The Ultimate Rabbi:Tevye the Dairyman

Sholem Aleichem's Tevye der milkhiger is an inexhaustible work of art. Its premise is so astonishingly plausible, it may be the reason for its all-rounded popularity. A humble shtetl dweller talks compulsively about his daughters: first comes Tsaytl, then comes Hodl, followed by Chava, ShprintzeÖ. And what does he say? What every parent has to say about his own children: everything and nothing. It is not hard to see why they, each and every one of them, are his raison d''tre. But they are also his curse, for Tevye doesn't have a son to recite kaddish after he dies. His daughters he is giving away, one by one. So he wonders: What will be left of me in the end?

As he concocts one episode after another, not really about them but about him, his horse, and his G-d, it becomes clear that the plot is less significant than the language in which it is transmitted. In the end what truly matters are not the ups and downs of the protagonist but the way those ups and downs give way to intricate, humorous detours and endless misquotations from the Bible, Talmud, and MishnaÖ. Indeed, Tevye is alive and well only when he shvitzes and schmoozes. Aren't we all? Words, their magic, their synergy, are his means of survival.

Few books I can think of are dearer to me. This one is better than Madame Bovary, though, another favorite of mine, to which, somehow, it bears a strong resemblance. For instance, how many daughters does Tevye have? The number keeps on changing, exactly like the color of Emma Bovary's eyes. Also, through their protagonists, both Flaubert and Sholem Aleichem address the issue of modern angst. They do so by creating characters that are lost in the shifting landscape of literature and the imagination: the adulterous French doctor's wife, while reading romances, daydreams her escape from her marital frustration; the milkman, on the other hand, wonders as he wanders through a labyrinth of midrashic misquotations. But Tevye is closer to my heart because he ridicules erudition -- he is the ultimate rabbi: ignorant, but astonishingly wise.

What kind of novelistic strategy is this that has the protagonist talking to its own author? Perhaps more puzzling is the vitality of the whole geshray: How is it that a novel drafted in installments between 1899 and 1916 managed to become a compact unit and remains at once timely and topical a century later? I've sought to answer these questions in the dozens of times I've read the book -- in Yiddish, Spanish, Hebrew, and English. I first encountered it as part of my education; years later I reread it for pleasure; then I returned to it in my apprenticeship as a writer; and finally I built a permanent place for it on my bookshelf as a teacher. My original sympathies were for Tevye's daughters. I saw almost all of them as captive mistresses responding to their husbands' quests: one became a tailor's wife, another a Communist's companion, a third married a goy, a fourth one commit-ted suicideÖ. I remember asking myself: Which of these will be my own path? What is fate securing for me? I didn't see them as passive, though; Tevye, I thought, was the truly motionless one. Why does he allow the environment to shape him in full?, I pondered. Why doesn't he take control of his own destiny?

Years go by and I'm less intrigued by the daughters and more -- far more -- by Tevye himself: by his inner quest, by his morality. What would I, as a father, do in a similar situation? Or, in the present tense, what do I do every day to keep my own dialogue with my Author alive? How do I remain firm in the face of so much chaos? What lessons does Tevye teach me about humanity? In a time of rampant anti-Semitism, he asks why life needs to be so difficult. I, instead, wonder why life appears to be, superficially at least, so easy, to the extent of deception. He asks how come G-d selected the Jews as "the chosen people." Chosen for what? For my part, I question if we Jews have not spoiled that divine choice, pushing ourselves to be artificially "normal." Haven't we given up too easily on our uniqueness? Did we get lost in the politics of assimilation and complacency?

In short, to me Tevye der milkhiger isn't only one of the most profound novels I've ever read. It is also a code of behavior disguised as a novel, one that delivers an unapologetic endorsement of the Jewish diaspora in a way that resonates across generations. "Let us wander as we wonder," it announces confidently. Is there anything more Jewish than this?