Tevye the Dairyman by Sholom Aleichem.
Title: Tevye the Dairyman.
Author: Algernon Blackwood.
Genre: Literature, fiction, short stories, romance.
Country: Yiddish.
Language: Russia (now Ukraine).
Publication Date: 1894.
Summary: A collection of short stories about Tevye, a pious learned Jewish milkman in Tsarist Russia who enjoys quoting the Holy Books, and his seven troublesome daughters, and tell of his business dealings; the romantic dealings and marriages of several of his daughters; and the expulsion of the Jews from their village by the Russian government. In Tevye Wins a Fortune, Tevye overcomes his annoyance and helps two lost women in a forest, and, after being unexpectedly and handsomely rewarded for his selflessness, sets up his business as a dairyman. In The Bubble Bursts, Tevye decides to invest his new-found fortune in the stock market through a "distant relative," who assures him of the plan's infallibility, with unsurprising results. Model Children is a story of the rich butcher Lazer-Wolf setting his eyes on Tevye's oldest daughter, Tzeitl, though while Tevye is ecstatic of his daughter marrying into wealth and saving the family from poverty, she and a poor tailor, Motel Kamzoil, have other plans for the future. Hodel is a story of Tevye's daughter who falls in love with a Revolutionary, and eventually has to follow him in exile. Chava is the story of Tevye's daughter who falls in love with an Orthodox Christian Fyedka, and, aided by a local priest (whom Tevye cannot abide), is faced with a heart-wrenching choice. Schprintze is a tale of Tevye's daughter who falls in love with a rich but inconsistent and spoiled young man, but the man's family's objections to her significantly lower class leads to devastating results for Tevye and his family. In Tevye Goes to Palestine, Tevye's youngest daughter, Beilke, marries the rich and very powerful but unpleasant Padhatzur who, concerned about his perceived social status, would like Tevye to give up his dairy business and move to Palestine. In the final story, Get Thee Out, Tevye is told that him and all the Jews are to leave the village in which their ancestors have resided for generations within three days, and Tevye has to decide whether to forgive and accept back into the fold one of his daughters.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My Review:
♥ "There are many thoughts in a man's heart." So I believe it is written in the Holy Torah. I don't have to translate the passage for you, Mr. Sholom Aleichem. But, speaking in plain Yiddish, there is a saying: "The most obedient horse need a whip; the cleverest man can use advice." In regard to whom do I say this? I say it in regard to myself, for if I had one had the good sense to go to a friend and tell him such and such, thus and so, this calamity would never have taken place. But how is it said? "Life and death issue from thine own lips. - When God sees it to punish a man he first takes away his good sense."
♥ Do you think I took it to heart? Do you think I grieved over the loss of my money? Not at all. We know what the proverb says: "The silver and the gold are mine. - Money is worthless." Only man is important, that is, if he is really a man, a human being.
♥ But what about hope? Naturally, the harder life is the more you must hope.
♥ But I think I have talked too long already. I have to be on my way, I have to tend to business. As it is said: "Every man is a liar. - Everyone has his affliction."
~The Bubble Bursts.
♥ Would it be a sin, for instance, if Tevye could spend one summer himself in a datcha somewhere? But then - where would people get cheese and butter? Who would milk the cows? The Yehupetz aristocrats, maybe? And at the very thought of it I burst out laughing. It's like the old saying: "If God listened to every fool what a different world it would be!"
♥ So go complain about modern children. You slave for them, do everything for them! And they tell you that they know better.
And... maybe they do...
~~Modern Children.
♥ But that's the way it is these days. Look at these lads who haven't got a pair of pants to their name, ad still they want to study! Ask them, "What are you studying? Why are you studying?" They can't tell you. It's their nature, just as it's a goat's nature to jump into gardens. Especially since they aren't even allowed in the schools. "Keep off the grass!" read all the signs as far as they're concerned. And yet you ought to see how they go after it! And who are they? Workers' children. Tailors' and cobblers', so help me God! They go away to Yehupetz or to Odessa, sleep in garrets, eat what Pharaoh ate during the plagues - frogs and vermin - and for months on end do not see a piece of meat before their eyes. Six of them can make a banquet on a loaf of bread and a herring. Eat, drink and be merry! That's the life!
♥ "You'll never understand."
"Why not?" says I. "Is it so complicated? It seems to me that I can understand even more difficult things."
"These things you can't understand with your brain alone," she says. "You have to feel them, you have to feel them in your heart."
And when she said this to me, you should have seen how her face shone and her eyes burned. Ah, those daughters of mine! They don't do anything halfway. When they become involved in anything it's with their hearts and minds, their bodies and souls.
♥ Each day is a gift from heaven. The sun no longer bakes like an oven, but caresses with a heavenly softness. The woods are still green, the pines give out a pungent smell. In my yard stands the succah - the booth I have built for the holidays, covered with branches, and around me the forest looks like a huge succah designed for God Himself. Here, I think, God celebrates His Succos, here and not in town, in the noise and tumult where people run this way and that panting for breath as they chase after a small crust of bread and all you hear is money, money, money...
~~Hodel.
♥ There is nothing in the world, I tell you, so maddening as a person who doesn't answer when you abuse him. You shout and you scold, you are ready to burst a gut, and he stands there and smiles...
♥ And peculiar thoughts came to my mind. What is the meaning of Jew and non-Jew? Why did God create Jews and non-Jews? And since God did create Jews and non-Jews why should they be segregated from each other and hate each other, as though one were created by God and the other were not? I regretted that I wasn't as learned as some men so that I could arrive at an answer to this riddle...
~~Chava.
♥ Man is a fool. If he was wise he would never let anything touch him too deeply. He would know that if things are a certain way that's the way they were intended to be. For if things were intended to be different, they wouldn't have been as they are. Don't we say in the Psalms: "Put your trust in God?: - Have faith in Him and He will see to it that you stagger under a load of trouble and keep on reciting: "This too is for the best."
♥ It seems to me that it's a clever world we live in, and yet there are such fools in it!
♥ For what the earth has covered is better forgotten. There is no help for it, and we have to return to the old saying that as long as "my soul abides within me" - you have to keep going, Tevye.
~~Schprintze.
♥ But what good is shouting and weeping? Listen to me and I will tell you something. When a person sees death in front of him he becomes a cynic. He can't help thinking, "What are we and what is our life?" - What is this world altogether with its wheels that turn, its trains that run wildly in all directions, with all its tumult and confusion, noise and bustle?" And even the rich men with all their possessions and their wealth - in the end they come to nothing too.
♥ I said to myself, as we say on the High Holy Days: "The Lord precedes anger with mercy. - God always sends a remedy for the disease." Only sometimes it's hard to tell which is worse, the remedy or the disease.
♥ "May I have as many blessings," I thought to myself, "how much better your sister Hodel has made out than you. I grant you this, she doesn't have a house with so many fancy gew-gaws in it, but she has a husband who is a human being who can call his soul his own. Even if his body is in prison. And besides that he has a head on his shoulders, has Feferl, and not a pot with a shiny cover on it. And when he talks there is something to listen to. When you quote him a passage from the Bible he comes back at you with three more in exchange.
~~Tevye Goes to Palestine.
♥ "Listen to me, gentlemen. Hear me out, dear friends. Since the Village Council has decreed that I must be punished, so be it. You know best what you do, and perhaps Tevye has merited such treatment at your hands. But do you know, my friends, that there is a Power even higher than your Village Council? Do you know that there is a God in Heaven? I am not speaking now of your God or my God, I am speaking of the God who rules over all of us, who looks down from Heaven and sees all the vileness that goes on below. It may be that He has singled me out to be punished through you, my best friends. And it may be just the opposite, that He doesn't want Tevye to be hurt under any circumstances. Who is there among us who knows what God has decreed? Is there one among you who will undertake to find out?"
~~Get Thee Out.