The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son by Sholom Aleichem
"The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son" by Sholom Aleichem is a collection of stories narrated by a young boy named Mottel, who is navigating the challenges of life as an orphan in a traditional Jewish shtetl. The narrative begins with the impending death of Mottel's father, which paradoxically brings Mottel joy, as he relishes the newfound freedom from school and the kindness of those around him. As he explores his environment and engages in mischief, including stealing fruit and daydreaming of adventures, Mottel's character emerges as a symbol of youthful exuberance and a yearning for liberation from restrictive traditions.
Mottel's journey eventually leads his family to emigrate to America, perceived as a land of opportunity and freedom. The struggles they face during their migration, including overcoming his mother’s nostalgic attachment to their homeland, highlight the theme of escaping the past to embrace the future. Once in America, Mottel’s family experiences the challenges of immigrant life while also celebrating the new prospects available to them. The story emphasizes themes of movement, adaptation, and the pursuit of dreams, reflecting the transformative experience of many immigrants seeking a better life. Although left unfinished, the narrative captures Mottel's spirit of adventure and optimism in the face of change and uncertainty.
The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor's Son by Sholom Aleichem
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Mottel, Peyse dem Khazns, 1907-1916 (English translation, 1953)
Type of work: Short stories
The Work
The Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor’s Son is another collection of Sholom Aleichem’s stories. This time the stories are told by a young child, Mottel, whose father is dying. Despite this imminent death, or perhaps because of it, Mottel seems exuberantly happy. When his father dies and he becomes, according to the terminology of the shtetl, an orphan, he is even happier because it means everyone treats him nicely and he is excused from attending school. The critic Dan Miron suggests that the deeper reason for this happiness is that Mottel wishes to break free of the shtetl’s restrictions, which are represented by his father. However, in the opinion of critics Frances Butwin and Joseph Butwin, Mottel’s happiness is an Oedipal victory for the son over the father, avoiding the father-son conflict found in other stories by Aleichem.
Mottel spends as much time as he can outdoors, playing with a neighbor’s calf or going fishing. He also steals fruit from a garden, which lands him in trouble. He has a nightmarish experience staying with an old man, who first tries to read him a book by the medieval scholar Moses Maimonides and then threatens to eat him, perhaps suggesting that looking back into the past may be dangerous.
Mottel mainly looks forward and wants to have adventures. He is thus quick to join his brother Elye in various business ventures, such as manufacturing soft drinks, producing ink, and working as exterminators. Elye, who has a book suggesting all these projects, is sometimes compared to Menachem-Mendl; like Menachem-Mendl, all Elye’s projects come to nothing. Moreover, as Miron notes, all of Elye’s projects involve poison; it is as if such business ventures are poisonous, at least if they remain connected to the Old World. Only when the family escapes to the New World do their business ventures begin to succeed. America, it seems, is the Promised Land, where everything will finally work out.
The family experiences difficulty in getting to America, including a brush with thieves and murderers at the Russian border. Once out of Russia they encounter further problems, most notably getting medical clearance to enter the United States. Mottel’s mother, who is still attached to the shtetl they left behind, cries continually, and the others warn her that this will hurt her eyes so she will be unable to pass the medical examination. This turns out to be true; as Dan Miron says, this nostalgic attachment to the shtetl, manifested through tears, becomes a disease and an obstacle to emigrating. Thus, the family must find another way to free themselves from the Old World.
Meanwhile, Mottel develops a talent as a caricaturist and is always doodling, prompting his brother to slap him repeatedly, perhaps because drawing likenesses is a violation of Jewish tradition. Mottel is continually trying to break free of tradition and continually slapped down for it, but he remains cheerfully exuberant throughout, eagerly looking forward to the hustle and bustle he expects to find in New York.
Once the family arrives in America, Mottel celebrates it as a place for the underdog, while the family’s friend Pinye praises its freedom and democracy and the opportunity it provides to get ahead economically. Some of the family members are reluctant to seize this opportunity because it involves beginning at the bottom as manual laborers, and they see such work as demeaning to the family of a deceased cantor. Pinye, however, pushes them forward and they get jobs, ignoring the hierarchical rules of the Old World. They also immerse themselves in American culture, from chewing gum to film houses to learning English.
Left unfinished when Aleichem died, the Mottel stories end with the family moving on from factory work to operating a street stand to planning to open their own store. They are also planning to move; moving, indeed, is what Mottel loves about America. Throughout the book he is a force for movement, action, and adventure, and for breaking free of old ways.
Bibliography
Butwin, Joseph, and Frances Butwin. Sholom Aleichem. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
Denman, Hugh. “Shalom Aleichem.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2d ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, in association with Keter, 2007.
Frieden, Ken. Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Gittleman, Sol. Sholom Aleichem: A Non-Critical Introduction. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1974.
Halkin, Hillel. “Introduction.” In The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor’s Son, by Sholem Aleichem. Translated by Hillel Halkin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.
Halkin, Hillel. “Introduction.” In Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories, by Sholom Aleichem. Translated by Hillel Halkin. New York: Schocken Books, 1987.
Miron, Dan. The Image of the Shtetl, and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Imagination. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000.