Happy New Year! by Sholom Aleichem

Sholom Aleichem. Happy New Year! and Other Stories, translated and edited by Curt Leviant. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000, 112 pages.

When grabbing something to read in order to pass the time during a long airline flight or train trip, there’s a tendency to settle for the literary equivalent of fast food: a predictable “quick read.” For a more substantial meal of pleasure reading, however, it’s good for a reader to choose from a menu that is a few tables removed from the tried-and-true comfort zone. In that case this short story collection by Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916) hits the proverbial spot. His works take place in another century, in a different setting, in a different language.

At first glance, the reader might ask herself how could fiction about life in a Ukrainian shtetl from the early twentieth century – and originally written in Yiddish, yet!– offer resonance and relevance to us today? According to the translator, Curt Leviant, Sholom Aleichem “was the first Yiddish writer to combine the age-old oral Jewish/Yiddish humor, anecdotes, and short Hasidic tales with the Western esthetic/literary tradition.” The author’s pseudonym, changed from his real name of Solomon J. Rabinowitz, is a Yiddish translation from the Hebrew: “Peace be with you.” The name appears beneath the titles of 28-volumes about a trio of main characters: Tevye the Dairyman, Menachem Mendel, the chronically unemployed wanderer, and young Mottel, the Cantor’s son. All three are essentially comic, though Leviant hastens to add, “Like the Jewish people, they have their doses of anguish,” tempered with both resigned honesty and resilient optimism.

With only one exception, the stories in this small volume are first-person narratives in which mostly unnamed characters offer their animated spiels to an invisible but obviously engaged listener. Two of the stories are set during Rosh Hashanah. In “Three Calendars,” a hustling but haggard street-hawker tries to unload three leftover copies of the time-sensitive wares, “the sort of stuff you can't even give away if it isn't sold before the holidays.” The title story tells of the problem faced by the town’s people, needing to stave off the usual government harassment during the holidays, when the ruler, the latest manifestation of “Mr. Big,” is “clean as a whistle” and apparently won't be bribed.

Two other stories depict the frenzied preparations for another important holiday of the Jewish year. In “The Passover Eve Vagabonds,” a man and his son find themselves chased from room to room as the wife and a housemaid cleanse the house to make it Kosher. Similarly, in “The Ruined Passover,” a young boy, thrilled at the thought of getting new clothes for the occasion, is brought down to earth amid the hustle and bustle: “ ‘Get away from the Passover cupboard with your bready clothes! ‘ “ Mama screamed, as if I were lighting matches near gunpowder.”(p. 102.)

A shaggy-dog story about the convoluted process about a disputed lottery ticket spurs “75,000,” in which the author makes fun of people bitten by the bug of money. As the tale unfolds, the author infers universal truths about greed. As the narrator continually asks, “Get the picture?” As in all of these stories, the speakers come alive, not only with rhythmical phrasing but also keenly-observed one-liners; for instance, the speakers discovers that searching for some missing merchandise is “like trying to find yesterday.” The kind of humor characterized by wild exaggeration and subtle put-downs disguised as praise abounds in the story titled, “In America,” the country in which the author spent only the last two years of his life. Opening with the line, “America is all bluff. All Americans are bluffers,” the story proves just that: “First of all – the land itself. A land flowing with milk and honey. People make money left and right. Beggars use two hands. They rake it in(...) Want to open a store–fine. Want to push a pushcart, that’s permitted, too. Or you can become a pedlar, even work in a shop! It’s a free country. You can swell from hunger, die in the street, and no one’ll bother you, no one’ll say a word.”


Among the impressive qualities of this short book is the power of a good, strong “voice,” as well as its signature humor-tinged-with-pain. We can trace the humorous devices appearing here in so many later venues, such as the monologues of Borscht Belt comedians and their stand-up successors, not to mention Broadway musicals and revues, situation comedies, and even the catch-phrase and tag-line- laden sketches in the edgy Saturday Night Live. But perhaps Sholom Aleichem’s influence goes even deeper than that- on literature in general, and especially twentieth-century works created in North America. The prominent author who immediately comes to mind is Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose Yiddish works earned him a Nobel Prize in 1978. Another Nobel laureate is Saul Bellow, who wrote serious novels in English, but his humorous touches owe much to that of Shalom Aleichem. Same with Bernard Malamud, Mordecai Richler, the list goes on and on.

This is not to say that Sholom Aleichem’s work shouldn't be enjoyed for its own sake. Some lines in the stories of this collection make the reader laugh aloud, but experiencing the book as a whole is ultimately elevating. More than offering knowledge about a particular ethnic and religious culture, this book offers much greater insights about the endearing and enduring human quality shared by all.

Would I lie to you?