any feeling? She stood like a post, not a drop of blood in her face, looked from him to me and back, and said not a word! I was also silent. Both of us were silent, as it is written in the Psalms: May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth—speech had failed us.

My head was spinning, my temples were pounding, and I felt I was suffocating. Was it the smoke from that fine cigar Podhotsur had given me? But he was smoking one too, and talking, his mouth never shutting, though his eyelids kept lowering as if he could not wait to take a nap.

“You must go,” he said to me, “from here to Odessa by the express, and then by sea to Jaffa. Now is the best time to go by sea, because later on the winds and hurricanes and the snows begin, and then. .” His tongue stumbled, as if he were overcome by the desire to sleep, but then he forged ahead. “And when you are ready for the journey, you must let us know, and we will both ride out to the station with you and see you off, because who knows when we will see each other again?” He gave a big yawn, stood, and said to Beilke, “My dearest, sit here a bit while I go lie down for a nap.”

That was the best thing he could have said, as I am a Jew! Now at least I could let out my bitter heart! I thought. I longed to talk to my Beilke, to tell her everything that had happened that morning. Suddenly she fell into my arms and began to weep. But what weeping you can only imagine! My daughters, poor things, are all like that. First they act mature and in control, and then when something bad happens, they weep like willow trees. Take my daughter Hodl. Just before she left for Siberia to join her Fefferl, she wept bitter tears. But how can I compare them?

I will tell you the honest truth. As you know, I am not a person of tears. I really cried only once, when my Golde, may she rest in peace, was lying on the earth, and I also had a good cry when Hodl went off to her Fefferl and I remained on the station platform like a great fool, all alone with my horse. And a few other times I welled up with tears, but I don’t remember if I ever cried. But Beilke and her tears moved me so deeply that I couldn’t hold back. I didn’t have the heart to criticize her. With me it isn’t necessary to say a lot. My name is Tevye. I understood her tears right away. They were not ordinary tears. You understand, they were tears brought on by the sin I have sinned before you—the sin of not listening to your father. And instead of blaming her, as I could easily have done, and baring my soul about her Podhotsur, I comforted her by telling her one biblical story after another, as only Tevye can do.

Beilke heard me out. “No, Papa, you can’t stop my tears with stories. That’s not why I’m crying — I have no complaints about anyone. It’s because you are going away on account of me and I cannot help you. That’s why I am so despondent.”

“You’re talking like a child,” I said. “You forget that we still have a great God and that your father is still in his right mind. Your father,” I said, “has a plan to go to Eretz Yisroel and come back, like in the commentaries: They journeyed and they camped—they didn’t know if they were coming or going.” That was the way I talked, but I was thinking, Tevye, you’re lying! You’re going to Eretz Yisroel, and that will be the last of you — no more Tevye!

As if she had read my thoughts, she said to me, “No, Papa, that’s how you comfort a small child. You give it a toy, you put a plaything in its hand, and you tell it a pretty story about a little white goat. If you do want a story,” she said, “I will tell you one, not you me. But the story I will tell is more sorrowful than pretty.”

Tevye’s daughters don’t mince words. She laid out for me a tale, a story worthy of A Thousand and One Nights, about how her Podhotsur became rich after being a nobody. He grew from the lowest of the low and with his own ability reached the highest levels and now wanted to invite to his house people like Brodsky. He was handing out charity, throwing thousands around. But money wasn’t enough — you still needed a pedigree, power, influence, and status. Podhotsur was doing everything possible to show he was somebody. He bragged that he came from the famous Podhotsurs, his father was also a famous contractor. But “he knew very well that he was a street musician,” Beilke said. “Now he tells everyone his wife’s father is a millionaire.”

“Who does he mean?” I said. “Me?” Maybe I was once fated to have millions, I thought, but that was as close as I’d ever get to having them.

“Do you know, Papa,” she said to me, “my face burns whenever he introduces me to his friends and tells them about my father and my uncles and the whole family — things that never were and could never be. I must listen to it all and be silent because he is, about those things, very capricious.”

“To you,” I said, “it’s being capricious, but to us it’s simply lying or bragging.”

“No, Papa,” she said, “you don’t know him. He isn’t as bad as you think. He is just a person who is one way one minute and another the next. He has a good heart and an open hand. If you make a sad face and catch him in a good mood, he’ll give you his soul. And especially for my benefit, the sky can be the limit! Do you think,” she said, “I have no influence on him? Just recently, to rescue Hodl and her husband, he promised me he would spend many thousands, on the condition they went straight to Japan.”

“Why Japan?” I said. “Why not India or Mesopotamia, or to the Queen of Sheba?”

“Because he has businesses in Japan,” she said. “He has businesses all over the world. What it costs him in telegrams alone, we could live on for half a year. But what good does it do me when I cannot be myself?”

“As it is written in the chapters, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? — I am not me and you are not you.” My heart was breaking to see my poor child miserable, although as they say, ‘in riches and in honor.’ “Your sister Hodl wouldn’t have done that.”

“I told you not to compare me to Hodl, Papa. Hodl lived in Hodl’s times and Beilke lives in Beilke’s times. From Hodl’s times to Beilke’s times is as far as from here to Japan.” Do you understand what she was talking about?

Anyway, I realize you are in a hurry, Pani. Two minutes more and it will be an end to all the stories. I was full up to here. I’d heard enough of sorrows and troubles from my youngest daughter and left her house wretched and brokenhearted. I flung the cigar that had clouded up my head onto the ground and said to it, “Go to hell!”

“Who are you cursing, Reb Tevye?” I heard a voice behind me. I turned, looked, and saw — it was he, Ephraim the matchmaker, may he have a stroke!

“Welcome,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was visiting my children.”

“How are they?”

“How should they be? May we be as well.”

“I see,” he said. “You are satisfied with my merchandise?”

“Satisfied?” I said. “May God repay you for what you have done.”

“Thank you for the blessing,” he said. “Maybe you can add a little extra on to the blessing?”

“Weren’t you paid for the match?”

“May your Podhotsur only be worth as much as he paid me.”

“What is it?” I said. “Was the fee too small?”

“Not at all, but it was the way it was given.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s not a groschen left.”

“What happened to it?”

“I married off a daughter.”

“Mazel tov,” I said. “May God grant much luck, and may you live to have much pleasure.”

“I’ve already lived to have much pleasure. I got myself a son-in-law — a charlatan who beat my daughter, took her last gulden, and ran off to America.”

“Why did you let him get so far?” I said.

“What could I have done?”

“You should have put salt on his tail.”

“Are you feeling all right, Reb Tevye?”

“May you feel half as well, may God help you!”

“Is that so?” he said. “And I thought of you as a rich man.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, “here’s a pinch of snuff for you.”

Having gotten rid of the matchmaker with a pinch of snuff, I went home. There I began to sell off my business of so many years. You can imagine that it was not done as easily as it was said. Every pot and pan took a lot out of me. Some things reminded me of Golde, God rest her soul. Others reminded me of the children, may they have many years. But nothing cut so deeply as selling my old horse. I felt particularly guilty about him. After toiling so many years together, slaving together, struggling together — and suddenly to sell him off.

I sold him to a water-carrier because from teamsters I got only abuse. They said, “God be with you, Reb Tevye, do you call that a horse?”

“What else?” I said. “Do you think it’s a chandelier?”

“It isn’t a chandelier, but one of thirty-six saints who hold up the world.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That’s an old man of thirty-six years, without teeth, with a gray lip, shaking like an old lady in the Shabbes frost.”

How do you like that talk? I swear the poor horse understood every word; as it says in the commentaries: The ox knoweth his owner—even a dumb beast knows when it’s about to be sold. I knew this because when I finalized the deal with the water-carrier, I said to him, “I wish you lots of luck.” Suddenly my horse turned his old head to me and looked at me with mute eyes, as if to say, “And this is the way I am repaid for all my labors? This is the way you thank me for all my years of hard and faithful service?”

As the water-carrier took him away to teach him the tough lessons of his new trade, I took one last look at my horse. I stood alone, thinking, God of the Universe! How cleverly you run your little world! Here you created a Tevye and you created, no comparison, a horse, and they both wound up with the same fate. The difference is that a man can at least complain, bare his heart. But a horse, what can it do? Poor thing, a dumb tongue, as we say: “the advantage of man over animal.”

You are looking at me, Pani Sholem Aleichem, because my eyes are filled with tears, and you are surely thinking, “This Tevye misses his horse? Why only a horse?” I am sorry about everything, and I will miss everything. I will miss the horse and the village. I will miss the elders, the constable, the Boiberik dachniks, and the Yehupetz rich folks. I will even miss Ephraim the matchmaker, may a plague afflict him, because in the end, if you want to be a bit of a philosopher, he is no more than a poor Jew trying to scrape out a living.

If God will bring me safely to my destination, I don’t know what I’ll do there. But first I will go to Rachel’s Tomb and pray for my children, whom I will probably never see again. And I will also think of Ephraim the matchmaker, and of you and all of Israel.

Here is my hand on it, and please send my best regards to everyone in the most friendly way.

“GET THEE GONE”

WRITTEN IN 1914.

A fine, hearty sholem aleichem to you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, to you and to all your children! I have long been looking forward to seeing you. I have quite a lot to tell you. I keep asking myself, why aren’t we seeing you lately? I am told you’ve been traveling to far-off countries, as we say in the Megillah: the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of King Ahashueros.

I see you are looking at me in a strange way. I bet you are wondering, “Is it he or not he?” It is he, Pani Sholem Aleichem, it is your old friend Tevye the dairyman. The same Tevye, no longer a dairyman but just an ordinary Jew, an old Jew as you can see, though not so old in years. As we say in the Haggadah, Lo, I am not yet seventy years old—I am still far from seventy! Then why is my hair so white? Believe me, not from pleasure, dear friend — a little my own sorrows, and a little the sorrows of all Israel. May God forgive me — a bad time! A bitter time for Jews! But I know what you’re itching to find out. You most likely remembered that when we last parted, I was on my way to Eretz Yisroel. And so you are figuring that this surely is Tevye returning from Eretz Yisroel, and you are probably eager to hear all about it. You want to find out about Mother Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of Machpelah and the other holy places. I can set your mind at rest. If you have some time to spare, listen to remarkable happenings, but listen carefully — as it says in the chapter, I pray thee, hear me. And when you have heard me out, you will say that a man is no more than an ass and that we have a powerful God who runs the world as He sees fit.

Tell me, what Bible reading are you up to in your synagogue? Vayikro—the first chapter of Leviticus? I am on a different chapter — the chapter Lech l’cho, or Get Thee Gone. “Leave, Tevye,” I was told. Get thee gone from thy land and from thy father’s house and go to the land which I will show thee. Get thee gone from the village where you were born and lived all your life, go wherever your eyes lead you! And when did they remind themselves to give Tevye this chapter to study? At the very time he was already old, weak, and alone. As we say in the Rosh Hashanah prayers, Cast us not away, O Lord, in our old age.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I almost forgot to tell you the very beginning, about what happened in Eretz Yisroel. How is it there, dear friend? May we both thrive as much. As it says in the Torah, it is truly a land of milk and honey! The problem is that Eretz Yisroel is in Eretz Yisroel, and I am, as you see me, still far from the Promised Land. Of Tevye, hear me out, the chapter of the Megillah applies: If I perish, I perish—I was a shlimazel and a shlimazel I will die. There I was, almost, almost standing with one foot on the other side, in the Holy Land. All I needed was a ticket, board the ship, and I was off. But God had other ideas.

Wait till you hear this, may it not happen to any Jew. My oldest son-in-law, Motl Komzoil, the tailor from Anatevka, goes to sleep a strong, healthy man and just decides to die! Well, he was never that healthy. After all, he was a workingman, sat night and day absorbed in Torah and in work—bent over his needle and thread patching trousers. He did this until he got consumption. He began coughing, coughed and coughed till he spat out the last of his lungs. Nothing could be done to help him, no doctor, no quack, no goat’s milk, no chocolate with honey. He was a fine young man, simple, not learned, but an honest man without pretensions. He loved my daughter with all his heart and sacrificed himself for his children and thought the world of me!

In short, we finish up the text: Moses passes away—Motl died and left me with a weight around my neck. How could I even think of going to Eretz Yisroel at that time? I had my own Eretz Yisroel at home! I ask you, how could I leave a widowed daughter, with little orphaned children, without a crumb of bread? Of course I was of as much use to her as a sack full of holes. I couldn’t bring her husband back from the dead, or return their father to his children. There I was, no more than a broken vessel in my old age, hoping to rest my weary bones, to feel like a mensch, not a donkey. I had had enough toiling, enough struggling in this world. I wanted to give some thought to the world to come. It was high time! In addition, I had already sold off my few possessions: the horse you know about, but the cows as well, except for two calves that might grow up to be useful if they were fed well. And there I was in my old age, suddenly a father of orphans, little children! Are you ready for more? Wait! The worst is yet to come, because with Tevye, if one tragedy happens, another is soon on the way. To give you an example — if ever a little heifer died, another one soon died as well. That’s the way God created His little world, and that’s the way it will always be — a lost cause!

Do you remember that my youngest daughter Beilke struck it rich when she landed Podhotsur, the big-shot contractor who made a fortune from the war? He’d returned to Yehupetz lugging back sacks full of money and fell in love with my daughter because he wanted a beautiful bride. And he sent Ephraim the matchmaker to me, cursed be his name, who made the match. Podhotsur proposed on bended knee and took her poor as she was, showered her from head to toe with gifts, jewels, gold, and diamonds. Sounds good, eh? Well, from all that good luck nothing is left, but nothing, nothing but mud. God protect us, because if God so wills it, the wheel turns, and everything falls upside down. As we say in the Hallel: first it’s He who raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and before you know it, it’s gone and He angrily looketh down low upon heaven and upon the earth. God loves to toy with human beings, how He loves it! He has toyed with Tevye time and time again—ascending and descending—first up, then down!

That is how it was with my contractor, Podhotsur. Do you remember his mansion in Yehupetz with the thirteen servants, the mirrors and the clocks and the fancy ornaments? Piff-poff! I talked to Beilke, begged her to make sure he bought the house and registered it in her name. Well, they heard me as much as Haman heard the Purim noisemakers — what does a father know? A father knows nothing! What do you think happened? You would wish it on your worst enemy. In the end, besides losing everything, Podhotsur went bankrupt, had to sell all he had — the mirrors and clocks and his wife’s jewelry. He had to flee his creditors at great risk to himself and become a fugitive, may it not happen to any Jew, and escape to where the beloved Holy Shabbes goes west — to America. That’s where unhappy souls go, and that’s where Beilke and Podhotsur also went.

At first it was terribly difficult for them. Whatever little money they had was eaten up, and when they had no food left, the poor things had to take work, backbreaking labor, like the Jews in Egypt. Now she writes that it’s not so bad, praise God. They have jobs in a stocking factory and are “making a living.” That’s what they call it in America. In our language it’s called “scraping for a piece of bread.” But they feel lucky; they are just the two of them, with no children to feed. And so it is for the best!

Nu, I ask you, shouldn’t an evil spirit possess that Ephraim the matchmaker for making that fine match he finagled me into and for the mire he led me into? Would it have been so awful for her to have married a workingman, as Tzeitl did, or a teacher, as Hodl did? Ay, those two weren’t so lucky either. One is a young widow, and the other is in exile God knows where. But that is all God’s doing — how can a man be prepared for that? To tell the truth, my wife Golde, God rest her soul, was the wisest one of all, if only because she saw what was going on around her, said goodbye to this foolish world, and left it. Tell me yourself — rather than suffering because of daughters, as Tevye has, is it not a thousand times better to lie in the ground and bake bagels? How did our rabbis say: Regardless of thy will thou livest — man does not take his fate into his own hands, and if he does he gets his knuckles rapped.

Let us, as you say in your books, leave the hero and get back to the heroine. Where were we? Yes, at the passage in Get Thee Gone. But before we get to that, I beg you to be so kind as to stop for a while at the section about the Amalekites in the Book of Exodus. Since the world began, it has always been the custom to study Get Thee Gone first and then Exodus. But with me it is the other way around — first study the Amalekites and then Get Thee Gone. I was taught a real lesson from that book. You might want to hear this — it might come in handy someday.

Long ago, right after the Japanese war, during the struggle over the constitution, all kinds of salvations and consolations were being visited on the Jews, first in the big cities, afterward in the small towns. But they never reached me, and I thought they never would. Why not? That’s easy to answer: after living for so many years among Gentiles, real peasants, I was on friendly terms with everyone in the village. Uncle Tevel was held in the highest esteem! Did you need advice? Go to Uncle Tevel. Did you need a cure for the fever? Go to Tevel’ye. How’s about a little loan? Also go to Uncle Tevel. Did I need to worry about such things as pogroms, when the peasants had told me many times that I had nothing to fear? They wouldn’t allow it! And so it was — but listen to this.

One day I arrived home from Boiberik. I was still going strong at the time, doing very well, selling dairy, cheese, butter, and vegetables. I unhitched the horse and tossed him some hay and oats. As I was about to wash up before eating, I suddenly noticed a crowd of goyim, the entire village, outside my door, including the elders, from Ivan Poperilo the mayor down to the last goy, Trochim the shepherd. All of them looked very strange to me, all dressed up in their holiday best. At first my heart thudded: what kind of holiday was this, all of a sudden? They hadn’t come to study Torah with me! But I pulled myself together: Nonsense, Tevye! You should be ashamed of yourself. All these years you’ve lived here as a Jew in peace and tranquillity among so many Gentiles, and no one has ever touched so much as a hair on your head.

So I went out and greeted them with a hearty sholem aleichem. “Welcome,” I said. “What are you doing here, my dear neighbors? What good news do you bring?”

The mayor, Ivan Poperilo, stepped forward and said without any preliminaries, “We have come here, Tevel, to beat you up.”

What do you say to that? What more did they have in mind? But show them my feelings — never! On the contrary! Tevye is not a little boy. So I said to them cheerfully, “Mazel tov to you, but why did it take you so long to get around to it? In other places they’ve almost forgotten about beatings!”

Then Ivan Poperilo the mayor said, rather seriously, “You must understand, Tevel, that we have been arguing over whether we should beat you up or not. Since everywhere else people are getting beaten up, why should we let you get away without it? So the village council has decided we should beat you up. But we don’t know what else to do with you, Tevel. Should we knock out your windows and rip up your feather beds and pillows, or should we burn down your house and barn?”

Now that really began to upset me. My guests leaned on their tall staffs and whispered to one another, looking as if they meant business. If they did, I thought, then as we say in the Psalms, The flood waters are rising up to my very soul. Tevye, you are in deep trouble! Eh, with the Angel of Death you don’t play games — I had to say something to them.

Why drag the story out, dear friend? It was fated that a miracle take place. The One Above put in my head the idea that I not humble myself. I took heart and in good spirits said to the villagers, “Listen, gentlemen, to what I have to say. If the council has decided, they must know best. Tevye deserves to have you destroy his home and everything he has. But you know, there is something higher than your council. There is a God Above. I am not saying my God or your God, but I am speaking of the God of all of us, who sits above and sees all the wickedness that goes on down below. It could be,” I said, “that He pointed me out to be punished by you, my best friends, for no reason at all, or possibly the opposite, He wants under no circumstances for Tevye to be harmed. Who,” I said, “can know God’s will? Maybe there is one among you who will take it upon himself to understand it?”

Apparently they realized that they would not get the best of Tevye, and so Ivan Poperilo the mayor said to me, “This is the way it is. We have nothing against you, Tevel. It’s true you are,” he said, “a Jew, and you are not a bad person. But one thing has nothing to do with the other. We must beat you up. The council decided it, and that’s the way it has to be! We will break out your windows. That we must do, because if some official passes through, they must see that you’ve been punished. Otherwise we might be the ones who get punished.” Those were his very words, so help me God! Nu, I ask you now, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you are a man of the world who has traveled all over. Is Tevye right when he says we have a powerful God?

Now let us return to the Lech l’cho — Get Thee Gone. I studied it not too long ago, and it has the most meaning. This time, you understand, no fancy interpretations or speeches helped me. Here is the story exactly, with every jot and tittle, as you like to hear it.

Right at that time the world was turning topsy-turvy over Mendel Beiliss and the blood-libel trial. Beiliss was suffering the punishments of the damned, atoning for the sins of others. Sitting on the stoop of my house, I was deep in thought. It was summertime. The sun was baking, and my head was spinning. How could this be happening? I wondered. How could it be possible, in these times, in such a clever world full of such smart people! And where was God, the old Jewish God? Why was He silent? How could He allow such a thing? How could it be, and again, how could it be? And I began to ponder the universe and wondered, What is this world? And what is the next world? And why does not the Messiah come? Ay, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Messiah were to come down right now riding on his white horse! That would be a fine thing! Never has he been so badly needed by our Jewish brethren as now! I don’t know about the rich people, the Brodskys in Yehupetz or the Rothschilds in Paris. Maybe they never think of Him at all. But we poor Jewish folk from Kasrilevka and Mazepevka and Zlodeyevka, and even Yehupetz and Odessa, crave his coming. We strain our eyes looking for him! Our entire hope now is that God will perform a miracle and the Messiah will come!

Just then, I looked up and saw a white horse and rider coming straight to my door! He stopped, got off, tied the horse to the post, and came right over to me. “Zdrastoy, Tevel! Greetings!”

“Greetings to you, your honor!” I answered in a friendly manner, and in my heart I was thinking, Haman approacheth. As Rashi says, When you await the Messiah, the village constable comes instead. I rose and said to the constable, “Welcome to you. What’s happening in the world, and what good news do you bring, your honor?” My heart was pounding — I wanted to know what and when.

But he, the constable, took his time. He smoked a leisurely cigarette, blew out the smoke, spat, and said to me, “How much time do you think you need, Tevel, to sell your house and all your things?”

I stared at him. “Why should I sell my house? Is it in anyone’s way?”

“It isn’t in anyone’s way,” he said. “I’ve come to tell you that you must leave the village.”

“That’s it, no more? For what good deeds do I deserve this? How have I earned this honor?”

“It isn’t me sending you away,” he said. “It’s the provincial government.”

“The government?” I said. “What does the government have against me?”

“Not just you,” he said, “and not just from here, but from all the villages all around, from Zlodeyevka and from Rabilevka and from Kostolomevka, and even Anatevka, which was a town and now has officially become a village, so we can drive all, all of you Jews from here.”

“Even Lazer-Wolf the butcher? And Naftali-Gershon the cripple? And the ritual slaughterer of Anatevka? And the rabbi?”

“All! All!” he said, making a gesture with his hand like cutting with a knife.

That made me feel somewhat easier, as it is said: The troubles of others are half a comfort to one’s self. But I was nevertheless infuriated, and a fire burned within me. I decided to confront the constable. “Tell me, does your honor realize that I’ve lived in this village much longer than you? Do you realize that in this little corner of the world my father lived and my grandfather and my grandmother, may they all rest in peace?” And I listed my whole family by name, whoever lived there and where and when they died.

He heard me out, and when I finished, he said to me, “You are a clever Jew, Tevel, and you can talk a blue streak. What good are your stories about your grandmother and grandfather to me? Let them have a bright paradise! But you, Tevel, had better gather up your stuff and get going to Berdichev!”

That made me even angrier. Enough, you Esau that brought me such good tidings, now he ridicules me by telling me to get going to Berdichev! Let me at least teach him a lesson. “Your honor, as long as you’ve been constable here, have you ever heard any of the neighbors complain that I’ve ever robbed them or cheated them or tricked them or taken anything from them? Go ahead, ask anyone,” I said, “whether I didn’t live much better alongside all of you than anyone else. How many times did I come to you to plead the case for my Gentile neighbors, asking you not to mistreat them?”

That did not sit well with him! He stood up, crushed his cigarette with his fingers, tossed it away. “I don’t have time to waste with your idle chatter,” he said. “I received an order, and that’s all I need to know. Come, you’ll sign the order right here. They give you three days to pack up, sell everything, and get on your way.”

I saw it was bad. “You are giving me three days?” I said. “For this may you live three years in honor and in riches! May God repay you many times over for the good news you brought me!” I gave it to him good, as only Tevye can! After all, what did it matter, what did I have to lose? If I had been twenty years younger and Golde were still alive, and if I had been the same Tevye the dairyman as before, in my prime — oh ho! I wouldn’t have given in so easily! I would have fought back to the last drop of my blood! But the way things were now — what could I do? What are we and what is our life? — what am I today and who am I? Only half a body, a wreck, a broken vessel! O ye ruler of the earth, our Father! I thought, why are you picking on poor Tevye? Why don’t you once in a while play around with Brodsky or Rothschild? Why don’t they have to learn the portion of Lech l’cho — Get Thee Gone? They would probably benefit from it more, wouldn’t you think? They would experience what it was really like to be a Jew, and they would see that we have a powerful God.

Well, these were all empty words. You don’t argue with God or give Him advice on how to run the world. As He says, The heavens are mine and the earth is mine—which means He is the boss and we must obey Him. What He says is said!

I went into the house and told my daughter the widow, “Tzeitl, we must prepare to leave here and go to a city somewhere. We’ve lived in the country long enough. Change your place, change your luck. Start packing the bedding and the samovar and the rest, and I will see to selling the house. A decree came saying we had to clear out of this home of ours in three days.”

She tried to hold back her tears, but her children saw her distress and burst into tears. It was like, what can I say, Tisha B’Av in the house! Angrily, I let out my bitter heart at my poor daughter. “What do you want from me?” I cried. “Why are you sobbing like an old cantor on Yom Kippur? Who do you think I am, God’s favorite child? Aren’t enough Jews,” I said, “being driven out of their villages? Listen to what the constable has to say. Anatevka, which used to be a town, with God’s help, is now a village, so that they can feel free to drive out all the Jews! If that’s the way it is, how are we any worse off than all the other Jews?”

So I poured my heart out to my daughter. But she is, after all, female, and she asked, “Where can we go on such short notice? Where can we find a city to live in?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I said. “When God came to our great-great-grandfather Abraham and told him, Get thee gone from thence, you must leave your native land—did Abraham ask him, ‘Where to?’ God said, to the land of Arad. We will go wherever our eyes take us, wherever all Jews go! What will be for all the children of Israel will be for us.

“And what makes you think you are better than your sister Beilke? It isn’t beneath her dignity to be with her Podhotsur in America, scraping out a living, so it shouldn’t be beneath yours either. Let us thank God, blessed be He,” I said, “that we have the means with which to set out. We still have some money from before, and a little from selling the cows, and some will come from the house. It all adds up, and may it be for the best! And even if we had, God forbid, nothing,” I said, “we are still better off than Mendel Beiliss!”

In short, I convinced her not to be obstinate. When the constable brings a decree telling you to leave, I explained, you can’t be piggish; you must go. Then I went into the village to sell my house.

I went straight to Ivan Poperilo the mayor, a fat goy who I knew was dying to buy my house. I didn’t give him any explanations — a Jew is smarter than a goy. “You should know, Ivan, my friend, I am leaving,” I told him.

He asked me why.

I said, “I am moving to the city. I want to be among Jews. I am no longer a young man, and I might die at any time.”

Ivan said, “So why can’t you die here? Who is stopping you?”

I thanked him warmly. “Better you should die here,” I said. “You’re more deserving, and I will go die among my own. Buy my house and my garden from me. I wouldn‘t sell it to anyone but you.”

“How much are you asking for your house?”

“How much are you offering?”

Back and forth, up a coin, down a coin, we haggled until we reached a price and shook hands on it. I took a nice down payment so he wouldn’t change his mind. A Jew is smarter than a goy. And that was how I sold my house and all my belongings in one day, dirt cheap, but still making a bit of a profit. I went off to hire a wagon to cart off the remainder of my poor household goods. But just listen to something that can only happen to Tevye. I won’t keep you long, but listen carefully and I’ll tell it to you, as you say, in three words.

I came home to find, not a house, but a wreck, the poor walls bare, as if they were shedding tears for all that was happening to them! On the floor were piles, bundles everywhere! On the hearth the cat perched, sorrowful as a poor orphan. My heart almost broke, and tears sprang to my eyes. Had I not been embarrassed before my daughter, I would have had a good cry! Here was where I had grown up, here I had struggled all my life, and suddenly—Lech l’cho—get thee gone! Say what you will, it’s a terrible loss!

But Tevye is not a woman. I straightened up, put on a cheerful face, and called out, “Come here, Tzeitl. Where are you?” She stepped out of the other room, her eyes red and her nose puffy. Aha, I thought, she’d been bawling again, like a woman on Yom Kippur! These women, do you hear, as soon as something happens, they weep! Tears are cheap to them! “You silly,” I said to her, “why are you crying again? Aren’t you being foolish? Just think of the difference between you and Mendel Beiliss.”

She didn’t want to hear that. “Papa, you don’t know why I’m crying,” she said.

“I know very well,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I know? You’re crying because you’re sad to leave your home. You were born here and grew up here, and so you are sad. Believe me,” I said, “if I weren’t Tevye, if I were somebody else, I would kiss these bare walls and these empty shelves. I would get down on my knees on the earth. I will miss every little thing the same as you. Even the cat,” I said, “is sitting on the hearth like an orphan. It’s a dumb animal, and yet I have pity on her. She will remain alone without someone to care for her, a forsaken creature.”

“There is, I must tell you,” she said, “a greater sorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are leaving someone behind who will be as alone as a bare stone.”

What did she mean? “What are you babbling about? Which person? What stone?”

“Papa, I am not talking about our leaving. I am talking about our Chava.”

When she uttered that name, I swear to you, it was as if hot boiling water had been poured over me or a block of wood had hit me on the head! I fell upon Tzeitl in a rage. “Why do you suddenly bring up Chava? I told you how many times that Chava for me is no longer alive!”

Do you think that frightened her? Not one bit! Tevye’s daughters have great strength in them!

“Papa,” she said, “stop being so angry, and remember what you yourself said so many times. It is written that a human being must have pity for another like a father for a child.”

Do you hear those words? I became even more enraged and lit into her, as she deserved. “You are speaking to me of pity? Where was her pity when I was stretched out like a dog before the priest, cursed be his name, kissed his feet, while she was in the next room and heard every word? And where was her pity when her mother, may she rest in peace, was lying right here on the ground covered in black? Where was she then? And the nights I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “And the heartache that gnaws at me to this very day when I remember what she did to me and for whom she forsook us? Where is her pity for me?” My heart was breaking, and I could no longer speak.

But Tevye’s daughter found an answer. “You yourself, Papa,” she said, “have said that a person who is sorry for what he has done, even God must forgive.”

“Sorry?” I said. “It’s too late! The branch once torn from the tree must wither! The leaf that has fallen to the ground must shrivel. Do not say any more to me about it—thus far and no more!”

When she realized that words were of no use, that she could not win Tevye over with words, she threw her arms around me and began kissing my hands. “Papa, may I suffer, may I die right here on the spot if you cast her off again as you did there in the woods when she ran back to you and you turned your horse away and sped off!”

“Why are you tormenting me? Why are you torturing me like this? What do you want of me?”

But she would not let go — she gripped me by the hands and pleaded her case. “May evil come to me, may I perish if you do not forgive her,” she said. “Because she is your daughter, just as I am!”

“What do you want of me?” I said. “She is no longer my daughter! She died long ago!”

“No, she didn’t die, and she is your daughter again as always. Because from the first minute she found out we were being sent away, she decided they would send all of us, she too along with us. Wherever we go — so Chava herself said — she will go. Our exile is her exile. Here is the proof,” she said. “Here is her bundle on the floor.” My daughter Tzeitl said this to me in one breath, the way we recite the ten sons of Haman in the Megillah, not letting me get in a word, and pointed to a bundle wrapped in a red shawl. Then she flung open the door to the other room and called out, “Chava!”

And what can I tell you, dear friend? Just as you describe in your books, Chava appeared from the other room — healthy, tall, and lovely as she always was, unchanged except for her face, which wore a worried look, her eyes sad. Holding her head high with pride, she remained standing, and she looked at me as I did at her. Then she stretched out her arms to me and could only utter one word, one word only, softly:

“Pa-pa. .”

Please don’t think badly of me that tears come to my eyes when I remember this. But do not even think that Tevye shed so much as a tear or showed, as they say, a sign of sentimentality — never! What I felt in my heart at the time is another story. You yourself are a father, and you know, just as I do, the meaning of the verse like as a father pitieth his children, and you know how a father feels when a child, no matter how it has sinned, looks right into your soul and says to you, “Papa!” Well, try to be strong and drive those feelings away! Then again the hurt persisted, and that fine bit of spite she played on me came to mind. I remembered Chvedka Galagan, may he sink into the earth, and the priest, may his name be erased, and my tears, and Golde’s death, God rest her soul. . No! Tell me yourself, how can I forget it, how can I forget it?

But then again, after all, she was still my child, and again the verse came to me, like as a father pitieth his children. How can a person be so harsh when God says of Himself that He is an all-forgiving God! And especially since she had repented and wanted to return to her father and to her God! What do you say, Pani Sholem Aleichem? You’re a Jew yourself who writes books and gives advice to everybody. Tell me, what should Tevye have done? Should he have embraced her as one of his own, hugged and kissed her, as we say on Yom Kippur at Kol Nidrei, I have pardoned according to Thy word—come to me, you are my child? Or should I have turned my back on her, as I did before, and told her, Lech l’cho—get thee gone, go back to where you came from? No, imagine that you are in Tevye’s place, and tell me honestly, as a true and good friend, what you would have done. And if you cannot tell me right away, I will give you time to think it over.

Meanwhile I must go. The grandchildren are waiting for me, looking for their grandfather. You must surely know that grandchildren are a thousand times more precious and more lovable than children. Sons and sons of sons—that’s no small thing!

Goodbye, be well, and forgive me for filling your head with so many words. It will give you something to write about. If God wills it, we will meet again someday.

VACHALAKLOKOS

A belated story from Tevye the dairyman, recounted before

the war but, because of the wartime turmoil, not seeing the

light of day till now

WRITTEN IN 1914-16.

You probably remember, Pani Sholem Aleichem, that I once told you about the portion of Lech l’cho — Get Thee Gone, with all the details. I told you how Esau settled accounts with his brother Jacob, repaid him well for the blessings of the firstborn son he stole from him. Like Jacob of old, I was exiled from my village with all my worldly goods, with my children and grandchildren, as their edict required. They made an utter ruin of my property and poor belongings; even my horse had to be sold, which to this day I cannot speak of without tears coming to my eyes. As we say on Tisha B’Av, This too is worthy of tears. That poor horse earned the right to have a few tears shed over him.

But never mind. After all, it’s the same story. Why am I more special to God than the rest of our Jewish brethren, whom Ivan is driving from the blessed villages as quickly as he can manage it? He is sweeping and cleaning out and uprooting every trace of a Jew! As we say in yaaleh veyavo, so as there shall be no sign—nothing will remain of their presence. I have nothing more to complain to God about than all the rest of the village Jews who are being driven out and are now wandering in every direction, having no place to lay their heads, quaking with fear every minute lest a police officer appear for whatever reason. Tevye is not ignorant like other village Jews. He understands a few Psalms and is no stranger to the midrash and can, with God’s help, interpret a portion of Chumesh and Rashi as well. So what? Do you expect Esau to appreciate this and have respect for such a Jew? Or maybe I deserve thanks for it? The fact is, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and a fault it certainly isn’t. Thank God I am a Jew, the equal of others, and am not so blind that I cannot see or understand the small print in the holy writings. I am acquainted with the ins and outs of scripture, as it is said: Worthy is he who understands.

You must think, Pani Sholem Aleichem, that I am just saying this off the top of my head. Or that I want to show off for you, to boast of my great knowledge and learning. Don’t be offended, but only someone who doesn’t know Tevye would say that. Tevye does not speak without thinking about it first, and he was never a vain braggart. Tevye likes to talk about something he has seen with his own eyes or has experienced himself. Sit down right here for a little while, and you’ll hear a good story, about how sometimes it can come in handy if someone isn’t an ignoramus and has some notion of the higher things and knows when and where and how to apply a portion from our old Book of Psalms.

To make a long story short, if I’m not mistaken, it was a long time ago, right in the heat of Ivanchik’s revolutions and constitutions. The hooligans were set loose on Jewish cities and villages and given a free hand. They destroyed Jewish property and goods, as it says in the Siddur: they shattered windows and tore bedding. I remember once telling you that I was not surprised by such things. I do not scare easily. If it happens, it happens. If it is fated, an edict from heaven, then how can I be an exception among Jews? As we say in the chapter, Each Jew hath his share. But then again, if it’s simply an epidemic, a kind of blight, God pity us all, a passing windstorm, you can’t take it personally! The windstorm will subside, the sky will clear, and it will be a new day for us.

And that’s how it was, as I once told you, when the village council informed me of the good news that they had come to do to me what they were doing to all of Israel — to administer the good deed of “driving out the Jews.” At first I reviled them soundly, complained, and demanded answers, as only Tevye can: “I ask you, how and why and when? Give me an explanation for suddenly swooping down and attacking a person in the middle of the day and tearing the feathers out of his pillows?”

Well, you can complain all you like, but all my words were useless. The hooligans were stubborn and insisted they had, for appearances’ sake, to follow orders from the police in case an officer blew in, a plague on him. And if he saw they had let a Jew pass as an equal with no sign of a pogrom, how would it look to the police? That’s why, they said, the council decreed that something had to be done to me! They must!

I thought it over and finally said, “Listen to what I have to say. Let the council so decree, but that’s beside the point. Is there not something higher than the council? But you know there is something higher than the council.”

“Tell us, what can be higher?”

I said, “God. I don’t mean our God or your God. I mean our God and God of our Fathers, the God of us all, who has created me and you and your whole council. That’s who I mean. And you must ask Him if He has commanded you to do me injury. It could be,” I said, “that He does command it, but then again, it could also be that He doesn’t want it at all. Ay, how can we know? Let us throw lots,” I said. “Here is a Book of God’s Psalms. Do you know what the Psalms are? We call it Psalms and you call it Psalter. The holy Psalter,” I said, “will be the judge between us. It will decide whether or not you must punish me.”

They exchanged disbelieving smiles. Ivan Poperilo the mayor stepped out from among them and said me, “Exactly how will the holy Psalter make a judgment?”

“If you give me, Ivan’u, your hand on it that the council will obey what the Book of Psalms says, I will show you how.”

Ivan put out his hand to me. “Agreed.”

“If that is so,” I said, “it’s done. Now I will flip through the pages of the Book of Psalms, and as soon as my eyes catch the first word, I will say to you, ‘Be so kind and pious as to repeat it.’ And if any one of you can repeat it after me, it will be a sign that God commands that you do with Tevye what you will. And if not, that will be a sign that God says no. Are you agreed?”

Ivan the mayor and the council exchanged looks and said to me, “All right.”

I opened the Book of Psalms for them, and my eyes somehow caught the word vachalaklokos. “There you have it,” I said. “Can you repeat the word vachalaklokos?”

They looked at one another and at me and asked me to say the word again.

“That’s fine. I’ll even say it three times, if you wish: Vachalaklokos! Vachalaklokos! Vachalaklokos!”

“No, Tevel, don’t say hal hal hal! Say it clearly with a beat, and slowly!”

“I’ll do it!” I said. “I will say it clearly with a beat and slowly. Va-cha-lak-lo-kos! Satisfied?”

The group thought it over and got down to work, each in his own way. One said, “Haidamaki,” another said, “Lomaki,” and a third actually came out with “Chaykolia.” What did he like about “Chaykolia”?

I realized it was a story without an end. “You know what, children?” I said. “I see that the work is getting too hard for you. Obviously, vachalaklokos is not for you, so I will give you another word, also from our Book of Psalms: m’maamkim keraticha.”

And the same business started all over again: one pronounced it “Lochanka kerosina,” a second pronounced it “Krivliaka buzina,” and a third simply spat out, “Forget it!”

Apparently they realized that with Tevye they would not win. Ivan Poperilo called out to me, “This is the way it is. We have nothing personal against you, Tevel, nothing at all. True, you are a Jew and not a bad person, but one thing has nothing to do with the other. We must make a wreck of things here. The council has decided, and it’s over. We will,” he said, “at least break a few windows, and if you wish, you can knock out a few panes yourself. That will silence their mouths, to hell with them! If the police ride by, let them see you didn’t get off. Otherwise they will punish us on account of you. And now, Tevel,” he said, “put up the samovar and be so kind as to serve us some tea and naturally some brandy to go with it, and we’ll drink to your health because you are, after all, a smart Jew, one of God’s people.”

That is what he said, those very words as I am telling you, may God help both of us!

So now I ask you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, you are a Jew who writes books. Don’t you agree with Tevye that we have a powerful God and that a person, so long as he lives, should never lose heart, and especially a Jew, and especially one who knows a Hebrew letter when he sees one? Above all, hear me, in the end it comes out, as we say in the daily prayer, worthy and good is he who can, that no matter how we keep from boasting about it, we must admit that we Jews are, after all, the best and the smartest people. As the Prophet says: Who can be compared to Israel? How can a goy compare himself to a Jew? A goy is a goy, and a Jew is a Jew, as you yourself say in your writings. You have to be born a Jew, blessed be the Jew. How lucky I was to be born a Jew and know the taste of exile and of always wandering, never sleeping where we spent the day. Since I learned the portion of Get Thee Gone—do you remember I once told you about that at great length? — I keep on going without a resting place where I can say, “Here, Tevye, you will remain.” Tevye doesn’t ask questions. They told him to leave; he left.

Today we met Pani Sholem Aleichem, right here on the train. Tomorrow the train can carry us off to Yehupetz. Next year it can drop us off in Odessa, or America, unless the One Above looks around and says, “Do you know what, children? I think I’m going to send you the Messiah!” I hope He does, even if it’s out of spite, our old God in Heaven!

In the meantime be well, go in good health, and give my regards to all our little Jews. Tell them not to worry: Our old God lives!