Fishke the Lame: Mendele Moykher-Sforim's Most Famous Story
- Yiddish Shmoozers in Translation
- Jan 25
- 20 min read
Updated: Mar 16
Sunday, 3/16 4:00 - 5:30 pm, Pacific
New Material Added! Scroll down for Chapter-by-Chapter Summary or Click here
Powerpoint Presentation on Translation Issues in
Fishke the Lame
By popular request, we are revisiting the Yiddish classics. The book, Fishke the Lame, is the earliest full-length work we will read and its at the head of our list, for March 16. Scroll down for an introduction.
THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT!
A limited number of used copies remain in the $25 range on Amazon. They are going fast.
You can also download a free digital copy from Syracuse University Press.
In the minds of his readers, the writer S. Y. Abramovitsh became so fully identified with his narrator Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Mendele the Book Seller) that Abramovitsh himself is most widely recognized by his character Mendele's name. They are not the identical person by any means.
Mendele the Book Seller appears in several stories by Abramovitsh but is most fully developed as a character in his long story, Fishke der Krumer, or, in English, Fishke the Lame. The story concerns a poor young couple--he a cripple, she blind--in the shtetl Glubsk ("Fools town"), who are described sympathetically and helped by the itinerant and more worldly book seller, Mendele.
The premier scholar of Abramovitsh, Dan Miron, points to three characteristics of Mendele: (1) He is fully an "insider" in the shtetl world; (2) He is nevertheless "uprooted" and an "outsider" because of his travels as a peddler, which makes him "more of an observer than a participant" and, unlike the Glubskers, a "free agent;" and (3) Mendele is an ironic folk intellectual not a scholar, despite the fact that he traffics in holy books.
Abramovitsh was of a different breed than his famous character Mendele. He was an educated professional living in urban environments, a trained scientist and widely acquainted with secular literature. He became the first of three "classic" Yiddish writers credited with launching modern Yiddish literature:
S. Y. Abramovitsh (1835–1917)
Y. L. Peretz (1852-1915)
Solomon Rabinovitch (Sholem Aleichem) (1859-1916)
Abramovitsh, Peretz, and Rabinovitch represent a wave of modernist, enlightenment (Heb. Haskalah; Yid. haskole) thinking that swept Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Typical of the Haskalah writers, these ground-breaking Yiddish authors did their early writing in Hebrew. But they realized that to write exclusively in loshen koydesh (Yid. the holy tongue) meant that their readers would be limited to the small educated elite. Their readers would consist only of maskils (adherents of Haskalah) like themselves.
As these writers aspired to reach and build a critical consciousness among ordinary Jews concerning the intense poverty, oppression, insularity, and cultural particularity of the shtetls, each began to write in Yiddish, beginning with Abramovitsh. It was Abramovitsh who first applied liberal doses of biting satire to his observations in Yiddish of a basically medieval shtetl culture and its encounter with a galloping modernity.
Consequently, Fishke the Lame has been compared to Cervantes' great satire Don Quixote, which Abramovitsh certainly had read. In Fishke, a critique of shtetl mentalities is present on every page as the characters of Glubsk contemplate and grapple with economic, technological, and ideological forces beyond their direct control. To write in Yiddish was a radical departure from intellectual conventions. If writing specifically for a Jewish audience there were only two choices, Yiddish and Hebrew.
But Yiddish was looked down upon by the Jewish elite as not a bona fide language but a bastard dialect or dzhargon (jargon). Yiddish was the language of workers, not scholars--the speech of uneducated common folk, insufficient for expressing higher thoughts. Yiddish was the language of everyday transactions in the marketplace. Yiddish was the language on the Jewish street. Its orthography, a phonetic use of Hebrew letters, was unstandardized. Only in the 1920s was an attempt made by YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute) in Vilna to standardize the language. Even today, Yiddish words are often spelled according to variant regional pronunciations and other idiosyncrasies.
Above all, Yiddish was the mame-loshen, the "mother tongue," a designation that carries at least two meanings. As the mother-tongue, Yiddish was indeed the native language of Eastern European Jews spoken from birth. And, further, Yiddish was also the distinct language of the family and home, in contrast to the study hall and synagogue. Yiddish was hyper-associated with the female domestic sphere, in contrast to the prestigious religious sphere, where women were systematically and rigorously excluded.
In other words, Yiddish was widely viewed as a lesser, feminized language as compared with Hebrew, the prestige language of religious continuity and entrenched patriarchy. Consequently, the decision to write in Yiddish meant taking a risk. Abramovitsh, Peretz, and Rabinovitch risked their professional identities in making the switch to Yiddish. In this struggle, the three classic writers emerged victorious as founders of a new modern Yiddish tradition, although Abramovitsh, for one, continued to bifurcate his cultural production, issuing rewrites and new editions of his work in both Yiddish and Hebrew.
On the other hand, women readers in Yiddish comprised a significant audience. By the late 19th century, enough women were literate enough in Yiddish to support a thriving market for collections of tkhines (Yid. prayers especially written for and, later, also by women). Obtained from book peddlers like the character Mendele, these popular collections contained prayers for women hoping to reach the ear of God with pleasingly composed supplications concerning illness, childlessness, or other of women's primary concerns.
This women's audience and market did not escape the attention of some authors willing to write potboilers and romances in Yiddish. The rise of such non-canonical works, which the scholar Khone Shmeruk links to publications first introduced by Nokhem Meyer Shaykevitch in the late 1870s, was a popular phenomenon criticized and dismissed by elites as shund (Yid. trash, offal).
But if the modernists wished to create a vibrant new literature for the Jewish masses, a literature certainly influenced by the great Russian and western European writers of their age, then Yiddish was the key. Abramovitsh, Peretz, and Rabinovitch had to overcome their own prejudices and fears of being associated with a low status, feminized mode of expression.
To reach the Yiddish-speaking masses with their modern literary, sociological, psychological, and political insights, it would be necessary to write in dzhargon, Yiddish. In Yiddish and in translations to all the modern languages, they continue to reach readers today.
On Sunday, March 16, we will first read Abramovitsh among ourselves with supplementary background and criticism by his almost unbelievably insightful and interesting interpreter, the Israeli-American Yiddish scholar Dan Miron (b. 1934). Be sure to read Miron's Introduction, pp. vii-xix.
In April we will get an introduction to Yiddish cinema and Yiddish acting with the 1939 film The Light Ahead, based on Fishke the Lame. The film is in Yiddish with English subtitles.
In May, we will have a master class comprised of two sessions, reading selected stories of Y. L. Peretz, the next of the "classic" Yiddish writers. We are excited to welcome Goldie Morgentaler, professor of English literature and translator Peretz's work. Shmoozers will remember with enduring appreciation the sessions led by Dr. Morgentaler about stories by her mother Chava Rosenfarb, author of The Tree of Life triology, that Morgentaler translated from Yiddish to English. Since then, In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb was published in 2023.
And in June, we have tentatively booked Marc Caplan, pending his teaching schedule, author of the books How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms andWriters in Weimar Berlin. Caplan is certainly among the most creative and thought-provoking scholars in the field of Yiddish literature today.
Supplementary sources:
Biographical entry by Dan Miron
Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1039
Lecture by Dan Miron
"A Traveler Undisguised: 'Mendele Moykher Sforim' as a Modern Jewish Intellectual"
Start here: Introduction by Eddy Portnoy, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (4:30 min)
Fishke the Lame – S.Y. Abramovitsh
Chapter-by-Chapter Summary
©️ Yiddish Shmoozers (In Translation)
Sunday, March 16, 2025 - 4-5:30 Pacific
Many thanks to the contributors listed below
Selection 1 Chs.1-5 Contributor: Leah Light
Epistle Dedicatory
The introduction is in the form of a letter to MMS’s friend Menashe Margolis, a leading promoter of the enlightenment for Russian Jews. MMS contrasts his friend’s subject matter to his own—upstairs vs. downstairs—paupers, tramps, ragamuffins, rogues, and their ilk.
Prologue by Mendele
Introduces character of Mendele to the reader (engages in conversation, folksy, gossipy, rambling story-teller register), imagining what any Jew wants to know about newly encountered person: name, pedigree, family, trade. Describes his wares, his horse, his place of travel (Poland), makes fun of literary tradition of author thanking his wife—says her name is Yente. No indication of events occurring in world or exact moment in history—same is true for Ch. 1-5—though his cohorts are apparently familiar with at least some local history and events that they discuss in the bath house (mentioned very briefly in Ch. 5)!
Refers to conversational partner in way that could suggest the person is of elevated class…or is this just the way people supposedly talked regardless of class?
Chapter 1
Beautiful day between Passover and Shvuot. Says his wares provide fare for lamentations, sadness. Describes beautiful surroundings but compares his admiration of temptress nature with bad side interfering with contemplation of calamity and destruction (good side) on Fast of Tammuz. Thinks himself unworthy for enjoying beauty of day but then finds himself reciting prayer naming God as restorer of life to dead. He nods off and finds his horse and cart entangled in mudhole with Reb Alter. They check each other out. Some local yokelry (Esau’s kin) arrive and though taunting them these help get the carts clear of the mud. MMS offers prayer asking for good fortune.
Chapter 2
MMS and Alter continue on their way. Broken down nature of cart described, Mendele finishes up morning prayers, sounds of insects around them. It’s hot and Mendele describes his garb (really unsuitable for heat) and gives an ode to Jewish sweat. Sweat reminds him of Jewish food (described) and awakens his appetite. He doesn’t eat and talks about extreme hunger reducing desire for food. Sees or hallucinates beautiful woman with luscious strawberries. He and Alter undo horses’ tack to allow them to graze and they rest under a tree.
Chapter 3
MMS and Alter chat, first about trade (what MMS thinks is universal Jewish conversation starter). Then Alter complains about needing to find a husband for oldest daughter because too many children and new young wife has had baby boy. Diversion as MMS ruminates on meaning of interjection Ba! Blames himself for probing into Alter’s life and reminding him of his misfortunes.
Chapter 4
Alter describes market scene. Then reminisces on interchange between men hoping to fix a match between their children and getting close to arranging this before discovering that each has a male child. One tale leads to another in the usual chaining of associations of memories.
Chapter 5
We learn about Fishke the Lame who is not just lame but so lacking in attractiveness that he is passed over repeatedly as a bridegroom prospect. He is not even considered suitable as a cemetery bridegroom—the custom of marrying of two unfortunate people in the cemetery (paupers, ugly men, etc., to spinsters) in hopes that this will end a cholera epidemic. Such events are described. Then Alter says he encountered Fishke in Glubsk a while back, still limping but now all decked out in finery…
Selection 2 Chs. 6 -10 Contributor: Ellen Grant
Chapter 6 (page - 74) Recounting of Fishke marriage to the blind bride in the cemetery.
Chapter 7 (page 74 -83) Alter initiates bargaining for goods. Alter goes to get the horses. Mendele looks for Alter.
Chapter 8 (pages 83-93) Mendele returns to the carts. Alter is not there. Mendele laments not being able to sell his goods and expresses concern that folks won’t get what they need, especially books. Mendele consoles himself with schnapps and heads back to the woods to look for Alter. Drunk Mendele breaks into a garden of cucumbers, gets caught and sobers up. His attacker takes him to a house with a nice buggy and team of horses. Inside was a notary and a “Red-collar” (policeman). After berating two men standing near the door (self-described Elder and Bailiff), the Red-collar accuses Mendele of being a thief and cuts off one of his payot. Mendele wept with shame. Seeing the expression on Mendele’s face the Red-collar concluded that he could not be a thief and left. After telling those who remained his story, they suggested he go to the village tavern. Mendele picked up is pe’a, covered his naked cheek with a neckerchief and left.
Chapter 9 (pages 93-110) Mendele wound his way through a clutter of carts and miscellaneous livestock and other animals and entered the tavern dark, loud and filled with “sodden men and blowzy women” - “country folk”. As the crowd thinned out he approached the landlady, a brisk, lively Jewish matron. From her name (Hya-‘Tryna) they realize that they are second cousins. Mendele is invited to stay over and they enter the house. Mendele describes the room in detail and the children. They eat dinner and are entertained by Hosea, described as the family rebbe. Plans are made to borrow horses from a goy to look fetch the carts and Mendele is invited to sleep there.
Chapter 10 (pages 111- 117) bedbugs black beetles bad smell Goes to the window His thoughts flowed out to the moon - grief, afflictions, mortification. On top of that he is scorned. “You are grudged even the petty scrap of careworn existence which is left to you, and might pass maybe for a life.” p 112 Goes back to bed and sleeps. Mendele and Hyam-Hanan go to get the carts. Find Alter under a tarp.
Selection 3 Chs. 11-15 Contributor: Andrea White
Chapter 11
Alter tells his story to Reb Mendele, and us, about the lost horses he went looking for. He comes upon a victim of The Black Deuce, bound and gagged who provides Alter a clue about the horses, that they had been stolen. On the road again, looking for the horses he now believes have been stolen, he comes across n unruly crown and overhears their talk about horses. He finds the horses and makes off with them but Fybush, that “blame bastid redhead,” is in pursuit. Fybush catches up with Alter and horses and a fist fight ensues. Alter hits him “right below his brisket” and succeeds in taking the horses back to Reb Mendele. Reb Hyam-Hanan has been sitting in the grass with Mendele , awaiting Alter and the horses’ return, while Alter has enlisted Fishke to watch the horses, now re-captured.
Chapter 12
Scene: the 4 of them (Rebs Mendele, Hyam-Hanan, Alter, and Fishke at leisure in the grassy field, relaxing “in their several unbuttoned attitudes.” As H-H rises to go home he implores Reb Mendele to come with him, his wife would kill him if he came home alone. Something about her disapproval of the “business” between Mendele and H-H (a marriage between their children?) H-H asks Mendele to write to his wife, a few words, and Mendele does so. 4 pages of “old-Fangled and Flowery” in which he pleads for H-H as the best of husbands - to H-H’s delight!
Chapter 13
Mendele and Alter sleep in the grass and Fishke watches the horses. They wake and Fishke has prepared a wonderful lunch for them. How did you get the food? They ask him, and he procedes to tell a story in which he explains the varieties and ins and outs of begging and stealing. Fishke quotes his wife as saying “our blessing is in our faults;” she is blind and he is lame, so begging has been to their advantage. However now her idea is that they would do better on the road. He reviews all the rules of being “a proper Jewish pauper.” At this and other points in the story, Mendele interrupts to summarize and sort of translate Fishke’s inarticulate speech.
Chapter 14
Fischke resumes his telling, with Mendele’s help. It’s mostly about his wife’s complaints. Mendele interrupts to tell the story of Alive-O who insists he owns everyone’s house in town and is therefore justified in collecting rent from everyone. Alter helps Fische resume his telling. He tells of Fybushie who gives a speech about the unfairness of the gentry who know nothing of hard labor having all the wealth. After all, we are “earning our bread by good honest begging. But Fybushie starts hanging around Fischke’s wife and talks them into riding in his wagon with him. “Another one,” Mendele intrudes. Like H-H, Fischke is in awe of his wife.
Chapter 15
Fischke continues. This road travel is a new experience for him, for now he’s with the “cavalry folk,” hearing others’ stories and learning “beggarcraft,” especially about disguises. He learns what his wife has already intimated that the blind and crippled are highly prized. Meanwhile Fybushie is turning his wife against him. Alter interrupts and asks “why don’t you get a divorce?” Fischke admits that he is increasingly smitten with his wife, actually bewitched by her. He suggests they leave this bunch of “mangy tramps” and settle down in a town. She refuses.
Selection 4 Chs. 16 -20 Contributor: Laura Lowe
Chapter 16
1. Fishke acquires a new title: psalms-almsman or just Fishke the Almsman. These are the hated town variety of beggars: hated by the band that he is traveling with: the horse drawn gentry.
2. The bastid works on separating Bassia and Fishke. He tells Bassia that there is no way to make a proper man of Fishke. He flirts with Bassia.
3. The bastid tells Bassia about Fishke’s new relationship with the hunchback girl.
4. The hunchback girl’s father traveled, and she didn’t know him. Her mother constantly cussed out her father.
5. The hunchback girl’s mother became a housemaid. The girl was left at home when her mother worked and was starved. When she was taken with her mother to work, she wasn’t fed.
6. While working the hunchback girl’s mother put her on a mantel ledge in the kitchen while the mother worked all day. The hunchback girl wasn’t allowed to make any noise: not even a moan. If she made noise her mother would hit her with a poker, scoop or ladle.
7. Per Fishke, being scrunched up on the ledge made her hunchbacked.
8. The hunchback girl’s mother eventually abandoned her on the street.
9. An “Auntie” took her home and she worked watching Auntie’s baby and doing house chores. At night she begged for food for herself, Auntie and the baby.
10. One day she got lost in the fields and it was getting dark and stormy. The bastid saw her and told her that he would take her to her Auntie’s. Instead, he drove off with her.
11. She was forced to carry on, weeping and grabbing at people while begging for the band. If she wasn’t able to get sufficient funds in a day, she was tossed out naked in the streets for the night. She almost died from the cold.
12. Fishke states that he would give his life to save her.
Chapter 17.
1. Fishke admits that he is in love with the hunchback girl and admits that his feelings for his wife have grown cold.
2. Suddenly Bassia started to be affectionate with Fishke. He wondered if she had gone crazy. Then her venom came out against him again.
3. The band of beggars entered a small town and went to the almshouse. It was horrible. Full of dirt, mold, holes, rotting timber and trash.
4. The almshouse was also a hospice for poor people about to die.
5. The almshouse was packed with beggars and those who were dying. Fights broke out.
6. Fishke laid down to sleep and the roaches, bedbugs and fleas kept him awake. He went out into the courtyard, longing for his old job at the bathhouse.
7. Fishke heard the bastid yelling at someone and throwing them out of the main building. It’s the hunchback girl.
8. Fishke carried her to his corner of the courtyard.
9. The hunchback girl questioned God’s role in her suffering. Fishke assured her that God is loving and hears everything.
10. In the morning the bastid came out of the almshouse building and saw the hunchback girl and Fishke together. He gave them a knowing leer and guffaw.
Chapter 18.
1. Fishke lapsed into silence.
2. Mendele philosophizes on those moments in life when words just come pouring out. It is the soul that is talking. He tries to get Fishke talking with discussions about abandoned children and their parents marrying someone else.
3. Alter became extremely upset by what Mendele has said. Mendele realizes that he needed to stop telling the truth right to a person’s face.
4. Mendele vows to take a silent oath, to hoard his words and only listen, observe and keep his mouth shut. Only praise people. He imagines becoming everyone’s favorite “Uncle”.
5. Mendele convinces Alter to come up to his wagon and gives him a drink of spirits, drinking toasts to Alter.
6. Fishke continues telling his story.
7. It was Friday night, and all of the beggars lined up to get vouchers for meals from the charitable board.
8. The beadle was overwhelmed with beggars. There was shoving and Fishke and the hunchback girl are watching off to the side.
9. The bastid obtained a voucher early and adds Bassia for his dinner voucher. Of course, no vouchers were left for Fishke and the hunchback girl.
10. After trying to bribe the beadle, it turns out that one voucher was left. Fishke insisted that it go to the hunchback girl. She insisted that he have it.
11. The beadle told them to come back after services and he will get them a meal. Two separate gentlemen agreed to have them as dinner guests.
12. After dinner Fishke and the hunchback girl went walking. They sat in a garden she told him how the bastid treats her.
Chapter 19
1. Mendele asks Fishke if the hunchback girl is pretty. Fishke gets angry about the question but describes her as quite pretty. He makes it clear that the relationship is built on pity: each for the other.
2. There is a description at some level of the abuse that the bastid inflicted on the hunchback girl: pinching, lustful pinching. Pawing her, sweet talking, threatening her. Hitting her.
3. Fishke was moved beyond recognition and stated that he would give his life for her. He swears that he will always be a true friend and a brother.
4. Fishke heard knocking around and saw the bastid breaking into someone’s cellar.
5. Fishke decided time for payback. He went over to the door to try to lock the bastid in. The bolt was bent, and he could not get it closed.
6. The bastid opened the door from the inside before Fishke could get the bolt to slide. The bastid flung Fishke down the stairs.
7. The bastid commenced to stuffing a sack with food while whacking Fishke.
8. Fishke upset by insinuations regarding the hunchback girl, started to fight back and bit down on the bastid’s hand. The bastid tore him off and choked Fishke. The bastid threw him down and left him locked in the cellar. Rats crawl over him.
9. The cellar door opened, and the hunchback girl was there. Fishke kissed her.
10. When they get back to the almshouse, Fishke saw the bastid with Bassia, cuddling.
11. Bassia came over and told Fishke off for being with the hunchback girl, calling her a hussy and trollop. Bassia started hitting him.
12. Fishke and the hunchback girl left the almshouse and ended up at the synagogue. They entered the shul planning to go to the women’s gallery for sleep.
13. Fishke tripped over something and there is stomping, jumping and jostling. He grabbed a beard and found that he was fighting a goat.
14. Fishke rounded up the goats to clear the women’s gallery for the hunchback girl. After side stepping the Billy goat, Fishke entered the downstairs. It was full of almsmen sleeping. Fishke laid down to sleep.
15. In the morning Fishke was awakened by members of the shul who had come to pray. Fishke joined them in Psalm recitals.
Chapter 20.
1. Bassia was burnt up on account of Fishke’s friendship with the hunchback girl. The bastid had told her about their relationship.
2. Fishke thinks that the bastid twisted information about his relationship with the hunchback girl to convince Bassia to stay away from him.
3. Instead of growing cold and leaving Fishke to go his own way, Bassia was insulted that he had taken up with the hunchback girl.
4. Alter stops Fishke and questions him about the inconsistency. How can Bassia be upset with Fishke when she has taken up with the bastid?
5. Fishke goes on at length about the horse sense that he picked up listening to the bathhouse men. The man who never has spoken a truthful word goes on and on about other people. The liar will call someone else a liar. The cheapskate will call another a cheapskate. The person with a heart of stone will call another wicked and hurtful. A gent that will do anything to get public honors will call others prideful.
6. Bathhouse participant Itsik the watchman says that nobody ever recognizes the fleas up their own noses. Shmerl says that everybody reckons to himself “Well I’m allowed so I can, and you hain’t so you cain’t.”
7. Fishke’s conclusion: Upstanding folks are all allowed and can and do pretty much as they please. And when he sees these upstanding folks, he gives a good greeting but thinks that he would just as soon never look at their faces again.
8. Mendele interrupts with a tale that’s supposed to be about him fighting ruffians, being egged on by the Devil. When he starts to tell the story, he stops. In the story women were looking at him as if asking him to not fight and he found their looks his undoing. He remembers that he only recently took an oath to be worthy of a benevolent society: an uncle to all.
9. Fishke continues his story. He and Bassia drifted apart again, and she got closer to the bastid. Fishke doesn’t care about her anymore: just the hunchback girl. She was never out of his thoughts.
10. One of the bastid’s mob, an old man, started doing the begging rounds with Fishke. He was a bad man: a goniffin rogue.
11. The old man would point to Fishke and tell people that he was the father of the poor cripple. He told Fishke how to behave: to moan and gimp it up.
12. He belittled Fishke, cursed him and punched him. The old man pocketed all of the money.
13. The old man told Fishke that Bassia gave him to the old man.
14. Fishke realized that he is the performing bear for this band. They had taken his wife. His only purpose was to perform and make money for them. A bitter pill to swallow.
15. Fishke saw that his relationship with Bassia was over. Fishke decided to run off. He must free himself of the villainous bunch. But what of the hunchback girl?
16. Choice: go back to the world of light, free and clean of sin and trouble or stay in Hell with the hunchback girl.
17. Fishke decided to stay. He refused to go out with the old man again. He was done being the dancing bear.
18. Perhaps the answer was a divorce.
19. Fishke was beaten by the gang. They told him that he was useless to them. They are ready to throw him out.
20. Fishke said “Gimme back my wife. I want my wife”. Of course it was a ruse to help him get the divorce. If divorced he could run off with the hunchback girl.
Selection 5 Chs. 21-25 Contributor: Michael Nutkiewicz
Ch. 21. Fishke and his wife Basia are speaking about their relationship. She curses him and tells him to go to his “hussy”. In fact, his wife and their son daily torment the girl. Fishke and the girl meet secretly to lament their fate, and Fishke paints for her a vision of what life might be like together in Glupsk, “the promised land.” (In fact, he describes a town and populace in poverty but at least honest and unpretentious.)
Goes to a festive meal at a bris and filches some honey cake for himself and his girl and informs her that he will be giving a get to his wife. But when he returns home, everyone is gone, including his wife and girl.
Ch. 22. Mendel and Alter ruminate on the question: what does it mean to fall love? Did it mean being enchanted by forces such as witches that required exorcism? Rich and poor both are susceptible to falling in love: the former because he can do it with impunity; the latter because he can depend upon charity.
The tasks that a woman has to endure as wife and mother. “Whether you’re beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish – that’s your task” [my translation]. And after she dies, the husband will sit shiva and fulfill the 30 days and then promptly seek another wife…and a third and a fourth and a fifth…. After all, he’s only fulfilling the mitzvah of marriage. In his old age, he’ll marry an old maid, and they will emigrate to the Land of Israel to wait until the messiah arrives.
In fact, the Jewish man performs all sorts of mitzvot without exactly knowing why/how. Of course, Fiskhe is the exception.
Fishke continues his own story. He arrives in Odessa, which he does not find very hospitable. There’s a comic scene regarding a misunderstanding (“an author” vs. “an other”) between Fiskhe and a German Jew utilizing German dialect.
Ch. 23.
He describes various poor people found in Odessa – from locals to emissaries from the Land of Israel. He is told that what makes Idessa different is music, specifically the “barrel organs” one finds everywhere, including in shuls.
Runs into Yontl No-gams who takes him around Odessa. Fishke impressed with the habits of Odessian Jews. e.g., men shave their beards and [married] women don’t cover their hair. They compare the Odessan “Frenchified” rebbe to Glupsk’s rebbe Hertzele, as well as other Jewish Odessan dandies to the simply pious Jews of Glupsk.
Fishke consults with Yontl about getting into business in Odessa. He rejects money changing or haberdashery. Yontl suggests collecting government taxes on kosher meat and candles or some other official communal position. He decides that working at the bathhouse was most proper for him but a tour of the Odessa bathhouse dismays him. Odessa is not for him.
Ch. 24. Fishke is homesick and leaves Odessa for Glupsk. He runs into his old hunchback girl in the forests. The vow never to part again after Fishke gives his wife, Basia, a get. His wife and “bastard” child are with the group that kidnapped her and his girl from Glupsk. She begs Fishke to take her home. He gives his girl the news that Basia will never grant him a divorce. They decide that they have to flee together.
While hiding Fishke overhears the bastard son tell someone that he beat up Basia. Fishke is discovered and the bastard son takes out his knife. At that moment Fiskhe’s girl snatches the knife away and pleads that Fishke should be spared. He ties Fishke up and leaves with the sobbing girl. Fishke is discovered by Alter.
Ch. 25. Fishke returns to Glupsk and is reminded by Mendele that “Our God does not forget us” [my translation]. Alter asks the name of his girl who up to now has been called “the hunchback girl.” When Fishke says “Beyla” Alter nearly faints. Mendele puts together that she is Alter’s daughter whom he had driven out of Tuneyadevka. Alter laments what he had done. He vows to find her again, Before he leaves, Fishke begs Alter to save her.
Fishke mounts his wagon and continues to Glupsk.
Comentários