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SHOLOM ALEICHEM
(Continued from Page 51) practical results but from the ecstatic fever that comes of waiting, hoping, and dreaming. He has in him something of the poet—like Sholom Alekhem himself during his own years on the stock ex change in Kiev. It is no mere accident that Menachem Mendel should turn to writing as oiie of his later trades.
It should not be assumed, however, that Menachem Mendel represents a superficial phenomenon— just the landless and economically helpless Jew, or even the average Jew trying to feed his wife and children. He is not the average Jew but a Jew suffering from a mania. He has been conquered by a dyibbuk. "Brni," the dybbuk roars in his ears, "diase, slobber at the mouth, and wait for the lottery prize. Don't think about your wife and children. Die three times a day from hunger, and live (With the dream of millions."
He is not a materialist; thou^ he is pre-oocupied with tangible "millions," the love and longing he expends upon them are the love and longing that other seekers expend upon ideals and ideologies. The Menachem Mendels have a passion for business, a passion for it& own sake. Menachem Mendel is not simply a shiemihl imsuited to business, not simply a luftmenslh or a finagler. He is a Don Quixote on Odessa's "little stock exchange." When his poor wife Shaine Shain-del in Kasrielevka, Sancho Panza in skirts writes that he should "tear himself away" from his business and come home, he doesn't motion these exhortations in the letters he sends in reply. He can't imagine coming back to Kasrielevka. What would he do there? Even when his Dulcinea, the city of Odessa, deceives him in the end and doles him out a bitter pill to swallow, he is still not brought to his senses. He simply sihifts his love and faith to Ydiupetz. And when Yehupetz disilltisions him he transfers his hopes to Warsaw.
He never stops trusting and dreaming. Every news letter to his wife tells of the discovery of a new Utopia. Is this a parody of the "steadfast trust" of the Jews? No, Menachem Mendel has something different from trusat and more than trust The Jew who trusts can be passive sometimes; he can remain inert and wait for his salvation.; M^acheni Mendel never sits idle. He cannot rest. He must always be bustling about in search of new fortunes. He is a caricature of an instinct foimd, not in passive belief, but only in energetic and indefatigable Utop-ianism. Like an anemic child, he has a large head but very thin legs thats do not support him.
Shaine Shaindel, his wife;, may be angry with him for stuffing himself with false hopes instead of sending her a little cash, but in her heart she pities him. We who read go furthra:: we sympathize. We smile when we read about
his latest ventiure in the lottery, but we do not laugh: there is too much that is appealing in his quix-otisd and dhildish enthusiasm, tliere is too much that is attractive in the sincerity and naivete of his imrealistic babblings.
Tevyeh the Dairyman is different. He is more tragic figure than the comic Menachem Mendel, but his bitter fortime does not break him; it only forces him to bend and twist. There is sometiiing in him that helps him to weather all his misfortunes.
Tevyeh has seven daughters, one prettier and livelier than the next, but the more he loves them the greater his troubles. Something disappointing andi distressing happens in connection with eadh of them. Someone else in his place woiild be imable to stand it, but, as Tevyeh says himself, he is no "yiddene." Sholom Aleidhem has endowed him with his own talent, the talent of the humorist who "understands—and forgives."
Tevyeh tells us how he tried to talk to his daughter Zeitel about Lazar-Wolf, the rich widower who wanted to marry her: "I tell you daughter, it's not alwfays you can find everything prepared beforehand and become a housewife and have everjrthing that is good, and give us at the same time, I say, a little pleasure in our old age, for our well-being I mean. iDay and night I'm harnessed to the yoke without a happy moment-only poverty and misery and bad luck all aroimd me."
Thus he speaks to her from his heart, with an anguished regret and in a Yiddish that no translation can do justice to, with all its soulfulness and sadness and fatherly intiraacy. For a moment he seems to be very angry with his daughter for rejecting..the wealthy match, taking no piiy on him or on herself, but he changes his tone when she answers, in teors, "Tate, Td rather get a job as a maid. 1*11 carry bricks. Til dig ditches. . . .»
"What do you mean, silly girl? I say to her. Am I asking you for; something, you foolish child? Am? I complaining? Just in genorail, I • . say, it's dark and bitter, and I'm talking my heart out. So I talk it over with him—with the Abnighty One—about the way he treats me. He is, I say, an all-merciful father who takes pity on me and treats ■ me delicately.. (He, ^6uldn't pim- \ ; ish me for my talk.).He deals with ; me, I say, like a father—and go ' do him something! But, I say, maybe it should be that way. He ■ is up high, I say, and we're down here on the earth, deep, de^ in the ground. So we have to say ■ that he is ri^t and his judgement ' is light because—if you want to " look at it the other way around— I yelling about? What am I fussing am I not a danrned fool? What am •, about? How can I, I say, a worm crawlmg on the earth—whom God can make a corpse of in the flash of an eye, with the smallest wind, (Continued on Page 55)
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JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN