And that, Pan Sholem Aleichem, is how I blew all my money. But if you think I’ve been eating my heart out over it, you have another guess coming. You know the Bible’s opinion: li hakesef veli hazohov—money is a lot of baloney. What matters is the man who has it — I mean, what matters is for a man to be a man. Do you know what I still can’t get over, though? Losing my dream! If only you knew how badly, oh Lord, how really badly I wanted to be a rich Jew, if only for just a few days! But go be smarter than life. Doesn’t it say be’al korkhekho atoh khai—nobody asks if you want to be born or if you want your last pair of boots to be torn. “Instead of dreaming, Tevye,” God was trying to tell me, “you should have stuck to your cheese and butter.” Does that mean I’ve lost faith and stopped hoping for better times? Don’t you believe it! The more troubles, the more faith, the bigger the beggar, the greater his hopes. How can that be, you ask? But I’ve already gone on enough for one day, and I’d better be off and about my business. How does the verse go? Koyl ha’odom koyzev—there isn’t a man who hasn’t taken a beating sometime. Don’t forget to take care and be well!
(1899)
TODAY’S CHILDREN
Say what you will about today’s children, Pan Sholem Aleichem, bonim gidalti veroymamti: first you have them, then you break your back for them, make every sacrifice, put yourself through the mill … and for what? So that maybe, you think, if you’ve managed to get ahead a bit in life, you can help them get somewhere too. I wouldn’t dream of having Brodsky for my in-law, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to settle for just anyone, because I’m not such a nobody myself; and since I don’t come, as my wife likes to put it, from a long line of fishmongers, I had hoped for some luck with my daughters. How was that? In the first place, because God gave them good looks, and a pretty face, the saying goes, is half a dowry. And secondly, because even if, with God’s help, I’m no longer the Tevye I once was, someone like me still rates a good match even in Yehupetz, don’t you think? The trouble is that the same merciful God who’s always practicing His miracles on me, first seeing how quick He can raise a man up and then how fast He can dump him back down, has let me know in no uncertain terms, “Tevye, stop being so ridiculous as to think you can run the world!” … Well, wait till you hear how the world runs itself without me. And who, naturally, does it run right over first? Why, your schlimazel of a Tevye, of course!
But why make a short story long? I’m sure you remember, though I would much prefer to forget, what happened with my cousin Menachem Mendl — how I wish I had never heard that name! — and with the fine business in gold imperials and poptions that we did in Yehupetz. It shouldn’t happen to my worst enemy! For a while I went about moaning and groaning that it was all over with me and my dairy, until the wife said to me, “Tevye, you’re a fool to carry on as though the world has come to an end. All you’re doing is eating your heart out. Why not just pretend we’ve been burgled, it could happen to anyone … If I were you, I’d go see Layzer Wolf the butcher in Anatevka. He keeps saying he needs to talk to you urgently.”
“What can be so urgent?” I asked. “If he’s got it into his head that I’m going to sell him our brown cow, he can take a stick and beat it out again.”
“What’s so precious about our brown cow?” says my wife. “All the rivers of milk and mountains of butter we get from her?”
“No, it isn’t that,” I say. “It’s just a sin to hand over a poor innocent beast to be slaughtered. Why, it says in our holy Bible—”
“For goodness’ sake, Tevye,” she says, “that’s enough! The whole world knows what a professor of Bible you are. Listen to a simple woman like me and go see Layzer Wolf. Every Thursday when I send our Tsaytl to his butcher shop for meat, it’s the same thing again: would she please tell her father to come at once, he has something important to say to him …”
Well, sometimes you have to do what you’re told, even if it’s by your own wife; I let myself be talked into going to see Layzer Wolf in Anatevka, which is a couple of miles away. When I got there, he was out.
“Where’s Layzer Wolf?” I asked the pug-nosed woman who was busy doing the housework.
“He’s at the slaughterhouse,” she says. “He’s been there all morning slaughtering an ox, but he should be back soon.”
While I waited for him I wandered about the house, taking in the furnishings. I only wish I had half as much! There was a cupboard full of copper that you couldn’t have bought for two hundred and fifty rubles; not just one samovar but two; and a brass tray, and another tray from Warsaw, and a set of cups with gilt edges, and a pair of silver candlesticks, and a cast-iron menorah, and all kinds of other things, more bric-a-brac than you could count. God in heaven, I thought, I should only live to see my daughters own such things! Some people have all the breaks. Not only is Layzer Wolf rich, with a grand total of two children, both married, he even has the luck to be a widower …
Well, before long the door opened and in came Layzer Wolf himself, fit to be tied at the slaughterer for having been so unkind as to declare unkosher an ox the size of an oak tree because of a tiny scar on its lung no bigger than a hairpin. A black hole should open up in the earth and swallow him alive!.. “Am I glad to see you, Reb Tevye!” he says. “It’s easier to raise the dead. What’s new with a Jew?”
“What should be new?” I say. “The harder I work, the less I have to show for it. It’s like it says in the Bible: loy mi’uktsokh veloy miduvshokh. I not only have no money, I also lack health, wealth, and happiness.”
“It’s a sin to be ungrateful, Reb Tevye,” he says. “Compared to what you once were, and let’s hope won’t be again, you’re not doing half bad these days.”
“It’s the other half that worries me,” I say. “But I have nothing to complain about, thank God. Askakurdo dimaskanto dikarnaso difarsmakhto, as the Talmud puts it …” And I thought: may your nose stick to your backside, you meat hacker, you, if there’s such a line of Talmud in the world …
“You’re always quoting something,” Layzer Wolf says. “I envy you, Reb Tevye, for being able to read the small print. But what good does all that book learning do you? Let’s talk about something more practical. Have a seat, Reb Tevye.” And before I can have one, he bellows, “How about some tea!”