3: Song and lyrics, Golem’s “Train Across Ukraine,” 2009.

3: Song and lyrics, Golem’s “Train Across Ukraine,” 2009.

Who is the Sholem Aleichem who shows up as a protagonist in “On Account of a Hat”?

“On Account of a Hat” opens with a frame story, narrated by Sholem Aleichem, who claims to have heard a story about one Sholem Shachnah—nicknamed Rattlebrain [drey zikh in Yiddish]—from a merchant from Rattlebrain’s hometown, Kasrilevka, who himself remains nameless. But why does the unnamed merchant from Kasrilevka tell the story about his hapless townsman Sholem Shachnah Rattlebrain to, of all people, Sholem Aleichem?

Sholem Aleichem—a pen name of the writer Sholem Rabinovitch—was widely known among a vast Yiddish-language readership across the Pale of Settlement, as well as in America and elsewhere where readers of Yiddish began to migrate from the Russian Empire in the 1880s. In particular, in a series of stories set on railroads, the author Sholem Rabinovitch who published under the pen name Sholem Aleichem invented the literary persona of Sholem Aleichem—and that Sholem Aleichem was a traveler, along with simple Jews, in the same cheap third-class seats of overcrowded trains crisscrossing the Pale of Settlement, conversing with the regular folk about their thoughts and troubles, and relaying their stories to the public.

Suggested Activity: Listen to the song “Train Across Ukraine,” by the New York-based Klezmer punk band Golem. The lyrics of the song include a first-person narration which is attributed to Sholem Aleichem, popularizing the figure of the writer-traveler to audiences in the twenty-first century. What are Sholem Aleichem’s motivations—as they are relayed in this song—for his way of traveling? What kinds of things does Sholem Aleichem, as imagined in this song, pay attention to as he travels across Ukraine? “On Account of a Hat” is one of many stories in which the writer Sholem Aleichem conveyed the tales of railroad passengers; if you’re feeling inspired by Golem’s upbeat tune, consider reading more of Sholem Aleichem’s railroad stories.

Source: Golem, “Train Across Ukraine,” 2009, track 1 on Citizen Boris, JDub Records, 2009, accessed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwR2xwxsRZc, February 5, 2021.

"Train Across Ukraine" lyrics by Annette Ezekiel, 2009.