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revolutionary traditions of the nineteenth century were perhaps even
more available than the traditions of Kasrielevky. But though he
be–
longed outside the world in the depiction of which his greatness lay, his
own alienation fostered his sympathy for the less sophisticated exile
in
which his characters lived. (Here, his sympathy, one of recognition
rather than of surrender, followed an instinct of wise artistry. He did not
identify himself with the life of his people; rather, he recognized the
identity in pattern between their lives and his own-a distinction which
proletarian novelists have never understood). His humor was preoccupied
with poverty-poverty, the visible symbol of man's alienation from the
world. He constructed a comedy of endurance, balancing the fantastic
excess of misfortune (always short of life's complete destruction, yet
always threatening to attain its end) against the precious but useless
resources of the human spirit which can make equally fantastic accommo·
dations, can even overwhelm the world with its enthusiasm, and yet re·
mains no less impotent than the despair it sedulously avoids. In this
respect, Sholom Aleichem was in the great tradition of Chassidism, to
which he provided the secular counterpart. Enthusiasm and ecstasy are
the ideal limits of his humor, just as they were the final values of the
Chassid's worship. His was the humor which loves the world from which
it seeks to be delivered.
Deliverance is a familiar theme in Jewish thought, and remains,
however disguised or modified, a basic concept in its social philosophy.
We would naturally expect the social, as distinct from the religious
meaning of the term, to imply a rather clear set of values, a sense of
injustice and indignation, and a program of rectification. But the peasant
tradition in literature, especially in Sholom Aleichem's time, reinforced
as it was by the influence of Russian populism, introduced several com·
plications, religious in origin, which had a natural result in offsetting
social thought from the centrality of the thesis of class struggle. Sholom
Aleichem, like Silone today who also celebrates poverty, would seem to
suggest a fundamental ambiguity in man's desire for salvation. This
ambiguity results from the double function of alienation, to both of
whose meanings Sholom Aleichem subscribed. On the one hand, suffering
and privation leave men alienated from the world, free to act, in default
of possession, towards the reconstruction of the social order and the
redistribution of worldly goods. On the other hand, their alienation from
objects produces an alienation from values, deprives them of enthusiasm
for action and leads them back to their poverty as the only trustworthy
and familiar, if not the only possible, locus of values. Men's original
indignation is sapped by a loss of faith, and leaves a residue of pity
and self·love which no program of rectification can draw off. So Sholom
Aleichem elaborates the symbol of poverty, which he identifies with the
Jews' particular plight, their alienation even from the class struggle, the
alienation, when all else is restored, of remaining homeless on the earth.
While awaiting deliverance, he is sceptical of all other alternatives. He
will not venture farther than the values immanent in his love for his
people.
For Sholom Aleichem, I should judge, there was no valid distinction
to be drawn between reformism and revolution in politics. Extremes
