“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!