Sholom Aleichem (1859–1916)

Two of the best-known Yiddish stories by the “Jewish Mark Twain”. Sholem Rabinovitch was an ambitious young man, brought up in a mixture of traditional Jewish and liberal Russian cultures in late-19th-century Ukraine. After failing as a businessman and as a writer in Russian or Hebrew, he stumbled upon a profitable market for folksy comic tales in Yiddish, which he published under the pen-name Sholem Aleichem (the ubiquitous Hebrew and Arabic greeting “peace be with you”). Although show more written mostly to entertain nostalgic first-generation emigrants to the US, these stories still have a lot of interest for modern readers because of the way that the comedy is overlaid on realistic descriptions of the life of Jews in the fast-changing conditions of Russia and America around 1900-1914.

Teyve the dairyman is an episodic narrative, published over the space of a couple of decades, of the life of a tradesman in a small Russian town. Teyve frequently reflects on his good fortune in not being born a woman, but has nonetheless been blessed with seven daughters (and a wife!), all of whom bring him misery in one way or another, mostly as a result of his own stubbornness or lack of perception, aided by the more predictable disasters of the outside world: wars, revolutions and pogroms. A lot of the comedy comes from Teyve’s extensive knowledge of — and total failure to understand — the Hebrew Scriptures. The musical Fiddler on the roof was very loosely based on these stories, but there’s no actual fiddling in the text.

Motl the Cantor’s son is a little different in tone from having been conceived from the start as a single novel, although it ends in mid-chapter after about 200 pages: Sholem Aleichem carried on writing until the last day of his life. It’s narrated by a nine-year-old boy who describes the family’s attempts to earn a living after the death of his father, first in Russia, then on the long trek west to join an emigrant ship, and finally in New York City. If the author had lived a little longer, it might have turned into the Jewish David Copperfield. There’s both comedy and pathos in Motl’s detached observation of the repeated disasters that happen to family and friends and the way he is able to take pleasure in small positive outcomes in the midst of it all. He’s always a small boy first and foremost, and only in second place a representative of his culture. This seems to work quite well, only occasionally turning slightly patronising and hardly ever veering into sentiment. It is still quite possible to laugh at Motl’s view of the world. show less

This collection of short stories is really two separate collections put together: the Tevye the Dairyman Stories, and the Railroad Stories. The first set comprises the short stories that were the inspiration for the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Written over a span of twenty years, these stories offer fragments of Tevye's life as he comes to terms with the changing times and the growth of his daughters. The Railroad Stories do not feature Tevye, and are instead a disjointed show more collection of narratives it seems Sholem Aleichem has collected on his many travels by railroad throughout Europe. There's no overwhelming theme to these collected stories, except perhaps koyl yisro'el khaveyrim ("all Jews are brethren") -- wherever you go, a Jew is a Jew.

I was surprised to find that Tevye's world in these stories is so different from what is portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof (the play and the movie). For one thing, society is much more varied, and there are Jews on all levels and in all sorts of roles, not only in the shtetl living as peasants. Secularization plays a much more significant role in these stories than the play/movie would suggest, and Tevye finds himself straddling the gap between the religious and secular world even more precariously. Speaking of precarious, though, there's a noticeable lack of any fiddling; the image of the rooftop fiddler, Halkin's introduction explains, actually comes from a Marc Chagall painting.

Perhaps the most colorful element of this collection is the language used. I really have to commend Halkin's translation -- it does a marvelous job of capturing the "feel" of Yiddish as I remember my grandparents speaking it. Halkin also does a great job of navigating the blended Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and Hebrew to craft a translation that keeps the essence not only of the meaning, but of Sholem Aleichem's famous wordplay and colorful turns of phrase. I don't read nearly enough Yiddish to be able to read the original and offer a line-by-line comparison to endorse the translation more fully, but this translation certainly had the right "feel," and evokes images of the world that so many immigrant Jews left behind to move to America (and elsewhere) at the turn of the last century. No wonder Sholem Aleichem received such a warm reception here when he emigrated! show less

re-read
I've read this collection of stories as a young adult back in Soviet Union and only re-reading it today I understand how I did not understood it at all.
Back in the day I've missed all the links to the Jewish culture, all the references to Torah, but also all the historical references to Pale of Settlements, the limitations on Jews getting education, owning land or being a professional.
These stories of Tevye, a poor and hardworking Jew, a father of six daughters, whom he hopes to show more marry well full of both humor and sadness, they're both hopeless and full of hope. And now I understand that this is how my great grandparents lived. show less

SYNC: Neville Jason’s performance makes Tevye’s Yiddish wit, wisdom, and melancholy utterly believable. Tevye, whom listeners will know from the popular musical Fiddler on the Roof, recounts the tales of his family’s daily life under the iron fist of the Russian tsar. Jason makes Tevye more than a milkman, but rather a philosopher of commonsense with a keen eye for irony. With subtlety and nuance, Jason masters Tevye’s self-deprecating humor. As all the misery and wretchedness of the show more world pour down on his head, Jason’s Tevye seems to shrug his shoulders and move on. show less