The Life of Sholom Aleichem

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During the rule of Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855), the political climate was very hostile to the Jews. They were officially excluded from many regions and subject to a series of restrictive laws. Moreover, the Jewish youth had to serve in the military for twenty five years after the age of eighteen. This caused the Jewish population to slowly wane. After 1855, the Jews were given some freedoms and they could receive education in the university. This was the new world into which Sholom Aleichem was born. Sholom Aleichem whose original name was Sholom Rabinovitz (1859-1916) was a major Yiddish writer who became a culture hero of the Pale of Settlement. Born in Pereyaslav in Ukraine, Aleichem received his early education in a traditional kheder (Butwin, 1). His father suffered a serious financial loss and his mother succumbed to cholera and died while he was still young. His father chose to migrate to Berdichev in search of a new life (Butwin, 2). In 1873, at the age of fourteen, due to liberal measures for Jews to get educated, implemented by Czar Nicholas, Aleichem was able to enter the Russian gymnasium from which he graduated in 1876. His academic life was cut short in 1880, when he was refused admission on the basis of his forthcoming mandatory military service. Hence, Sholom had to earn a living sooner than expected and started teaching, reading and writing. In 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II, there were a series of terrible pogroms in some provinces. Soon they were replaced by “legislative pogroms” whereby Jews faced several restrictions. The legal machinery of Russia was aimed at annihilating the Jewish (Butwin, 5). After Aleichem had established him as a writer, another bout of pograms broke out in and around Kiev in 1903-1905 (Butwin, 9). In 1906, he migrated to New York. He was well received in America but did not taste instant monetary success. He did not like the vulgarity of the theater, the feuds between the newspapers, rush of traffic, etc. He managed a marginal living. Before he became financially independent, he lost his health and died of a serious illness. His life experiences show that emigration is often the outcome of unstable political environment, lack of individual freedom and most of all, poverty (Butwin, 9).

Portrayal of emigration in his rendering of the experiences of Tevye and his family

Sholom Aleichem is best known for his short stories revolving around the fascinating character of Tevye the dairyman who is both poor and philosophical. The last chapter of Sholom Aleichem’s ‘Teveye the Milkman’ that is one of the stories in “The Old Country” is called Lekh-Lekho “Get Thee Out” and in this, he describes the expulsion of the Jews from all Russian villages even though they were born there. The story is peppered liberally with biblical quotations and translations, as is the general method used to teach Torah. Tevye says that thought he looks older than he is mainly because of his sorrows and the sorrows of Israel. This subtly indicates the problems faced by immigrants. He reveals to Aleichem that he is studying the “Lekh lekho” portion in the bible. According to Yiddish folk semiotics, the chapter of ‘lekh-lekho’ refers to the expulsion from one’s own home. Being driven away from home is how Sholom Aleichem feels about the historical even that took place in 1915, when, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled within a day from their hometowns. The fact that makes it more tragic for Tevyev to leave home is his old age. This is wrong says Tevyev quoting the words of Rosh Hashanah “Do not cast me off in my old age” (Aleichem, 180). Tevye had planned to go to Palestine, but was unable to do so because of the death of his oldest son-in-law Mottel Kamzoil, who had died of ‘coughing sickness”. Here the emphasis is on the poor insecure unsafe conditions in which Jews lived. His youngest daughter Beilke had married a wealthy person. But she too became poor when her husband became bankrupt. She and her husband decide to immigrate to the United States. Sholom sarcastically remarks: “That’s where all the unhappy souls go, and that’s where they went” – indicating that people emigrate in search of happiness and prosperity. But people who emigrate also face problems in the new country. Beilke and her husband on reaching America use up all their money and then have to do manual work to survive. Thus the story “Get thee out” by Sholom Aleichem depicts emigration as a hugely risky endeavor.

Portrayal of emigration in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof

Fiddler on the Roof (1963) was a very successful Broadway musical that deals with issues of feminism, racial persecution, diaspora, and intermarriage. However, it is mostly about Jewish life, presented from the viewpoint of the Jewish people who have immigrated to other places. The musical is said to derive its main strength from the stories of Sholom Aleichem that help in documenting Jewish experience in the twentieth century. It was later made into a film in 1971. The movie brought to life the shtetl of Eastern Europe along with its poverty, hardships and inherent passion of the people. The story revolves around Tevye, the milkman and his five daughters with the main theme being intergenerational conflicts between tradition and change. Fiddler on the Roof is set in 1910 in a small Ukrainian village of Anatevka. It is a very unstable period in history when Jews were driven from their homes by Pogroms, increasing sentiments against the Russian regime, and the closing in of World War I. In this backdrop the movie shows how old traditions disintegrate and how new traditions are formed due to industrialization. For example, the movie deals with the theme of marriage. Traditionally, in Jewish culture a matchmaker chooses a wife for a man, the girl’s father approves and then the marriage takes place officially. Tevye and his wife were married in that manner and it is in the same manner that he believes his five daughters should get married. But Tzeitel makes her own choice and marries a wealthy butcher. By accepting her marriage, Tevye indirectly seemed to have given his children the freedom to make their choices. Accordingly Hodel decides to marry a young revolutionary and younger sister Chava chooses a non-Jew, Fyedka. Tevye is unable to accept this marriage for his spiritual roots knotted in religion are too strong to be compromised. This is indicative of the problems immigrants face when they immigrate to a land of different culture and values. As an immigrant, Tevye continually struggles to decide how to adapt to new lifestyles without eroding Jewish values. Moreover, the movie shows clearly that it the political oppression of Jews in Czarist Russia that is the main reason for Jewish immigration. Contrary to the ending in “Get thee out”, the ending in “Fiddler on the Roof” sees the family decide to move to the New World – indicating that maybe emigration is truly the solution of people in despair.

Sholom Aleichem’s life shows emigration as the outcome of a struggle to escape poverty and oppressive political tyranny. It also shows that emigration brings with it a lot of risks. Though he is a well established writer before entering New York, he takes him a lot of time to taste financial success. His short story “Get Thee Out” depicts emigration as the resort of unhappy people. Only Tevye’s daughter decides to migrate to US and she is able to achieve only a moderate level of success which, according to Tevye, may have been achieved if she had been married to the right man. Compared to his experiences in real life, the story takes a bleak view of emigration. The movie depicts emigration as a route for people struggling to survive as it frees them from the clutches of tradition while opening new doors to progress. It also reaffirms that Jewish emigration was the resultant of oppressive Tsarist rule in Russia combined with poverty. In a nutshell, while the short story “Get Thee away” focuses on the difficulties faced by Tevye as Jewish migrant in Russia, the experiences of Sholom Aleichem shows that emigration is something to which the Jewish migrants are naturally pushed as a result of poverty and a quest for individual freedom, and the movie “Fiddler on the Roof” digs at the social problems associated with emigration such as intergeneration conflicts between tradition and assimilation..

References

Butwin, Joseph (1999). “Sholom Aleichem” in Twayne’s World Author Series Online, G. K. Hall Publishers, New York, 1999.

Aleichem, Sholom. “Get Thee Out” in ‘The Best of Sholom Aleichem’, pp. 179-192.

Movie: Fiddler on the Roof directed by Nichol Jewison.

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The Life of Sholom Aleichem

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