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Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem
Sample Issue
Synopsis from the publisher
Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye,
the buoyant, compassionate, philosophical, Bible-quoting dairyman whose life
story formed the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. And no Yiddish
writer was more beloved than Tevye's creator Sholem Rabinovich (1859-1916),
who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish for "hello there.")
Selected Passages
"Well one can't stop being a Jew in this world: it was time for the evening
prayer. (Not that the evening was about to go anywhere, but a Jew prays when
he must, not when he wants to.) Some fine prayer it turned out to be! Right
in the middle of the shimenesre, the eighteen benedictions, a devil gets
into my crazy horse and he decides to go for a pleasure jaunt. I had to run
after the wagon and grab his reins while shouting 'God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob' at the top of my voice - and to make matters worse I'd really
felt like praying for a change, for once in my life I was sure it would make
me feel better..."
"You can see that I tried to make light of it, though my heart was weeping
inside me. But Tevye is no woman; Tevye kept a stiff upper lip. And she, my
Hodl, was not to be outdone by me. She answered whatever I said point by
point, quietly, calmly, intelligently. Say what you will about them, Tevye's
daughters can talk! ...Her voice shook dully, and even with my eyes shut, I
felt that I could see her, that I could see my Hodl's face that was as pale
and worn as the moon...Should I have thrown myself on her, had a fit, begged
her not to go? But I could see it was a lost cause. Damn them all, every one
of those daughters of mine - when they fall for someone, they do it hook,
line, and sinker!"
"In short, I'll try not to make it a long story. A couple of years went by
and my Beilke grew into a young woman, while I carried on with my business
as usual, taking my cheese, cream, and butter to Boiberik in the summer and,
in the winter, to Yehupetz - may it end up like Sodom beneath a sea of salt!
I can't even bear to think of that town anymore... that is, I don't mean the
town, I mean the Jews who live in it... that is, I don't mean them either, I
mean Efrayim the Matchmaker, may his grandfather break a leg in the grave!
Just listen to what a Jew, a matchmaker yet, can do to you."
Review Essay by Philip Graubart
Like the Ancient Mariner, Tevye the Dairyman grabs a listener - in
his case, his creator, Sholem Aleichem - and tells a tale. The comparison
may seem strange; unlike the Coleridge character, Tevye is funny, warm,
learned, earthy, and hopeful. Still, both the Ancient Mariner and Tevye
tell stories of ruin: the Mariner, of his ship; Tevye, first, of all the
assumptions that sustain his world, and then of the world itself.
Sholem Aleichem didn't conceive of a novel when he wrote his first
Tevye short story, and the novel doesn't really get going as an organic
narrative until the third chapter. But the first two episodes, "Tevye
Strikes it Rich" and "Tevye Blows a Small Fortune," introduce us to Tevye's
two favorite subjects: God and money. As it happens Tevye's holds
complicated views on these subjects. On the one hand he's a traditional
man, trying to hang on to the religious and economic culture that sustained
his people for generations. On the other hand - and, in many ways this is
his tragedy - he's not unsympathetic to the revolutionary ideas that will
ultimately destroy him and his family.
In the first story, "Tevye Strikes it Rich," Tevye shows both his
pious and radical sides. When evening comes, he follows the commandment to
pray, commenting, "a Jew prays when he must, not when he wants to." But, in
one of the funniest scenes in Yiddish literature, he laces the traditional
prayers with notably impious demands and complaints. "'See us in our
affliction,'" he recites, and then adds "take a good look at us poor folk
slaving away and do something about it, because if You don't, just who do
You think will?" "'Bless the fruits of this year'" he continues, then adding
"Kindly arrange a good harvest of corn, wheat, and barley, although what
good it will do me is more than I can say: does it make any difference to my
horse, I ask you, if the oats I can't afford to buy him are expensive or
cheap?"
In "Tevy Loses a Small Fortune," Tevye catches the capitalist bug
raging through pre-revolutionary Russia - what he calls "the itch to be
rich." But when he loses his savings, he returns quickly to more Jewishly
traditional views of money, waxing philosophically, "If we blew a small
fortune, that's only because we weren't meant to make a big one." "Money is
a lot of baloney," he comments at the end.
In each of the subsequent stories, revolutionary changes rob Tevye
first of each of his daughters, then ultimately of his entire way of life.
"Today's Children," the third story, commences the portrait of a world where
traditional sources of authority gradually lose their grip. Tevye's
daughter Tsaitl, and Motl the tailor outrage Tevye by arranging their own
marriage. "Are you crazy," Tevye screams at Motl. "Since when can you be
the matchmaker, the father-in-law, and the groom all rolled into one? I
suppose you want to be the rabbi and the bandleader too!" Once again,
however, Tevye displays both of his sympathies. Despite his fulminations,
he readily accepts the marriage, even preferring the gentle Motl to the old
butcher Layzar Wolf.
In "Hodl," it's the political revolutionary Perchick who steals
Tevye's second daughter. Again, Tevye doesn't know quite what to make of the
socialists. He ridicules the revolutionaries to Hodl, viciously mocking how
they call themselves "honorable," while refusing even to speak with their
parents. Tevye gets his ideas about "honoring" from the fifth commandment.
On the other hand, like a good socialist, Tevye spends much of the novel
railing against the rich Jews of Boiberick . "Hodl," in fact, best captures
Tevye's intellectual dilemma. Looking at the world with open eyes, Tevye
grudgingly admits that change must come. He also understands that change
will come, while finally seeing clearly that change will destroy his world.
In "Chava," the third daughter marries a non-Jew, and Tevye
denounces her as "dead" (though he also finds himself, in the privacy of his
thoughts, pondering "What did being a Jew or not a Jew matter?"). In
"Shprintze," Tevye's fourth daughter literally dies. Her radical
egalitarian ideas allow her to believe that she could marry a man outside
her class. Disappointment when her beloved's uncle nixes the marriage kills
her. In "Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel," it's Bielke, Tevye's fifth
daughter, who catches capitalist fever. For the money alone, she marries a
rich Jew - a godless lout, contemptuous of Jewish tradition. Here, it's not
the daughter who leaves; it's Tevye who's tossed out of Russia by his own
son-in-law.
"Lekh Lekho," the last story, completes the picture of revolutionary
transformation. Tevye now faces a world devoid of both morality and
rationality. When Tevye's gentile neighbors come to wreck his home, he
reminds them - to no avail - "You know there's a God above, don't you?" When
a policeman shows up with the order expelling him (and all Jews) from town,
Tevye asks "In all the years you've been the law around here, have you ever
heard a single soul in the village complain that I stole anything, or
pilfered anything or cheated anyone, or took the smallest item...?" Tevye's
appeals to God and common sense - the pillars of his old world - fall on
deaf ears. The old world has died.
Tevye, however, doesn't die along with it. Like a raging flood,
history sweeps away the shtetls, but somehow Tevye stays afloat. Partly,
this is because of his sense of humor, but mostly it's his faith. Tevye
argues with God, berates God, scolds God like a nagging wife, but never
breaks with God. Tevye holds God responsible for all his losses but he
never denies God; for Tevye, as Hillel Halkin writes in the introduction,
"to curse God is to die." Tevye is no theologian inventing excuses for God,
or philosophical systems that explain God's behavior. He believes because
he believes, believing even when God doesn't deserve it. And it's this
existential, almost post-modern, faith that saves him. "The old God of
Israel still lives!" he assures Sholem Aleichem, in the last line of the
book.
In the end, it's faith that distinguishes Tevye from The Ancient
Mariner. Both characters lose everything and survive to tell the tale, but
for Tevye survival is no great trick; Jews have been doing that for two
thousand years. Tevye loses everything, but instructs Sholem Aleichem to
"say hello for me to all our Jews and tell them wherever they are, not to
worry." With or without God's help, he perseveres. And it's that
perseverance that's allowed us, Tevye's Jews, to weather the ravages of
history and build new lives, far away from Tevye's old home.
Study Questions by Laura Sheppard-Brick:
1. Tevye often contradicts himself. For example, he says,
"...it happened early one summer, around Shavuos time. But why should I lie
to you? It might have been a week or two before Shavuos too, unless it was
several weeks after...." (P 3). How does this affect his credibility as a
narrator? This admission of doubt comes at the beginning of the novel. How
would it change your feelings about Tevye if it came at the end?
2. In "Tevye Blows a Small Fortune," the reader is told the
outcome at the beginning of the story, indeed in the title. Given this, what
provides that tension in the story; what makes you keep reading it?
3. Tevye talks a lot about undergoing personal change. In
"Tevye Strikes it Rich" he says "I was the same man then that I am now, only
not at all like me; that is, I was Tevye then too, but not the Tevye you're
looking at." (P. 4), and in "Today's Children" he says, "I'm no longer the
Tevye I once was." (P. 35). Is this simply a literary device intended to
capture Tevye's voice, or does it have significance in the story? If
significant, what does it tell us about Tevye?
4. These stories are told from Tevye's point of view, as if he
were relating episodes of his life to Sholem Aleichem. How does this
narrative structure shape our perceptions of Tevye? Sholem Aleichem wanted
to create a new voice in Yiddish fiction; in what ways does he succeed?
5. Unlike in Fiddler on the Roof, the film/play based on this
novel, Tevye does not live in Anatevka, or any sort of insular Jewish
community. How does this affect any notions of shtetl life that we might
have received from watching the film or play? Why do you think Sholem
Aleichem decided to place Tevye where he does in the world?
6. Tevye disowns Chava for marrying Chvedka, a Christian.
Intermarriage is common today, but it is oft sited as one cause of the
decline of American Judaism. Tevye asks, "What did being a Jew or not a Jew
matter." (P. 81). Perhaps intermarriage is not the end of the world, but is
it something we should worry about? What do you think Tevye would say about
this?
7. Bielke is Tevye's one daughter who marries for money, yet
Tevye actually counsels her against it. Has Tevye changed his mind about how
good it is to be rich? If so, what causes this change? What does Bielke's
condition tell us about Sholem Aleichem's opinion of the rich?
8. How would you characterize the relationship between Jews and
non-Jews in this novel?
9. Hillel Halkin, the translator, claims that the Jewish humor
of this period and especially the humor in Tevye the Dairyman served the
purpose of "...neutraliz(ing) the hostility of the outside world, first by
internalizing it ('Why should I care what the world thinks of me, when I
think even less of myself?') and then by detonating it through a joke
('Nevertheless, the world doesn't know what it's talking about, because in
fact I am much cleverer that it is - the proof being that it has no idea how
funny I am and I do!')..." (P. xvi). What do you think about this theory? Is
this why Tevye is funny? (Is Tevye funny?) Do you think that this sort of
humor is a useful psychological tool for a people facing oppression?
10. The stories that comprise Tevye the Dairyman were written
over the course of several decades with little or no overall plan for their
structure. Do they comprise a novel, or are they simply a collection of
short stories featuring the same main character? What is the evidence in
favor of and against each possibility?
11. With the exception of the first episode, Tevye suffers
nothing but one misfortune after another. Do you consider him to be a tragic
hero? Why or why not? In what ways does Tevye bring his suffering on
himself?
12. Consider both Tevye's Jewish observance and his relationship
with God. Is Tevye a good Jew?
13. Several of the episodes in the novel are not included in the
play/film version. Why do you think these particular scenes were cut from
the story? How do you think Sholem Aleichem's conception of his novel and
characters might differ from that of the filmmaker's?
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