The Grandmother and Her Granddaughter
Abraham Goldfaden
1893
Second Act
A big room divided in two by screens. One half represents a bedroom where Odele reclines sadly on a sofa. The other half represents Bontsye’s room: on a table lie a taytsh-khumesh [the Tsene-rene1], a pair of glasses, a tin of tobacco, and a bunch of thread with which the cemetery has been measured, used to make wicks for memorial candles [kneytlekh leygn, a custom among pious women in Eastern Europe in which one would measure the cemetery where one’s loved ones were buried with a length of string from which candles would be made for Yom Kippur].
Odele [To herself]:
It is bad, bad for me! Ever since Grandmother brought her dear Tuvye Shmaye into the house, it has gotten even worse for me. Two old fools have taken over my life. They are cruel, despotic, and egoistic and care only for themselves. No one else, especially a young person, means anything to them. They do not want to understand me. Grandmother wants to give me away to secure her place in heaven and Tuvye Shmaye wants his marriage-broker fees and a glass of brandy. What can I do? My only remaining hope is my beloved Ignatz, my dearly beloved Ignatz. If he does not rescue me from this hell, my life is worthless. But I cannot believe that of him. I know that he loves me very, very much and will use every means so that I will be and remain his. I have just received a letter from him. Let me see what he writes to me. [She takes the letter from the table and opens it. At that moment Bontsye enters from the other side with a young woman.]
Wait awhile, my good woman, we still have time. Let’s say veyiten lekho2 and after that I will make the wicks for you. Ay, ay, ay, when it’s the eve of Yom Kippur I get no rest from these women. They come running only to Bontsye for their wicks. They know of nobody else. Yes, yes, very proper, but you don’t dance until you’ve eaten—Bontsye dare not miss her veyiten lekho. [She kisses her Tsene-rene and opens it. Meanwhile the young woman exits.]
Odele [On one side of the room, reads the letter, written in highly Germanized Yiddish]:
“My Odele who is so dear to me.” [To herself] Yes, I who am so dear to you!
Bontsye [At the other end of the room, reads]:
“Ve nokhosh hoyo orum. And the snake was wiser than all the trees of the Garden—so she understood that she was naked and sewed together fig-leaves, and she gave her husband to eat also from the Tree of Knowledge.” [She starts to cough.]
Odele [Continues to read the letter]:
“I hope that you will no longer torment my heart, so deeply wounded by the arrows of your love!” [To herself] Deeply wounded heart!
Bontsye [Continues to read from her book]:
“. . . inside with pitch and outside with tar, and the door of the Ark shalt thou make on the side. Noah planted a vineyard in the Cave of the Patriarchs, in the heat of the day, when God had withdrawn the sun from its cover.”
Notes
R. Yaakov Ashkenazi’s late 16th- or early 17th-century Yiddish adaptation of the Pentateuch relating the biblical narrative combined with later narrative elaborations. The title means “Go forth and see.” Republished hundreds of times over the past four centuries, it was read very widely in traditional East European Jewish society and generally imagined to be a text for women particularly.
[“And he will give thee,” a collection of biblical blessings said after the Sabbath has ended.—Trans.]
Credits
Avraham Goldfadn, Di bobe mitn eynikl [The Grandmother and Her Granddaughter] (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1893), pp. 23–26.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.
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