Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance - Sholem Aleichem's first long novel

A couple of years ago, I read eight books by Sholem Aleichem, not including what the author calls “my first long novel,” Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance (1888, quote on p. xi), about a star fiddler and the women who fall for him.  The novel has its moments, but is, in general awkward and minor.  Some passages and characters prefigure the greater works to come.  Otherwise, I can recommend the novel only to readers particularly curious about the origins of the Yiddish novel or the development of the artistry of Sholem Aleichem.

A reader like me, for example.  I am glad I read the book, but I cringe a bit to think that it has been the introduction to this great author for so many good readers.  Bibliographing nicole assumes, or hopes, that “its style [is] characteristic,” and she is right, but also entirely wrong.  “Folksy, intrusive, exuberant” – all useful words for Sholem Aleichem’s third person novels.  The problem is that Sholem Aleichem’s greatest works are all in the first person, and are almost all representations of speech.  Sholem Aleichem is among history’s greatest monologists.  The third person novels are all weaker; of the three I have read, Stempenyu is easily the weakest.

I wrote a guide to Sholem Aleichem way back when.  The linked monologues of Tevye the Dairyman are my pick as Single Best Book, but the back-and-forth Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl or the extra-exuberant Motl, the Cantor's Son or the traveler’s motley of The Railroad Stories are of comparable quality, as is, I suspect, any random collection of Sholem Aleichem’s monologues.  Nineteen to the Dozen is an especially good recent example.

The curious thing about the novels that I have read is that they are all about performing artists, extraordinary ones:  an ecstatic fiddler in Stempenyu, a flawless cantor in The Nightingale (1889), an actor and a singer in Wandering Stars (1909).  The monologues that I have read have all been about ordinary folks.  Interesting, isn’t it, that when Sholem Aleichem wanted a “big” story, a story for a novel, he so often reached for performers, to characters who had a big cultural role.

Note that The Nightingale was published only a year after Stempenyu.  It rewrites much of the earlier novel, borrowing much of the story and language, particularly the ecstatic musical language (“divine voices,” “magical tones,” etc., all borrowed from the typical p. 23 of Stempenyu), and unfortunately borrows or fails to expunge some of the same structural problems.  The last quarter or so of The Nightingale, an extended wedding scene, turns into something much more powerful and original.

This is my little contribution to the massive Art of the Novella reading that has been occupying the attention of so many, so all page numbers are from the recent Melville House edition, which uses an old translation by Hannah Berman.  Well done, Nonsuch Frances, although I will admit that I had wondered, from the beginning, about the desire to rush through these books, even through Stempenyu, which is worth reading carefully if it is worth reading at all.

In Praise of Sholem Aleichem

“We have no desire to make extravagant claims: Yiddish literature can boast no Shakespeares, no Dantes, no Tolstois.” That's from the introduction to The Treasury of Yiddish Stories (1954), edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, p. 2.

Last year, Harold Bloom echoed this fifty year-old judgment: "There is no Proust or Kafka in this panoply; that is an impossible standard to apply." Actually, there is a Kafka, the same one who wrote about the bug and so on - the fact that he wrote in German, not Yiddish, is just a detail. But that's not my point.

These eminences are right. I know what they mean. Still, Yiddish literature does have Sholem Aleichem, who turns out to be a much bigger figure than I had guessed. His stories contain so much variety of character, so much Jewish life. They range across classes and occupation and education, and across Europe, from Kiev and Odessa to London and even New York City.

Sholem Aleichem's greatest achievement can be found in his monologues and his related first person narrations that imitate speech. In his more conventional novels and other stories, there is a distinct Sholem Aleichem voice, clever, jokey. In the monologues, though, there's a cacophony. Occasionally, when a story turned a new corner or I met a new character, I would compare Sholem Aleichem to Charles Dickens, and then draw back. No, no, Sholem Aleichem's world is not that big. Except in the monologues - there he's the equal of anyone.

I've read five Sholem Aleichem books that I can recommend very highly. The sad-sap schemer and his put-upon wife of The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl; the cheerful nine year-old, Motl, the Cantor's Son; the commercial travelers, third class of The Railroad Stories; the little bit of everything in the collection of monologues Nineteen to the Dozen. That's four.

And then there's Tevye the Dairyman. I'm now convinced that this book, this character, really is a world-class creation. No, not King Lear or Don Quixote, fine, but something much more complex than The Fiddler on the Roof would suggest. I hate to throw around words like proto-existentialist, since I don't know what I'm talking about, but that's the idea. The stories are much more than funny tales of a traditional father's conflicts with his modern daughters (though his warmth and intelligence are certainly appealing). We only hear Tevye's voice, his jokes and endless quotations and family troubles, but somehow that's enough to depict his endless struggle to understand himself, his place in the world, and his ongoing argument with his God.

A day or two ago I called I. L. Peretz the foil of Sholem Aleichem. Peretz was small and deep, Sholem Aleichem big and shallow. More or less. Tevye's an exception.

These five short books fill maybe 900 pages, less. I've read a couple of Sholem Aleichem's novels as well. They have problems, structural mostly. It's not a good thing that The Nightingale (1889) doesn't really take off until the last quarter or so, in a long section about a young woman's wedding and its consequences, although that last part is pretty great. Wandering Stars (1909) is a sprawling, overstuffed mess, but the sprawl and stuffing are themselves quite enjoyable. I plan to read more of his novels, but I'm not expecting to find another Tevye.

Anyway, if I were to recommend a single Yiddish author, among the batch I have read, it would be Sholem Aleichem; Tevye the Dairyman would be the single book. Number two would be Peretz and The I. L. Peretz Reader. Number three - oh, there's too much.

Golem! sings about The Railroad Stories

I feel so bad. I forgot, last week, when writing about Sholem Aleichem's The Railroad Stories, to mention the song "Train Across Ukraine," which is actually about The Railroad Stories. This is a new song, from earlier this year, found on the album Citizen Boris by the neo-klezmer band Golem!

The lyrics are little more than a summary of the premise of the stories - the traveler, third-class, tells us that he rides the train. He introduces himself as both Sholem Aleichem and as Hello, How Are You. Come to think of it, that's not correct, since The Railroad Stories are not narrated by Sholem Aleichem. Well, it's creative license, compression. Some of the lyrics are in Yiddish, but I'll bet they just repeat the English.

The link to Sholem Aleichem is in part a memorial and cultural celebration. But it's also an excuse to play a klezmer train song, with whistles and hoots and steam-engine like drumming. Great song. I wish I could link to it, but all I could find was a Youtube video with terrible sound that's not worth anyone's time.

You can go to Golem!'s Myspace page (warning:PLAYS LOUD MUSIC), though, and hear another of their best songs from the same record, "Citizen Boris," the lyrics of which are nothing but the citizenship oath and questions and answers from the citizenship test ("What is the 4th of July? Independence Day"). The song captures both the absurdity and the patriotic wonder of asking a Ukranian grandmother to swear an oath to die for her new country if called to service.

Perhaps I should have mentioned Golem! during Golem Week, but to my knowledge they have never recorded a song about the golem, although there is a golem-like fellow on the cover of their 2006 album Fresh Off Boat (left), which I think is marginally superior to Citizen Boris. If you know where to listen to such things, try the "Golem Hora," or the brilliant "Warsaw Is Khelm." The fools of Khelm, the most stupid people on earth, that's a whole 'nother set of Yiddish folk tales and jokes that I don't believe I've ever mentioned.

Oh look, Golem! gives away "Warsaw Is Khelm." So download it, and see a fragment of the cute video.

Now I feel that I have done my duty to Golem!

Talking is far better, because you never know what may come of it - what make a railroad story a Railroad Story?

I thought I was going to pin down a couple of my favorites among Sholem Aleichem's Railroad Stories, but I'm having trouble doing that, and not because they're all my favorites. I mean, there's some of this, and there's some of that. But I can't stop looking at the frames of the stories.*

Sholem Aleichem could have published all but a few of these stories as pure monologues, like the examples collected in the superb Nineteen to the Dozen: Monologues and Bits and Bobs of Other Things. The monologues in that books are pure - they are uninterrupted, and the reader has to infer the identity of the auditor. In The Railroad Stories, the narrator, the commercial traveler, is always present, but so, potentially, are a train car full of other people.

So in "Baranovich Station," it's important that the teller of the fascinating but unfinished story is in a full car with dozens of listeners. The pain of never hearing the end is that much greater than if there were an audience of just one, and the reader can share his own pain with the fictional crowd. Although, presumably, the reader also has some distance and can appreciate the joke in a way that the audience cannot.

"A Game of Sixty-Six," by contrast, has to be one on one (with the reader looking over the traveler's shoulder). A man relates to the narrator, confidentially, and at length, being cleaned out by card sharks, before suggesting a little game of their own. Our traveler may not be the sharpest card in the deck himself, but:

"I watched him cut the deck; he did it a little too skillfully, a little too fast. And his hands were a little too white. Too white and too soft. Suddenly I had a most unpleasant thought..."

The con man's story wouldn't work in public. The creepy gangster's story in "The Man from Buenos Aires" works the same way. It requires intimacy.

But sometimes, as in two stories told about an unimportant branch line called the Slowpoke Express, the railroad car provides a stage, even for an audience of one:

"And since we were on the Slowpoke Express, which I described in the last chapter - where, being the only passengers in our car, we had all the time and space in the world - he sprawled out as comfortably as if he were in his own living room and gave his narrative talents free rein, turning each polished phrase carefully and grinning with pleasure at his own story while stroking his ample belly with one hand." ("The Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah")

The plots of the two Slowpoke Express stories depend on the actual characteristics of locomotives (an engine running out of coal, for instance), which is not generally the case. What makes a story a Railroad Story? It's the train car as a public space, where strangers can impart their stories to each other. From the narrator's farewell, "Third Class":

"When you travel third class, on the other hand, you feel right at home. In fact, if you happen to be in a car whose passengers are exclusively Jews, you may feel a bit too much at home... At night you can save yourself the bother of having to fall asleep, because there's always someone to talk to - and if you're not in the mood to talk, someone else will be glad to do it for you. Who expects to sleep on a train ride anyway? Talking is far better, because you never know what may come of it."

Translation by Hillel Halkin.

* Prompted by D.G. Myers, a bit, perhaps.

What's a writer after all? Anyone can be one - Sholem Aleichem's Railroad Stories

"My goodness, the things one sees traveling! It's a pity I'm not a writer. And yet come to think of it, what makes me say I'm not? What's a writer, after all? Anyone can be one, and especially in a hodgepodge like our Yiddish. What's the big fuss about? You pick up a pen and you write!"

That's the commercial traveler, third class, who narrates Sholem Aleichem's The Railroad Stories (1902-10, 1911). The traveler mostly just gives us other people's stories, in their own words, with a bit of framing. So most of The Railroad Stories are monologues, Sholem Aleichem's perfect form. Not everyone is a writer, but everyone traveling in a third class Ukrainian train car has a story to tell.

Some of the stories are jokes with punchlines, some are character sketches or social observations or commentary. "A Game of Sixty-Six" is a good con man story. A number are, almost inevitably, stories about story-telling. In "Baranovich Station," a passenger promises a great story. A village bands together to prevent a fellow-citizen's flogging. The story gets more and more complicated and compelling, but then the storyteller reaches his station and disembarks, before the end. "What end? It's barely begun. Let go of me!"

I don't want to say that every one of these stories is more consequential than those in Inside Kasrilevke, but the range of stories is important. There's more varied life here than in any other Sholem Aleichem book I've read. And the comedy is tinged with - sometimes about - some darker matter. Prostitution, suicide, pogroms, discrimination.

I'll pick out one or two of my favorites for tomorrow.

"Come to think of it again, though, writing is not for everyone. We should all stick to what we work at for a living, that's my opinion, because each of us has to make one. And if you don't work at anything, that's work too."

Oh, you want some socks? - The Rough Guide to Sholem Aleichem

Lamed Shapiro was probably a pretty darkly hued fellow to begin with, but he was also rejecting some of what he saw as the sentimentality or lack of seriousness of older writers like Sholem Aleichem.

For example, the odd little volume of Sholem Aleichem published in 1948 as Inside Kasrilevke, which contains two longish stories, "The Poor and the Rich" and "A Guide to Kasrilevke."* Both are comic tales of life in Sholem Aleichem's fictional representative shtetl. They're comic, light-hearted, but with, just barely, touches of seriousness.

The "Guide to Kasrilevke" is mostly shtick. Each chapter has a travel guide title ("Hotels," "Restaurants," "Theater," "Bandits"), but it's really the story of Sholem Aleichem's own visit to Kasrilevke, the town where nothing functions. He just works through some good comic pieces - the tram that won't move; the restaurant that says you can have anything you want, but then doesn't seem to have any specific dish; the thieves who are disgusted by their victim's poverty. The scene that made me laugh the most was where the author, having barely set foot in his hotel room, is assailed by a string of sock vendors:

"Another individual stepped in; this one had a cap on.

'Buy my socks, mister, good and cheap!'

'I don't need any socks,' I told him. 'Thank you.'

'What do you mean, you don't need any?' he protested. 'Didn't you just buy half a dozen socks from the other fellow?'"

That's what we call logic. After a few more sock sellers:

"'Who's 'me'?' I asked. I was afraid to open the door for fear someone might be offering me more socks.

'Dovid,' came the reply.

'Dovid who?'

'Dovid Shpan.'

'Who's Dovid Shpan?'

'Dovid Shpan the agent.'

'What have you got?' I asked. 'Maybe more socks?'

'Oh, you want some socks?' he replied. 'Just wait a minute. I'll run out to the stores and bring you some!'"

Simple Chico Marx stuff, I guess, but I liked it. The other story is a little different - a delegation of Kasrilevke elders travel to the big city to raise money to fix up their burned out town - but the shtick isn't that different. A good running gag, for example: the dignified rabbi always replies to questions with a parable, a very wise and beautiful one, which the narrator always somehow avoids relating: "But since I am telling you a story, I'd rather not interrupt it with another one."

Minor Sholem Aleichem, I suppose. But after the horrors of Lamed Shapiro, a great relief.

* First published when? She don't say. "This book contains the stories Dos Naye Kasrilevke, Kasrilevke Nisrofim, Kasrilevke Moshav Z'kenim, translated from the Yiddish by Isidore Goldstick." That's it. I know; looks like three stories, not two. The third is attached to the second as an epilogue. Both stories mention airplanes, so publication must be after 1908. From their tiny chapters, I would guess that both were originally serialized in Yiddish newspapers.

Lucky me - I'm an orphan! - Sholem Aleichem's cheeriest creation

"I've never been so important. How is that? Because my father, Peysi the cantor, died on the first day of Shavuos. That make me an orphan." (p. 116)

This sounds like it might be another sad story, but it's not. Sad for some of the characters, but not for Motl, the cantor's son.

"Lucky me!" says Motl, the cantor's son, "I'm an orphan!" And it turns out that he's right, sort of. Motl is - well, it's not quite clear - eight years old to start, let's say. His mother is still alive, and always weeping. He has an older brother, a worrier, and an entrepreneur. So when Motl loses his father at the beginning of Motl, the Cantor's Son (1907-8, 1916), he enters a world of surprising freedom. "I've stopped going to school and am no longer in Hirsh-Ber's choir. Orphans are excused. Lucky me!"

I wonder if Motl will pay for this in the long run. But try telling that to an eight year old. They are so irresponsible.

The novel really gets going when Motl's family decides to emigrate. They wander through Europe, and end up in New York. For Motl, it's all a great lark. A third-class train car, a third-class ocean liner cabin, Ellis Island, Antwerp, Vienna - it's all so much fun. It's the grown-ups who have the worries, not Motl.

Motl, the Cantor's Son does not seem especially sophisticated to me. It's the voice of the boy, and his way of seeing, that are the heart of the novel. Sholem Aleichem's version is wonderful, but hardly unique. But there's something about Motl's spirit, his irrepressibility, that I find very appealing:

"The ride through New York was pretty awful. The worst part was changing from the stritkah to the eleveydeh. That's a stritkah that runs on a long, narrow bridge above the ground. It flies like a bullet. You're sure you're going to die.

You think that's all? Wait, I'm not through. You crawl out of the eleveydeh and walk down some stairs to a cellar an get into another stritkah called a tsobvey. The tsbobvey rushes through the cellar until you feel faint... Brokheh swears she's never taking either again. She'd rather walk than ride through the clouds or the earth like a lunatic. 'Spare me your ups and you can have your downs,' she says.

She's a weird one, my sister-in-law. If I had my druthers, I'd ride the eleveydeh and the tsobvey all day long." (p. 264)

One can see the Yinglish intruding. Noospeypehz, eiskrim, haht dawgz at the Hibru Neshnel Delikatesn. Sholem Aleichem seems to have felt ambivalently about America, but he lets Motl love it.

Tevye the Dairyman is cheerful, too, always cheerful. His cheerfulness, though, is a weapon in his ongoing argument with God. Motl is just a kid. That's what I mean when I say Motl, the Cantor's Son is less sophisticated. The meaning of the Motl stories is less internal to the central character, more about what happens around him.

Still, there's a lot more to this charming book that I'm omitting. But I wanted to write about something sunny before devoting the rest of the week to:

The Golem!

Quotations are from the Hillel Halkin translation, packaged with The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl & Sheyne-Sheyndl. Penguin Classics also has a new translation from Aliza Shevrin, packaged with Tevye the Dairyman.

The musical-dramatic-national-patriotic tragic-comedy Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem

Sholem Aleichem's Wandering Stars, originally published in 1909 and newly re-Englished by the expert Aliza Shevrin, is a Yiddish theater novel. Some luck that the same "star" metaphor is used in Yiddish and English. Two shtetl kids, a fourteen year old boy and a fifteen year old girl, fall in love and run off with a theater troupe. They wander around Europe and America - Budapest, Vienna, London, New York - and become stars, one an actor and the other a singer.

The novel begins with the discovery that the youngsters have disappeared, on the same night that the theater troupe skipped town. Could there be a connection? Then Sholem Aleichem takes us back to the arrival of the theater company, to give us the details of what happened, to let us get to know Leibel and Rosa. On the one hand, there's not a lot of tension here, since we know what's going to happen. On the other hand, we actually don't, since there's a pretty good twist that finishes the episode and pushes the story forward, that keeps the stars wandering. A couple more twists follow. This isn't a thriller, but the story is more than an afterthought.

Wandering Stars is not short - it's a little over 400 pages - and is padded. It takes Sholem Aleichem about a quarter of the novel, for example, to get Leibel and Rosa out of town. He's in no hurry. The novel was serialized in a newspaper* on a daily basis. Yes, daily. So each chapter is two or three pages long. Many are separate skits or essays or character sketches. All to the good, since these are among the best, the funniest, things in the book.

The main story, in general, is not the most interesting part of the book. But as the novel progresses, a huge case of actors, moneymen, and other hangers-on accumulates. The momentum increases, and the gags get funnier. Like this newspaper review:

"'Among all the pieces in all the Jewish theaters, this holiday Menorah shines so brightly that it has cast into the shadows every other piece,' modestly wrote another manager of his own production. The Menorah, he added with rare reserve, 'stands out among the others like a giant among dwarfs. At no other production will you witness so many tears shed on the stage over the plight of desolate widows and miserable orphans, over lost children and butchered babies, over Jewish daughters murdered and Jewish wives dishonored in bestial pogroms. And the rib-tickling humor, laughter, and Jewish wit heard on our stage cannot be beat. At no other production will you hear such sweet melodies sung by famous leading ladies and see such exciting dances by the loveliest dancers in the world." (p. 280)

Wow, The Menorah has everything. And then there's The Alrightniks; Four Sticks Make a Canopy; Dora, the Rich Beggar, by Shakespeare, Improved and Staged by the only Albert Schupak; and of course the musical-dramatic-national-patriotic tragic-comedy Moishe, featuring the smash hit song "Moishe."

How I long to see The Alrightniks.

Adam Kirsch seems sort of irritated that Wandering Stars is - what? Not crisp and efficient? Not as good as Tevye the Dairyman? He's right, it isn't. I have read enough Sholem Aleichem now that I am beginning to think of him as a literary giant, comparable to Mark Twain, say. His writing covers a lot of ground, and his inventiveness seems unbounded. But Tevye the Dairyman is a world-class masterpiece, hugely likable, and also complex, deep. I'm not disappointed that Sholem Aleichem didn't produce too many of those. Wandering Stars is, as is, a treat.

I still don't think I'm really writing book reviews. For a more review-like review, see the enthusiatic Reb Jew Wishes.

* What newspaper, published where? No idea. No one wants to tell me. Certainly not Tony Kushner, in his gushy, useless introduction. It's all just so wonderful! Thanks, Tony. I only know (or have guessed) that the original publication was in 1909 because of references to the novel's centennial.

As I wish my enemies an early death, so I am from the bottom of my heart, Your truly faithful wife, Sheyne-Sheyndl

I'm as bad as Menakhem-Mendl, her husband - I got carried away by work and have neglected Sheyne-Sheyndl.

Sheyne-Sheyndl always starts her letters the same way:

"To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!

First, we're all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you."

But then, then - some samples:

"Second, you write like a madman.

Second, I'm writing you, my sweetheart, to wish a cruel death to all my enemies.

Second, just look at what you've done, you fool!

Second, my dear husband, I pronounce you a certified lunatic. You might as well run naked through the streets!

Second, my mother says you can't make a fur hat from a pig's tail. I'm referring to your charming sister-in-law Yentl."

Actually, Sheyne-Sheyndl's letters always contain sayings from her mother. Here are a few of these gems:

"If it acts like a donkey and brays like a donkey, it must be a donkey.

One man eats garlic and another smells of it.

What's a rabbi doing raising pigs?"

In one letter, the mother seems to short circuit, just spilling out one saying after another. "She said a few other things too, my mother did. In fact, she left Kreindl speechless."

Maybe I should show how Sheyne-Sheyndl's letters end:

"I tell you, my husband, I've put up with as much as I can. Either you get yourself home in a jiffy and act like a human being - or else! As I wish my enemies an early death, so I am from the bottom of my heart,

Your truly faithful wife,
Sheyne-Sheyndl"

The last two chapters of The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl are each single letters by Menakhem-Mendl. They're fine, funny stories on their own, but the lack of the exchange of letters with Sheyne-Sheyndl is a great loss. So many of these comic Yiddish stories have a tragic undercurrent, and here's one of them. "May I never read another letter of yours again!" she says in her last letter. Maybe we just aren't getting Sheyne-Sheyndl's side, but maybe she's given up on her restless, useless husband.

And of course, Sheyne-Sheyndl's letters may contain a few hints about why Menakhem-Mendl doesn't want to go home, which is also sad. I think Sheyne-Sheyndl sounds like great fun, but I don't have to live with her.

Translations by Hillel Halkin.

A botched transition to Sholem Aleichem's Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl

I spent some time with a bit of Mark Twain yesterday. Sholem Aleichem is sometimes called the Jewish Mark Twain. Cuz they're both funny.

Now see, this transition has moved me from a book about scientists to Mark Twain to Sholem Aleichem. For a transition to be good, though, it should go somewhere or have meaning, unlike this one. A little writing tip for you. Free of charge.

I want to say something about The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl (1892-1901, more or less), a book that, it turns out, has what we call "relevance". Menakhem-Mendl wants to strike it rich, and will try anything legal. His wife Sheyne-Sheyndl just wants him to come home. She's right, of course. Along the way, over six separate stories and a mere one hundred pages, Menakhem-Mendl tries his hand at trading in English pounds, railroad stocks, sugar, timber, oil wells, real estate, and probably more; he also takes a shot at matchmaking, selling insurance, and journalism. I'm not sure that a writer today would have such a different list of schemes - replace the railroads with tech stocks, and put the matchmaking business online.

Here's how the third story starts. Actually, it's how all of the stories start, almost exactly:

"To my wise, esteemed, & virtuous wife, Sheyne-Sheyndl, may you have a long life!

Firstly, rest assured that I am, praise God, in the best of health. God grant that we hear from each other only good and pleasing news, amen.

Secondly, I'm through with investing. You can have it! It's no occupation for a Jew. It's made me old and gray before my time. I could write a book on all I've been through. Yehupetz is in ruins. The market has gone bust. There isn't a ray of hope. The carnage, I'm sorry to say, is worse than it was in Odessa. Everyone is in the soup. Everyone is bankrupt, and so am I. Filing for bankruptcy is the latest fashion."

Menakhem-Mendl is back on his feet, though. Now he's a commodities trader:

"A more painless way to make a kopeck has yet to be devised. Just yesterday I earned 50 rubles - so help the two of us if I know what it was for. I also sold 300 tons of sugar as easily as smoking a cigar. That is, the sugar wasn't mine, but I got into the act, which was good for 50 more."

This story is my favorite, the funniest. The gag is that Menakhem-Mendl actually changes professions with every new letter home:

"Second, you're absolutely right. The sugar business is not for me... I now have, with God's help, a more suitable line of work. In a word, I'm in finance...

Secondly, finance is strictly for beggars... In short, I've sent finance to the devil and now am in real estate...

Secondly, Yehupetz real estate is for the birds. I'm now in country property."

"Always a Loser," the last chapter is titled, and how else could the stories work? Menakhem-Mendl is not greedy, really, although he is utterly selfish. He's restless and vain, and wants to be a player, a big man, more than a rich man, much more. That's why he always finds himself on the wrong side of the bubble, and why he never stops trying one thing or another. He's a great character, even if he has about a third of the depth of Tevye the Dairyman.

I have neglected the other character in the book's title. Sheyne-Sheyndl deserves her own post. Now there's a character.

The zippy translation is Hillel Halkin's, in the New Yiddish Library edition.

You saying how America was a lend of business? Det's how it's suppose to be. - Sholem Aleichem in New York

Sholem Aleichem left Russia in 1905, after witnessing a pogrom from the second story of a hotel. From then on, until his death in 1916, he was a wanderer, to New York and back to Europe, writing and performing his monologues. He and his family ended up in New York City; Sholem Aleichem is buried in Queens.

His relationship with the new world was complicated. New York (and Argentina, and Canada) were refuges for persecuted Jews, and presented great economic opportunities. But in Sholem Aleichem's New York stories, the materialism seems to overpower Jewish culture. He had always satirized greed, but his New York monologues are angrier.

The beginning of "A Business with a Greenhorn: How Mr. Tummler, a Business Broker, 'Loined' a Greenhorn Who Got Merry Wid a Goil for Business. Retold Here in His Own Words":

"You saying how America was a lend of business? Never mine! Det's how it's suppose to be. But a fella getting merry wid a goil for business? Det, you'll poddon me, is mean end doity. Now, I ain't preaching no morality here, but I am telling you it's a fect; when nine-end-ninety procent of grinnhorns in dis country is getting merry for business, it is making me med! End if I am meeting op wid such a kind of grinnhorn, belive me he don't get off dry. You live it to me!"

Then Mr. Tummler tells us, in a few pages, and one burst of words, how he sells a young couple a laundry business, drives them out to re-purchase it at a discount, and then sells it to them again, in the process consuming their savings and destroying their marriage. Perfectly horrible.

Why would he tell this to Sholem Aleichem, or whoever the listener is? Because, like he says above, he is entirely justified. "Because it ain't enough he got his hends on soch a poifect peach to make whoopee wid plus make hay wid her tousend dollar in kesh, but he wants she should woik so he can sit rond wid his pels all day playing pinochle, end son on - because, mister, I know my pipple!"

It's a sort of revenge on the baser instincts of humanity by the basest of them all. In this story, New York is dangerous and brutal, and it is other Jews that are the danger.

The dialect of these passages is an attempt by the translator to render the Yinglish of the original. There's another reason for Sholem Aleichem's anger. America may save Yiddish in some ways (later, terribly, more than anyone could have guessed), but it might also destroy the language.

I'm quoting from Classic Yiddish Stories of S. Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz (2004), ed. Ken Frieden, tr. Ted Gorelick. Nineteen to the Dozen: Monologues and Bits and Bobs of Other Things has the same story as well as a funnier, somewhat less brutal New York monologue, "Mister Grinn Gotta Job. As Told by Himself and Here Set Down in His Own Words ."

Help the jackass of your neighbor and your jackass of a neighbor too - Sholem Aleichem's masterpiece "Hodl"

Tevye's oldest daughter, in "Today's Children," turned down a proposal by a rich man to marry a poor tailor. The next daughter, Hodl, does something even worse: she falls for a university student. She "reads and write both Yiddish and Russian and swallows books like hot cakes." That'll lead to trouble.

Here Tevye first meets the student, Peppercorn:

"Just then I looked ahead and saw a young man trudging along by the side of the path, a bundle under one arm, all sweaty and falling off his feet. 'Hurry up or you'll be late for the wedding!'* I called out to him. 'Come to think of it, hop aboard; I'm going your way and my wagon is empty. You know what the Bible says: help the jackass of your neighbor if you pass him on the road, and your jackass of a neighbor too.'**

He laughed and jumped into the wagon without having to be asked twice." (p. 55)

Tevye likes the student and invites him home. Soon Peppercorn is tutoring Tevye's daughters, and is practically one of the family. Just one problem:

"But I will say this for Peppercorn: when he opened his mouth, it erupted like a volcano. You wouldn't have believed the things that came out of it then, such wild, crazy ideas, everything backwards and upside down with tis feet sticking up in the air. A rich Jew, for instance - that's how warped his mind was - wasn't worth a row of beans to him, but a beggar was a big deal, and a workingman - why, a workingman was king, he was God's gift to the world - the reason being, I gathered, that he worked.

'Still,' I would say, 'when it comes to livelihoods, you can't compare work to making money." (p. 57)

The student is a radical, a revolutionary, in Russia in 1904. He marries Hodl - I'm skipping a funny scene where they announce their engagement to Tevye - but then disappears, into a prison, it turns out. The story only has five pages left. Hodl tells her father that she will join her husband in Siberia; Tevye argues with her is his usual indirect way; they sit on the porch all night and talk; Tevye takes her to the train station.

Those last few pages are funny, sad, warm, psychologically insightful. What more do I want? "Hodl" is one of the best short stories I have ever come across. I had not been expecting that.

I have been enjoying the Hillel Halkin translation, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, but am delighted to see that Penguin Classics, just a couple of weeks ago, published a new version by Aliza Shevrin, an expert translator of Sholem Aleichem. This one is called Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son. The latter contains the monologues of a nine-year-old who migrates to America. The Railroad Stories or Motl the Cantor's Son, which should you choose? I haven't read either, but will, soon, God willing. Politely request that your library own both.

* Just to be clear, the "wedding" is merely Tevye's joke, although a joke that backfires.

** Exodus 23:5 "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden... thou shalt surely help him." Close enough for Tevye.

Let's talk about something more cheerful - Tevye's novel of short stories

Tevye the Dairyman actually is a book of short stories that functions as a novel. A timetable of original publication dates will clear things up:

1894 "Tevye Strikes It Rich"
1899 "Tevye Blows a Small Fortune"
1899 "Today's Children"
1904 "Hodl"
1905 "Chava"
1907 "Shprintze"
1909 "Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel"
1911 Tevye the Dairyman is published as a book
1914 "Lekh-Lekho"

I'm ignoring some revisions. The first two stories are just what their titles say; the rest are about Tevye and his daughters. One can see that it took Sholem Aleichem a few years to attach the "marry off his daughters" story to Tevye. Also, that Sholem Aleichem was not quite happy with the way he ended the story in 1909, so he gave Tevye one more story. Sholem Aleichem was right, the 1914 ending is better.

The stories take place in real time. Tevye mentions actual events - pogroms, plagues, emigration - and he ages, which reinforces the theme of the breakdown of the old order. But Tevye is always funny, and even cheerful. Tragicomic, I guess that's the word. Here's how "Hodl" ends:

"You know what, Pan Sholem Aleichem? Let's talk about something more cheerful. Have you heard any news of the cholera in Odessa?"

"Hodl" is absolutely amazing, one of the best short stories I have ever read. More on that tomorrow. I've come across readers, good readers, who complain about short stories, for reasons which mostly perplex me. One of the oddest complaints is that they want to spend more time with the characters, to get to know them better. I think there's a basic misunderstanding of the form here that could be cleared up with a little effort, but in any case, Tevye the Dairyman doesn't have that issue. You want more Tevye, you got it, at least until you get to the end, when, come to think if it, I still wanted more.

You can't stop loving your children just because they're nothing but trouble - the great Tevye the Dairyman

I want to write about - no, advocate - Tevye the Dairyman (1910, sort of). It's so good I won't be able to do it justice. It's the best Yiddish book I've read as part of my project, and the best I expect to read. At his best, Sholem Aleichem is as good as Isaac Bashevis Singer at his best, and Singer is as good as anyone. So.

Tevye the Dairyman is an enormously likeable book, mostly because Tevye the dairyman is such a likeable character. The book's eight stories are all monologues, just Tevye talking to Sholem Aleichem, catching him up on the latest news. The news mostly involves Tevye's daughters.

Let's have some Tevye, the beginning of the story of daughter #3, "Chava", p. 69:

"Hoydu lashem ki toyv - whatever God does is for the best. That is, it had better be, because try changing it if you don't like it! I was once like that myself; I stuck my nose into this, into that, until I realized I was wasting my time, threw up my hands, and said, Tevye, what a big fool you a re! You're not going to remake the world... The good lord gave us tsa'ar gidul bonim, which means in plain language that you can't stop loving your children just because they're nothing but trouble. If my daughter Tsaytl, for example, went and fell for a tailor named Motl Komzoyl, was that any reason to be upset?... Ask her about it and she'll tell you that life couldn't be better. In fact, there's only one problem, which is that her children are starving."

There's a lot here that's typical. Tevye is always in fine spirits, joking around, even when recounting his sorrows, some of which are actually pretty sad. And he argues with God, as in the very beginning of the passage. Subtly, quietly, maybe. Comically, sure. Much of the heft of the book lies in Tevye's - what would you call it - his skepticism and doubt, the skepticism of a believer.

He also uses Hebrew quotations, incessantly - tsa'ar gidul bonim, for example, means "the sorrows of child raising." Sometimes the quotations are accurate, and other times they're mangled in various meaningful ways. The reader will have to decide how often to check the translations in the endnotes. Occasionally, I recommend. If you become irritated with them, you'll fit right in with the other characters, who are constantly telling him to cut it out.

Here's Tevye with his daughter Chava, who has gotten to know a Russian fellow a little too well:

"'Since when are you and he on such talking terms?' I ask.

'Oh,' she says, 'we've known each other for a while.'

'Congratulations!' I say. 'You've found yourself a fine friend.'

'Do you know him, then?' she says. 'Do you know who he is?'

'Not exactly,' I says, 'because I haven't read up on his family tree yet, but that doesn't keep me from seeing what a blue blood he is. In fact, if his father isn't a drunk, he may even be a swineherd or a handyman.'

Do you know what my Chava says to me? 'I have no idea who his father is. I'm only interested in individuals.'" ("Chava", p. 71)

This is the secret of Tevye's appeal, actually, and part of his tragedy. His daughter is just repeating her father's own beliefs. Tevye is also interested in individuals. The stories of the other daughters also parallel Tevye's own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes not so much.

What a rich character, and all in eight stories, 130 pages. But that's a strength of a good monologue: every joke, every metaphor, every inadvertent revelation tells us something. the time we spend with the character is intensified.

Maybe I should mention that Tevye the Dairyman is the source for Fiddler on the Roof, which uses four of the eight stories. Maybe I should also say that there is no fiddler in the book. That image comes from Marc Chagall's paintings, which certainly fit with Sholem Aleichem's world, so no harm done.

All references to Hillel Halkin's translation, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, which has, on the cover, a picture of a fiddler, on a roof.

A 19th century Yiddish reading list, pt. 2 - Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz

Three authors are at the core of early Yiddish literature: S. Y. Abramovitsh aka Mendele Mocher Sforim (1836-1917), Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916), and I. L. Peretz (1852-1915).

Mendele Mocher Sforim* / S. Y. Abramovitsh is the inventor of modern Yiddish literature. He wanted to write for ordinary Jews in their own language. Abramovitsh published his first Yiddish novel, The Little Man serially in late 1864 to 1865. It is narrated by Mendele Mocher Sforim, Mendele the Book Peddler. I don't think he meant it as a pen name, but Abramovitsh brought Mendele back again and again, and the name stuck.

A number of Sforim novels have made it into English at one time or another. The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third (1869) is a must, as well as Fishke the Lame. Other titles: The Wishing-Ring, The Nag aka The Mare, and The Parasite. My library has an anthology, Selected Works of Mendele Moykher-Sfarim, so I'll see what's in that.

Sholom Aleichem's Yiddish collected works fills 28 volumes, mostly short stories, mostly monologues, mostly about rural Jews in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Aleichem is a sort of Yiddish culture hero, and is almost famous because of The Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye the Dairyman (1894-1914) is the source for Fiddler, eight stories in which Tevye tells us about his troubles with his daughters. "Maybe you can tell me, though, why it is that whenever something goes wrong in this world, it's Tevye it goes wrong with?" That's the tone, always comical, or tragicomic, or comitragic.

The Railroad Stories (1902-1910) are also high on my list. This time, it's railroad passengers telling us their stories. After that, what? I have a little Dover collection, Happy New Year! and Other Stories, selected from the 1959 Stories and Satires. I've counted up at least ten other story collections in English, with who knows how much overlap. There's a lot out there.

Aleichem wrote a fake travel guide for the town he used in many stories, Inside Kasrilevke. Chapters include "Hotels", "Theaters", "Fires", "and "Bandits." I can't pass that up. There are at least a couple of novels to try, as well: The Nightingale, Or the Saga of Yosele Solovey the Cantor (1886), and Mottel the Cantor's Son (1916), which takes us to America, along with the author himself, who left Europe for New York City in 1914. Aleichem's funeral was attended by 150,000 mourners, and was covered on the front page of the New York Times.

Aleichem's contemporary I. L. Peretz is a little easier to deal with because of The I. L. Peretz Reader, ed. Ruth Wisse. Peretz mostly wrote short stories, as well, but this volume also includes some poetry, travel writing, and a memoir. I've come across at least six other collections as well. My understanding is that Peretz is more of a modernist than Aleichem or Sforim.

The anthology Classic Yiddish Stories of S. Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and I. L. Peretz, edited by Ken Frieden, is just what it says, and is meant as an accompaniment to Frieden's study Classic Yiddish Fiction, which would be a logical place to continue my research.

Tomorrow, I'll continue my list with everyone who is not named Sforim, Aleichem, or Peretz. I encourage readers to leave any suggestions they might have.

* Or Seforim, or Sefarim.