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it might be an exaggeration-for it existed peripherally in a prirruuve
agricultural economy where Jews were seldom allowed to own land–
but there certainly were very sharp and rigid caste differentiations in
Jewish life. A careful reading of Sholom Aleichem reveals the extent of
social snobbishness and caste pride in the Ghetto.
Sholom Aleichem also indicates the precarious position of the
Ghetto in relation to the external world. Though the Jew may have
gained a miserable sense of security in Ghetto isolation, he could never
afford to forget that the enemy could always enter through the walls
beyond which he himself could never escape. And even in some of the
gay stories, by means of the deftest reference, Sholom Aleichem brings
into focus the terror of pogroms from which the Ghetto was never free.
That in this unstable social setting, the Jew's relationship to God
should
be
disturbed is not surprising. Sholom Aleichem's stories show
the intimate kinship which even the most miserable Ghetto Jew estab–
lished with his God: he felt secure in being closest to Him and therefore
did not hesitate to complain to and about Him; he did not hesitate even
to question His efficacy. No more telling example of Sholom Aleichem's
dual approach to Jewish life can be cited than in Tevye's simultaneous
sense of intimacy with God (based not on the traditional mystical intui–
tion in which God is found within the self, but rather on a series of
rationalistic assumptions from the premise of the Chosen People) and
his reiterated rebellious question which his Almighty must surely have
found difficult to answer, so reasonable was it: "Apparently
if
He wants
it that way, that's the way it ought to be. Can't you see?
If
it should
have been different it would have been.
And yet, what would have been
wrong to have it different?"
[My emphasis.-I.H.]
It is not strange that Tevye should have chosen God as the object
of his compressed rebelliousness. His social conditions were intolerable,
but his social position made revolt impossible. What could the Ghetto
do by itself? Later its youth was to play a tremendous role as a revolu–
tionary leaven, but the older, ingrained types like Tevye knew that they
were trapped. The social frustrations which they therefore accurimlated
led them to place responsibility on the Maker in the other world. Their
inability to rebel in this world led them to the shocking act of rebelling,
always with reverence and love, against the other.
Teyve is the embodiment of that crucial transitional generation
which, since it could not find complete deliverance in the traditional
God and had no use for any new beliefs, ended by celebrating its own
uneasy earthly lot: poverty and hope. For if you had become skeptical
of deliverance from above and never accepted the possibility of deliv–
erance below, what could you do with poverty but celebrate it? This
theme is constant in Sholom Aleichem's stories. "In Kasrilevka there
are experienced authorities on the subject of hunger, one might say
specialists. On the darkest night, simply by hearing your voice, they can
