Jewish Children

Jewish Children Translated from the yiddish of Shalom Aleichem by Hannah Berman A curious noise comes from the town, a roaring, a rushing, a tumult. In a moment the face of the world is changed for me. Our farm is a courtyard, our house is a palace. I am a prince, Busie a princess. The logs of wood that lie at our door are the cedars and firs of the "Song of Songs." The cat that is warming herself in the sun near the door is a roe, or a young hart; and the hill on the other side of the synagogue is the mountain of Lebanon. The women and the girls who are washing and scrubbing and making everything clean for the Passover are the daughters of Jerusalem. Everything, everything is from the "Song of Songs." I walk about with my hands in my pockets. The nuts shake and rattle. Busie walks beside me, step by step. I cannot go slowly. I am carried along. I want to fly, to soar through the air like an eagle. I let myself go. Busie follows me. I jump from one log of wood to the other. Busie jumps after me. I am up; she is up. I am down; she is down. Who will tire first? "How long is this to last?" asks Busie. And I answer her in the words of the "Song of Songs" "'Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.' Ba! Ba! Ba! You are tired, and I am not." Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem was a leading Yiddish author and playwright from Ukraine. The musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.