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
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,
And lifteth the needy out of the dunghill.
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!