Customer Reviews

Adventures of Mottel: The Cantor's Son

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Thanks to Fiddler on the Roof, Sholom Aleichem is known predominantly for creating Tevye the Milkman. But to me, Sholom Aleichem's most enduring character is probably Mottel.

People like to say that Mottel is an ordinary boy with boundless optimism. And, in many ways, they're right. For a boy who sees and understands so much petty and needless cruelty, Mottel is indeed an optimist.

But what strikes me most about Mottel is how accurately he sees his world (warts and all) and how he rebels against its injustices. For Mottel draws. And he draws everything. There is a greenhorn hanging out by the family stand, making a nuisance of himself? Mottel draws him. Brocha of the big feet and bigger mouth makes Mottel's life a misery? Mottel draws her (or rather her giant foot).

And, when Mottel shows his pictures to the people around him, he makes them laugh--and even sometimes to be nicer to each other. (Well, OK--not everyone laughs. The subjects of Mottel's paintings don't usually laugh and Mottel's brother Eli does not laugh. The former--you can guess why; the latter because he does not approve of drawing.)

And so, with his endless pictures (for no matter how often Eli tries to beat the "figures" out of Mottel, Mottel continues to draw them) Mottel resists the endless petty cruelties of big world. And it is this courage that so endears Mottel to me. I want to be more like him--to be able to see the pettiness and the squalor and the misery and, instead of getting needlessly angry to do something about it. And have the "something" even work sometimes.

So yes, this is a hilarious story about an ordinary boy with boundless optimism whose mischief is often a little ray of sunshine in a dark world. But it is also a story about a boy who rebels against needless cruelties. Sometimes successfully.

I highly recommend this book.

This book (one of three) was purchased as part of a study prior to a production of 'A Fiddler on the Roof'. I proved invaluable by providing background to the way of life and conditions during the period of the musical play.

A terrific collection of short stories by the Yiddish Mark Twain. It's great to see his stuff still in print.

Adventures of Mottel

By Sholom Aleichem

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

The Adventures of Mottel was originally written in Yiddish. Knowing nothing of Yiddish the translation seems fine to me. The flavor of the strong Jewish ethnicity comes through adequately.

Mottell, like Huck Finn, introduces himself to the reader on page one and is the narrator of the stories through the book. The technique works well. Mottel is childlike and funny. He tells the stories with wit, wisdom and often with humorous naiveté.

Mottel tell his story as it is happening. He is not a good writer, he tells us, but just a boy. The style is very reminiscent of Huck once again but the tale has no resemblance to anything written by Mark Twain.

It is a Jewish story of pogroms, displacement and prejudice on the underside. On the upside it is Mottel and his descriptions of his strange family and relatives and their trials and tribulations - characterization resembling "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or "My Name is Aram."

It is a story of poverty and in that respect similar to all such stories. It is ethnic and told in dialect. It begins in Russia and ends in America. Mottel's adventure takes us from Russia, across the frontier, around Europe then to England and finally America but the book is hardly a travelogue. It is the memoir of little Mottel, the cantor's son, via the imagination of Sholom Aleichem.

Mottel's descriptions and explanations of his brother Eli's business adventures early on in the book are hilarious; not so funny are his tales of the family's imprisonment on Ellis Island and the people they meet there.

Beneath all the humor the unpleasantness of poverty and the unique Diaspora of the Jewish people saturate the pages.

I have read three groups of stories by Sholom Aleichem and by far I like "Tevye the Dairyman" best. I consider it in the ten star category. Mottel and the Railroad Stories are certainly good enough to be in the five star category. I have enjoyed reading them all.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."

A warm tale of the endurance of the human spirit