The South Wing

Why is there a fiddler on the roof in the musical Fiddler on the Roof?

It’s not a cosmic question; its creators–Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein–put him there. Sholom Aleichem’s original stories about Tevye the dairyman and his seven daughters (not five; but then, a play can only be so long) feature no fiddler, on or off a roof. The image came from a painting by the surrealist artist Marc Chagall of a giant fiddler sitting on a giant chair above the rooftops of a town. The canvas is predominantly blue, drawing attention to the white bird on the musician’s shoulder. The bird looks at a red and green wreath seemingly suspended from the moon; two more birds sit on the fiddler’s crossed knees. He has a red face and purple pants. Metaphor for the precariousness of life? Not until Broadway got hold of it.

Tevye is a Jewish Shakespearean jester: foolishly misquoting and misapplying Scripture, always ready to make the best of his troubles. To tighten the metaphor: he is a combination of Lear and his jester, suffering for his children’s sake and counseling himself to make the most of his lot. Tevye’s malapropisms are especially difficult to translate, perhaps explaining why it took years before the Yiddish stories were brought to an American audience. After all, how faithfully can you render a translation when every third word out of its main character’s mouth requires passages of explanation? “Gamorah,” for instance, is the code of Jewish law—not to be confused with Gemorrah, the evil city, which he also invokes. Much like a non-whaler reading Moby-Dick , a non-Jew reading Sholom Aleichem (a pseudonym meaning “peace unto you”) should find an edition with notes or glossary entries. Even so, there is no glossary that can replace a familiarity with the culture his humor draws on, and no translation that can do justice to his puns. Moreover, since Jews pray in a non-vernacular language, Tevye’s Hebrew stumbles stand out from the Yiddish of his narration, whereas in translation, it all becomes flat English.

The musical, however, both in the stage version and in the popular 1971 film adaptation, has enjoyed enduring success. This is partly due to the gentrification of Tevye’s speech; the obscure quotations (”there is no bear; there is no forest,” a reference to a Talmudic exegisis on an episode from 2nd Kings where–well, you get the idea), are gone. The other significant difference between the stories and the musical is the number of daughters. The seven have been auditioned down to five, and only three have lead roles. Much is lost, much is gained, but the stories are still worth a look.

Other books by Sholom Aleichem are more accessible. There is The Adventures of Menachem Mendl, an epistolary novel that reproduces the correspondence between a husband and wife. On one side, we have Menachem Mendl, writing to his wife about his travels, his get-rich schemes, their inevitable failures, and his optimism in the face of persistent defeat. On the other is his wife, Sheineh-Sheindl, who admonishes his idiocy, quotes a few verses from her acid-tongued mother’s bottomless bag of proverbs, and begs him to come home. So much for plot. Book One treats his currency-speculation; Book Two, his stock-brokerage; and so on.

Menachem Mendl is funny and heartbreaking, made all the more poignant by the ways in which the two partners, affectionate but estranged, stand on ceremony when addressing each other.

Each of Sheineh-Sheindl’s letters begins, for example: “To my dear, esteemed, renowned, and honored husband, the wise and learned Menachem-Mendl, may his light shine forever. In the first place, I want to let you know that we are all, praise the Lord, perfectly well…” How sweet. Then quite suddenly, she changes her tune: “In the second place, I am writing to say, you foolish simpleton, just look what you have done!”

This mixture of formality and informality is found throughout the novel.

Menachem-Mendl and Tevye are not so different—indeed, they are cousins, and Menachem makes an appearance in a story of Tevye’s—but the quotations in Menachem Mendl tend to begin with “As my mother says…” rather than Tevye’s “As it says in the Gamorah.” Neither Tevye nor Menachem Mendl  is difficult to read, but the reader who is discomfited by jargon should begin with Menachem-Mendl.

But by far the best, funniest and, saddest book is The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son. Sholom Aleichem’s granddaughter, Tamara Kahana, did the first translation, and she clearly inherited her grandfather’s sense of humor. With such ironies as: “it’s a grand thing to be an orphan!,” the book, told throughout from a child’s perspective, is no more or less sad than the records of any other immigrants, but, because of the buoyancy its narrator brings, is all the more heartbreaking.

What sets Sholom Aleichem apart as a writer is his ability to give full weight to comedy and tragedy at the same time. Shakespeare habitually introduces cute characters into his tragedy–Tom O’ Bedlam and the jester in King Lear; the porter in Macbeth, etc.–but Aleichem has no need to be so uneconomical. For him the tragedy is the comedy, and vice versa. The humor in his books is like the smile that a person’s face makes when he is crying his hardest.

There are many writers who cross over between novel and short story, but Sholom Aleichem’s novels are short stories strung together, each starting at the beginning and none ending with any sort of conclusion. Like Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi, encountering a series of unrelated charlatans and poetasters, Menachem Mendl’s and Tevye’s adventures have no emotional arc. Menachem runs into more and more debt, Tevye runs out of daughters, and no learning takes place. Rumor has it that Mark Twain was once known as “the American Sholom Aleichem.” One of the defining characteristics of The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son, as compared with Aleichem’s other stories, is that he and his family succeed in going to America and begin to have financial success; but even their aspirations are cut short: Sholom Aleichem died in the middle of writing Mottel.