l’chaim (to life)
scenes from Jewish daily life. Study taken from a folk song.
……..Rokhle a young girl, a beauty, is the daughter of respected
but decrepit Jewish rabbi Moishe. She won’t have a lack of suitors
when it’s her time to get married but meanwhile she is in love
wholeheartedly with Shlomo, a poor worker in Matteus’ house.
Young people dream about marriage, about being bonded for their
entire lives, but their hearts freeze when they think that the
will of the grey haired and long bearded Moishe can change their
fate.
Matteus being captured by Rokhle’s beauty asks his father to betrothe
him to this woman he loves. Indeed, Fate delivers a blow to the
beloved ones. Exiting a synaogue, Matteus’ father has a serious
and intense conversation with Rokhle’s father, so the two grey
heads decide the destiny of their children.
Matteus, full of passion, hastens the wedding and unhappy Rokhele
hardly has time to tell Shlomo about her father’s decision. This
is the last time they will meet. Shlomo tries to convince the
young woman to run away with him, but how can she dare to go against
her father’s will and to attract people’s scorn and God’s wrath?
The wedding happens with all ceremony nd special Judaistic religious
tradition. And Matteus brings Rokhle to his house as his wife
and housekeeper. Days pass, months fly by and it seems that everything
is forgotten that was once so painful hard to bear. Rokhele has
a child and the young mother dedicates all her love and care to
her child. Shlomo vanished and now he works somewhere in a different
shtetl. Matteus is happy. Full of self respect and pride, he comes
home every evening where everything is clean and comfortable,
where he has a beautiful wife and a pretty child.
And Fate again changes the flow of events. Shlomo can’t bear being
separated. All this time he has been watching Rukhle and witnessing
that neither her marriage not her well being nor her motherood
has brought her happiness. Again he asks her to run away with
him, to acept true love and happiness. Let her go with Shlomo,
and take her child, that he might become a second father.
As a young girl she wouldn’t dare, but as a woman, she does. Matteus
woke up and suddenly realised that his house is empty and a short
note told him why. Shlomo loves Rokhele and she left with him
and Matteus who loved her not less, was left alone, all on his
own, after a year of cloudless happiness which he never thought
of losing. Matteus couln’t stand this blow and went astray. His
business went to ashes. More and more often a bottle of vodka
appears on his table. And after some time, no-one would have recognised
repectful and calm Matteus in this pitiful and ragged drunk.
The song gives an epilogue to this drama.
Five yers passed. Matteus sank lower and lower. And one day to
his hovel where at a broken table and on a pile of rags used as
a bed, Matteus spent his days, a beautiful well dressed woman
with a wondeful child arrived. What do you want, madam, obsequiously
bowed Matteus. Will you be so kind as to give some water to the
girl?
So while Matteus was fussing about getting water and taking generous
alms a note was left on the table. Whar was in it? Why when the
mother and the child left, Matteus having found and read this
note, grabbed his head and brst into tears and finally collapsed
on the floor? Why? He learned that right now the mother and the
child were those that he loved and called wife and child. The
paid her debt to her child and husband by showing them to each
other.
Cine-fono Magazine (Kiev) 1910 #23
brief synopsis of some of the films
articles about Sara's Grief from Sine-fono 1913
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