Analysis of the Novels Tevye The Dairyman and The Story Of My Dovecote, and How They Expanded My Jewish Culture Knowledge

Throughout the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, eastern Europe was a region of constant oppression and objectification. Tight communities, including the Jewish people of small villages, were frowned upon by many, and in return, developed their own unique way of living life on a daily basis. Despite the fact that these small, segregated groups did not have much to work with, especially in regards to external cooperation, hope, faith, and religion united them and created a common goal. Although this goal cannot be perfectly defined, it was about getting by, and beginning to thrive.

A number of renowned authors have written about their experiences and have illustrated to millions the tough times that they have suffered through. Over the decades, their writing has proved to be timeless and robust, and the open interpretations that stem from their stories have sparked an uncountable amount of conversations and thoughts.

In this essay, I will dig deep to analyze the works of two Jewish writers, who in their respective writing, efficiently tell their stories to the audience.

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I will initially cover the novel Tevye the Dairyman, written by Sholem Aleichem, and then proceed onto a short story written by Isaac Babel, titled, The Story of My Dovecote. Both writers tell their stories through a personable and unique perspective that has the ability to touch, inspire, and manipulate the audience in a multitude of ways. Additionally, by utilizing several elements of literature, each writer’s voice and style of writing significantly adds to the depth of their works, and contributes to the audiences expanding comprehension of the Eastern European Jewish culture through the last few hundred years.

In Tevye the Dairyman, the main character, Tevye, is a man constantly surrounded by conflicts and dilemmas. He is a family man, a humorous narrator, a Jewish traveler, and a very opinionated person with endless thoughts. His surroundings, including the people around him and his neighboring villages, significantly impact his life and he influences them as well. Consequently, Tevye’s several daughters, wife, and many clients are the most vital figures throughout his journey. A majority of the story takes place in Russia, in a tight Jewish community, commonly referred to as a Shtetl. Tevye frequently makes runs to the neighboring villages, Boiberik and Yehupetz, to sell his dairy products, as this is what he does for a living. He calls himself the best dairyman in town and takes extreme pride in his work. These two villages, Boiberik and Yehupetz, are essential to Tevye’s story as they are symbolic of a more upper-class, bustling lifestyle that Tevye cannot afford to live. Early on in the story, in Yehupetz, Tevye interacts with a stock-exchanger named Menachem Mendl.

Despite the fact that he says he wants to help Tevye, by investing his money and coming out with much more, Mendl represents the false sense of hope that many Jews had throughout the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Menachem successfully swindles Tevye into investing his money in him through his persuasive dialect; he says, “before you know it, your hundred’s worth two, your two hundred four, your four hundred eight, and your eight a thousand and six. It’s the damnedest thing!” (Aleichem 1894, 27). Weeks go by without any communication from Menachem, and coincidentally, they cross paths in Yehupetz one day. Tevye frustratedly states, “I’m not even asking what you did with the money that I bled for. I know as much as I want to, that it went to buy birds in a bush, whole flocks of them, and that I’ll never get to see a single one. And whose fault is it? It’s my own, for having been taken in by a lot of hot air. Take it from me, the only way to make money is to work your bottom off. Which is where you, Tevye, deserve to get a swift kick!” (Aleichem 1894, 34). This particular experience that Tevye has with Menachem Mendl is significant because it speaks on behalf of the Jewish community as whole. It elaborates upon the fact that work ethic outweighs mostly anything, and the thought that the Jewish community was plagued by a sense of false hope. As Tevye’s story progresses, it becomes evident that the challenges he is facing are quite minute in the grand scheme of things, and there is a much more troubling conflict at stake. Although he is caught up in making money, marrying off his several daughters, and positioning himself in order to gain money and high-ground, the true conflict Tevye has to deal with presents itself near the end of the writing, specifically, in the chapter Lekh-Lekho.

In this section, the massive, anti-semitic Russian government initiates a movement of destruction and vandalization against the small Jewish shtetls. The goal of this destruction, also called pogroms, was to force the Russian Jews out of their shtetls and into a physical state of relocation. The moment in which Tevye finds out he needs to leave his village is yet another point in the story where he conveys his sense of false hope. As a large group of his community approaches him, he is waiting for, and only anticipates, good news. Unfortunately, Ivan Paprilo, a Christian man in the shtetl, informs Tevye that he will need to leave the village, along with his other fellow Jews, not to mention, Layzer Wolf and the rabbi. Tevye, in a very sarcastic and nonchalant fashions responds, “congratulations! What’s taken so long though my children? Everywhere else the pogroms are already over” (Aleichem 1894, 121). Tevye quickly realizes that no one else is acting facetiously, and his whole narrative is being flipped within the matter of one quick conversation. He is not alone though, as an uncountable number of Jews in Russia, and all across Eastern Europe, were forced into relocation. These disturbingly violent pogroms destroyed most of the Jewish culture’s hope at the time; their sense of unity and togetherness had finally been shattered as there was no true solution or vantage point post-pogrom.

During this period of constant wandering and dispersal, religion was extremely important to the Jews, as they believed that God, or some other savior, was going to come down from above and rescue them or point them in the correct direction. For example, Tevye says, “the only hope left us is for God to work a miracle and send us the Messiah right away” (Aleichem 1894, 123). Tevye’s audience has already observed, however, that God has not helped him out too much yet. In the novel, God solely acts as a figure in which Tevye can fall back on, but it is crucial not to confuse this with him using God as a source of reliance; he blames God for the good and the bad, but does not wait for God to take action. Tevye is constantly reciting portions from the Torah, the Talmud, and even the Bible. He does this in order to effectively explain the phenomena which occur around him and his family on a regular basis, which he believes has a divine meaning. The fashion in which Tevye uses religion to understand, cooperate with, and explain the events going on around him, from getting a small fortune finessed, to marrying off each of his daughters, it is representative of the eastern European Jewish culture, and how members of it had to find ways to make their undesirable situations more comfortable.

On a similar note, The Story of my Dovecote, written by Isaac Babel, another Jewish writer, reflects Babel’s personal experiences as a student in primary school. This story is set in Russia, but zeroes in on the Jewish culture and the problems that came along with it. The primary conflict is, again, the relationship between the Jewish people and the anti-semitic Russian government. Babel is faced with the challenge of having to be the top performer in his Russian language and mathematics classes, but not for the same rewarding reasons that many would assume. The real reason is that the classes above him will only allow two Jewish students to move on, creating a large sense of pressure that all falls onto the narrator. If he somehow does find a way to attain these grades and be admitted into the next class, his father promises to build him a dovecote; “As a child I wanted a dovecote very badly. In all my life I have never desired anything more intensely” (Babel 1986, 365), he says. Contrary to what the audience may have assumed, Babel gets the grades and finishes at the top of his class. He has installed a great sense of pride in himself and in his father, and to no avail, they find out that another Jewish student’s family, Efrussi Junior, bribed the school to be let into the next class, over Babel. His father, Khariton Efrussi leads the family, and is one of the oldest and richest men in their community of Odessa.

Babel’s story uses symbolism and allusions to keep the audience engaged and thinking on their toes. The first major allusion in the story is the key differences between the Babel family and the Efrussi family. Although both were part of the Jewish community, the amount of disloyalty demonstrated by the Efrussis represents the free-for-all and survival of the fittest mindset implemented into society at the time, even across families of the same religion. The fact that the Efrussi family had the ability to bribe school officials into moving their son into the next class all leads back to the anti-semitic Russian government and the school only being allowed to accept a set percentage of Jews.

Other conflicts in the story, including the pogrom and the deeper meaning of the dovecote, are also rooted within the evil Russian government. Synonymous with Tevye’s story, there is a strong sense of false hope installed within this text, specifically, within the dovecote. At first, it seems that Babel wants to build a dovecote and fill it with doves for the same reason that a kid today would want to build a doghouse and put a dog in it: to have a loving housepet. The meaning of the dovecote runs much deeper though. It is symbolic of peace, innocence, serenity, and purity. These certain traits are crucial to Babel’s story, as him and his surrounding community are stuck in the opposite of them. A violent, unfair, and cruel pogrom is being held against their village, and the entirety of the story foreshadows this only for it to be finally mentioned in the last sentence. In this pogrom, doves get killed, straightforwardly being symbolic of a loss of innocence, serenity, and purity within Babel’s village, and more importantly, within himself. Babel, near the end of the story hesitantly grunts out that, “things turned out my way, things turned out badly” (Babel 1986, 371). His situation in school is only a small challenge amongst the bigger picture, but the way he handles it queues the rest of the story greatly and helps the audience truly comprehend the fact that there is a pogrom going on, even though it is not mentioned until the last word is read.

Most of eastern Europe, Russia specifically, was a very dark place through the 19th and 20th centuries for tight communities, including the Jews of small shtetls. Every moment of cooperation and perseverance made an enormous difference and left a lasting impact on the culture, despite the fact that objectification and discrimination thrived in these small communities. Many writers, including Aleichem and Babel, do a terrific job of illustrating the hardships they went through, and reflecting their experiences to - and on behalf of - the entire Jewish culture. The symbolism, allusionism, and other literary elements utilized, add a deeper-than-surface meaning to their literature and encourage their audience to interpret their journeys in a plethora of ways. While reading about these two particular journeys, I took in a lot of information that will help develop and mature my understanding of the Jewish culture and its origins.