Mottel the Shlemiel

What is a fool?" Funk & Wagnall, a dictionary I bought cheap, defines a fool as, "a person lacking understanding, judgment or common sense." Or, " one who has been duped or imposed upon.." However, I ask you, in whose opinion?

This is the story of Mottel, who, almost the entire population of Podzencheen called, not Mottel the Woodcutter but Mottel the Shlemiel, the Fool. Podzencheen was a large town in Polish Russia. That is, it was in Russia but its people spoke Polish and hated their Russian landlords. However, that is another story.

Mottel was a cousin of my late grandfather, Kitkind the Dairyman, may he rest in peace. Actually, Mottel as well as everyone in this story is also "the late." This is because this story takes place away back before the “Great War “of 1914 1918.

This defining of who is a slemiel and who is not has one major problem. Those persons who label someone else a shlemiel may be shlemiels themselves. At least someone who is labeled a thief is named so by a jury of people who are not thieves themselves. Except perhaps for their lawyers. Have you ever asked yourself? "Why are not lawyers, politicians and convicted felons allowed to do jury duty?" Everyone else is forced to do so. The reason is obvious to me.

Why was Mottel called Mottel the Shlemiel? Well, it started when he married his wife Roiseh, Yosel the bookbinder's daughter. You see, the townsfolk could not understand why a strikingly handsome man like Mottel would marry such a plain looking girl like Roiseh. She even had a wart on her chin. Mottel could have had any young woman in town, especially Marsha, Simcha the grain merchant's beautiful daughter. Simcha was the richest man in town and would have given a huge dowry. Marsha made no secret of her interest in Mottel but he politely ignored her and chose Roiseh instead.

What Mottel knew was that Roiseh had taught herself to read and write not only Hebrew and Yiddish but Polish as well. She was even teaching herself to read and speak English. Girls in Russia in those days did not go to school and were taught how to be good wives and mothers at home. Jewish girls rarely learned to read even enough Hebrew to follow the service in the Synagogue. Why, the townsfolk asked themselves, would a man pick a wife who knew more languages than himself and was possibly smarter?

So, Mottel was called a fool because he chose a plain girl with a small dowry and a wart on her chin who could read three languages. Instead of a pretty, and rich, girl who could not read even one. That Roiseh had a sweet disposition and was always cheerful did not matter to Mottel's peers. They would have chosen the beautiful rich Marsha, and many of the town's young bachelors lay awake nights dreaming of her big bosom and her bigger dowry.

Mottel was further considered to be strange for another reason. He did not stay behind after morning prayers to shmoose with the other men. He hurried home to spend that time, before going to work, with his wife. They could understand this behavior in a newlywed rushing home to his bride. However, long after the honeymoon Mottel still rushed home. Oddly preferring his Roiseh's company to that of his friends and cronies.

Now, normally calling someone a shlemiel over his choice in a mate would have slowly died off. But in this case it did not. Granted, everyone knew that many of the men who were calling Mottel a fool were jealous. They were the young men that were falling all over each other trying to get Marsha's attention and all that went with it.

However, shortly after Mottel and his bride moved into their new house, he began to act in another foolish manner. Technically, the house was not new. It had belonged to Haskell, the Blondeh, Simcha the Schneider's son, who had married Chana, Louis the Schuster's daughter. Haskell and Chana had packed themselves and their two young children, Lillie and Moishe, off to America. Before they left, they sold their house to Mottel.

The house was new to Mottel and to Roiseh who was thrilled to have any sort of home of her own. The most striking feature of this house was not the house itself. It was built just like all of the other houses in town. However, it came with a huge backyard and a large barn, not just a stable.

Right from the beginning, Mottel began to bring home from his woodcutting, odd bits of junk. This was mostly broken pieces of metal and old pots and pans. You see, dear reader, in the olden days in many Polish towns and villages there was no garbage collection, as we know of to day. Table scraps were fed to the goats or pigs. What they could not eat went into the compost pile and what could not be composted was burned in the wood stove in winter and a bonfire in summer. What could not be fed, composted or burned, usually metal of some kind, was piled in a corner of the yard and left to slowly rust away. These piles of junk were considered a nuisance, taking up useful space in the garden.

From time to time, when the pile grew too big, a horse and wagon were hired to take away the junk. It was then taken into the forest and dumped into a ravine. Mottel, however, would offer to take your junk away at a lower price. This was not the foolish part. That he did not dump the junk in the forest but into his own backyard and barn were considered to be the actions of someone not altogether there.

The townsfolk readily gave Mottel their old junk. But not without some snickering behind his back. "What will he do with all of that junk? He even plays with his junk, putting it into separate piles. How could a wife stand to have such a mess in her garden?"

Roiseh, on the other hand ignored the comments of her neighbors and even her friends. She continued as a loving wife giving Mottel three strong sons and a beautiful daughter over the next ten years. This gave rise to another strange behavior of Mottel. Soon after his first child was born, the neighbors noticed him actually playing with the infant and laughing as if it were not a chore and as if he was actually enjoying himself.

Remember, in those days the father of the household had very little contact with the children. Of course, there were the nightly hugs and kisses at bedtime but except for that they were left entirely in the care of their mother. The father went to Church or Synagogue, went to his job, then went to Church or Synagogue again and then went home.

A Jewish man’s first real interaction with his offspring was when he took his son, when he was deemed old enough, to sit proudly with him and the other men in the men’s section of the synagogue on the Sabbath. He noticed his daughters only when they began to prepare the evening meal by themselves and he suddenly realized they were no longer children but emerging headaches. Yes, headaches. He suddenly observed that they had little bumps under their blouses. This meant that he would soon have to scrape together a dowry, pay for a wedding and then watch his little angel go off with a young man to do the things that his own wife had done and was hopefully still doing with him.

Anyhow, now you understand that by actually playing with his children, Mottel was again the object of ridicule from his contemporaries. The yentas or gossips would say, “Grandfathers can play with children because with age one again becomes a child, but a father playing with children is not natural.”

Now, as if the townsfolk did not have enough reasons why they ridiculed Mottel, he gave them another. Roiseh, his wife, as I have already told you was a pretty smart woman. It soon got out that she was teaching herself to read and to write English, of all things. It was also yented (gossiped) that she was teaching her daughter English as well, the boys and Mottel being too busy with school or and work to bother. Since everyone dreamed of immigrating to America, learning English was not such a bad idea.

The trouble began when other wives, over their husband’s objections, begged Roiseh to teach them English as well. They even offered to pay. Seeing a way to earn some extra cash for the household, Roiseh agreed. The husbands asked Mottel to forbid his wife to teach their spouses. He wisely refused. It would have done no good anyhow. He knew his Roiseh. He also knew that they were jealous that their wives would know something that they did not. But more than their pride was hurt. This meant that if they ever did get to America their wives would be able to speak the language when they could not.

“What kind of a husband are you that you cannot forbid your wife to teach our wives?” They badgered.

“Ha”, replied Mottel. “What kind of husbands are you that you cannot keep your wives at home?”

Roiseh even offered to teach a special class, secretly, for just the men. They steadfastly refused to take lessons from a woman. That was a different time, a different world. There was one young man however, Shloimy, the son of Elyeh the pharmacist, a rabbinical student who asked to learn English and even studied with the women. Shloimy, it is rumored, went on to become the head Rabbi of the largest Synagogue in New York.

Through all of this turmoil over Roiseh’s school, the piles of junk continued to grow. However, Mottel had a large piece of land and there was always room for more. Years passed and the townsfolk, by and by, accepted the strange behavior of Mottel and even began to forget why he was called Mottel the Shlemiel.

However, in 1914 a terrible thing happened. War broke out across Europe and into Poland and Russia. The young Jewish men of Podzencheen were terrified that they would be forced into the army. This was not out of cowardice. Does not the good book say, "Thou shall not kill?" My uncle Israel told my mother that he and his fellow Jewish soldiers aimed their rifles over the heads of the enemy. They thus avoided the sin of killing not only a fellow human being but also possibly, G-d forbid, a relative similarly forced into the army on the other side.

Of course one could always refuse to put on the uniform. For this honesty, one was usually shot. So they put on the hated uniform and shot over their enemies’ heads. It was much easier to play the general's game. You did not see him up there shooting and getting shot at did you?

Whoops, back to our story of Mottel the Shlemiel. As soon as war was declared Mottel disappeared. He returned four days later so tired that he hired a wagon to take him home from the train, normally a short walk. This did not go unnoticed by the town yenta or gossips that already had crooked noses over his having slipped away from them four days earlier. They hardly gave him time to take his boots off and have a cup of tea before they were headed to his door to request deliveries of wood.

Normally even the town's nosiest busybody, Benta, Simcha the butcher’s wife, also known as Benta the Yenta, would have discreetly waited a few minutes. She led the charge. She had to. The laughter and singing from Mottel and Roiseh's house could be heard all over town. It had started as soon as Mottel had burst through his front door shouting, "Roiseleh, Roiseleh!" The noise was like a giant magnet. It drew Benta to it as fast as her fat little legs could carry her. Her cronies followed behind like a strange gaggle of geese, their skirts flapping in the wind, like feathered wings. And with the excited cackle of these birds at feeding time.

The door was ajar and what greeted the nosy neighbors was a sight they would retell forever. There was Mottel wildly dancing Roiseh around the kitchen shouting, "We're rich, we're rich!" and "Canada here we come!"

When Mottel finally fell exhausted into a chair, he explained where he had been for four days. He had traveled all the way to Warsaw. There he had visited all of the foundries that produced iron and other metals. Mottel knew that because of the war, the demand for scrap metal would greatly increase. It would eventually make it possible for him to sell his own piles of scrap metal to these foundries. If fortunate, he could sell it at a large profit. This he had done. He had arranged for a bank loan to hire a fleet of trucks to carry his piles of "junk" to the foundries in Warsaw. A price per kilogram had already been agreed upon.

After paying for the trucks, selling the scrap metal and also selling their house they would have enough money to go to Canada. There would be enough money left over to even buy a business once there. Did not Mottel's cousin Moishe have a grocery store in Toronto? Had he not been after Mottel for years to come to Canada and to go into partnership with him?

In two months Mottel and his family left for Sweden. From there they embarked on a steamship to Canada. Mottel was never again referred to as Mottel the Shlemiel.