- Person
- Sholem Aleichem
- Lived
- 1859–1916
- Field
- Yiddish literature
- From
- Russian-Ukrainian
The story
In Sholem Aleichem's lifetime millions of Eastern European Jews left the shtetls for America, driven by poverty, restrictions and pogroms. The writer knew that journey himself. After the 1905 pogroms he left the Russian Empire, travelled to New York in 1906, lived for years in Switzerland, and in 1914 settled in New York with his family, first in Harlem and then in the Bronx.
Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, subtitled The Writings of an Orphan Boy, captures that journey through the eyes of a child. It is narrated in the first person by a boy who, at the outset, is not quite nine years old, from a Jewish family in Kasrilevke, the fictional shtetl of many of Sholem Aleichem's stories. Motl's father, the town cantor, dies after a long illness, and Motl finds that being fatherless earns him extra sympathy and forgiveness for his pranks. His older brother tries get-rich-quick schemes from a book, which fail, and the family sets off for America.
The first volume, From Home to America, appeared in 1907. It follows the family via Antwerp and London's Whitechapel, past con artists and fellow refugees, across the ocean to Ellis Island. The second, In America, written in 1916, follows their life in New York: sweatshops on the Lower East Side, labour protests, Charlie Chaplin films, the struggle to learn English, and finally a grocery store and growing comfort. News arrives that Kasrilevke has been devastated by a pogrom. Almost every episode, even the serious ones, is told with humour.
Sholem Aleichem was still writing the book when he died in May 1916; his last page breaks off in the middle of an episode. It has since been translated into English by Tamara Kahana in 1953, Hillel Halkin in 2002 and Aliza Shevrin in 2009, and a critical Yiddish edition appeared in 1997. A 1928 Soviet silent film based partly on it was restored in 1991 as Laughter Through Tears.
For generations of immigrant families, Motl's cheerful voice made the hardship of uprooting bearable to read about and easy to recognise. The novel remains one of literature's warmest accounts of arriving in a new country.
Why it matters
Motl gave the Jewish immigrant experience a warm, lasting literary voice that still speaks to families who have made the journey to a new land.
About Sholem Aleichem
The great humorist of Yiddish literature, creator of Tevye the Dairyman, Menakhem-Mendl and Motl, whose stories became the basis for Fiddler on the Roof.
More about Sholem Aleichem
- Sholem Aleichem's The Bloody Hoax exposed the blood libelIn The Bloody Hoax, Sholem Aleichem told of two student friends who swap identities, so that the Christian student becomes the victim of a blood libel accusation.
- Sholem Aleichem's Tevye stories gave the world FiddlerSholem Aleichem, often called 'the Jewish Mark Twain', created Tevye the Dairyman, whose stories became Fiddler on the Roof, performed from Broadway to Tokyo.
Sources
- Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son Wikipedia
- Sholem Aleichem Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.