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.