Tevye the Dairyman Wisdom and Knowledge Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Story Number.Paragraph
Quote #1
I beg you, Pani Sholem Aleichem, not to be upset with me, as I am an ordinary man and you certainly know more than I do—who can question that? After all, living one's whole life in a little village, one is ignorant. Who has time to look into a holy book or to learn a verse of the Bible or Rashi? Luckily when summer comes around, the Yehupetz rich folk take off to their dachas in Boiberik, and every now and then I can get together with an educated person to hear some wisdom. Believe me when I tell you how well I remember that day when you sat with me in the woods listening to my foolish tales. That meant more to me than anything in the world! (1.2)
Tevye has a good racket going on here, seeming to flatter the dude who's going to ostensibly write about him while actually praising himself. For example, there is a deft little maneuver when Tevye says that small-time village shmoes really have no time "to look into a holy book"… which is really a huge self-pat on the back. You know who's just bursting with Bible references? Everyone's favorite dairyman.
Quote #2
Many are the thoughts in a man's heart—isn't that what it says in holy Torah? I don't need to interpret that verse for you, Reb Sholem Aleichem. But in Ashkenaz, or plain Yiddish, it means: "The best horse needs a whip, the smartest person—advice." […] Only when God showed his favor to Tevye, suddenly made me rich so I could finally make something of myself, put away a few rubles, only then did the world take notice […] Many good friends suddenly began to show up, as the verse says: All are beloved, all are elect—when God grants a spoonful, people offer a shovelful. Every person came with his own advice. (3.1-2)
You have to love Tevye's little explanations for the Torah verses he quotes. What makes it extra funny is that he seems to take everything in the Torah as somehow ironic or sarcastic. Think about it—in what universe does the pretty straightforward "All are beloved, all are elect" mean that people are out to shove their unsolicited advice down everyone else's throat?
Quote #3
And in the next three hours he gave me a song and dance about how he had made from one ruble three and from three ten. "First of all," he said, "you take a hundred, and you tell them to buy ten shares" or whatever he called them. "You wait a few days till they go up. You send a telegram and tell them to sell, and for that money you buy twice as many. Then you start all over again and again send off a telegram, until finally from the hundred, you have two; from the two, four; and from the four, eight; from the eight, sixteen—wonder of wonders!" (3.36)
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen—this must be the exact speech that Ponzi schemers always give their investors to explain just how profits would always go up instead of ever going down. Love it.
Quote #4
I avoid long discussions with this priest because right away we get into the whole business of your God and our God. I cut him off with a proverb and tell him we have a fitting commentary. Then he cuts me off and says he knows the commentaries as well as I do and perhaps better, and then he begins to recite from memory from our Bible. […] I get very angry and pour out whatever comes out of my mouth. Do you think that bothers him? Not at all. He looks at me and laughs […] At that time I didn't understand that little smile, but now I know what it meant. (6.5)
As always, Tevye turns the global, big-picture into the local, small-picture, just like in his debates with God, where he ascribes some petty and small-time motivations to a deity. Here, although the priest might be doing a turn-the-other-cheek thing or whatever, Tevye assumes that he's actually laughing at the Chava-Chvedka situation.
Quote #5
"Mazel tov! We have here a new philosopher, fresh from the oven!" I said. "As if I didn't have enough enlightened daughters, now Tevye's wife has also started to spread her wings and fly!" (6.38)
Wow, dude, that's way harsh. But also, there's a contradiction in the way Tevye is super-proud of his daughters' education—in almost every story he tells, the girls are able to out-argue him—and his sexist commentary about their intellectuality. Which is the real Tevye?
Quote #6
"Don't compare me to Hodl," Beilke said. "Hodl lived at a time when the whole world was in chaos, about to turn upside down, and people were worrying about that and forgetting about themselves. But now," she said, "that the world is calm again, everyone is worried about himself, and they've forgotten about the world." (8.52)
Right, so first of all, we kind of need to throw away our hindsight knowledge that this was written in 1909, so just 8 short years later… KABOOM! Anyway. Why does Beilke reject Hodl's way of choosing a husband, as well as her idealism/commitment to a cause? What does she claim to know that Hodl didn't?
Quote #7
Why interfere when it's something between children? A lot of good it did me with my older daughters when I gave them advice about their matches! I talked and I talked, I advised and advised, poured out the whole Torah—and who ended up the fool? Tevye! (8.67)
Awesome. So Tevye's two strategies for dealing with his daughters' marriages are: meddle, meddle, meddle; or totally ignore it. No in-betweens for this guy.
Quote #8
To tell the truth, my wife Golde, God rest her soul, was the wisest one of all, if only because she saw what was going on around her, said goodbye to this foolish world, and left it. Tell me yourself—rather than suffering because of daughters, as Tevye has, is it not a thousand times better to lie in the ground and bake bagels? How did our rabbis say: Regardless of thy will thou livest—man does not take his fate into his own hands, and if he does he gets his knuckles rapped. (9.11)
What a weird bit here. Even though the ending yet again reinforces Tevye's main point about how God is in constant control of everything so just get your hands off the wheel already, the first part about Golde reveals that she was wise enough to actually grab some control back from God and His plans. Sure, it was by dying and all, but still, the language totes makes it sound like it was her own decision to forget the worldly nonsense around her.
Quote #9
What do you say, Pani Sholem Aleichem? You're a Jew yourself who writes books and gives advice to everybody. Tell me, what should Tevye have done? Should he have embraced [Chava] as one of his own, hugged and kissed her, as we say on Yom Kippur at Kol Nidrei, I have pardoned according to Thy word—come back to me, you are my child? Or should I have turned my back on her, as I did before, and told her, Lech l'cho—get thee gone, go back to where you came from? No, imagine that you are in Tevye's place, and tell me honestly, as a true and good friend, what you would have done. And if you cannot tell me right away, I will give you time to think it over. (9.77)
This might be the only time where Tevye actually quotes conflicting Biblical verses to cover both sides of a particular argument. Maybe this is just a way to wink at the idea that Sholem Aleichem is actually the writer who is puzzling out how to conclude the plot of this work—so it really is up to him to imagine himself in Tevye's place, making the decision.
Quote #10
No matter how we keep from boasting about it, we must admit that we Jews are, after all, the best and the smartest people. As the Prophet says: Who can be compared to Israel? How can a goy compare himself to a Jew? A goy is a goy, and a Jew is a Jew, as you yourself say in your writings. You have to be born a Jew, blessed is the Jew. How lucky I was to be born a Jew and know the taste of exile and of always wandering, never sleeping where we spent the day. (10.25)
A pretty great insight here that the kind of cultural exceptionalism that is part of Jewish tradition (you know, all that stuff about how Jews are Jews and could never be like or become like Gentile) often goes hand in hand with exclusion (exile and being seen as not belonging). This is pretty much the problem of the Jewish identity in the early twentieth century, and was used to justify most of the atrocities committed again Jews.