The Jackpot

The Jackpot by Sholem Aleichem is a musical comedy about the manners of the newly rich and the adventure of a tailor who strikes it lucky overnight. Like most of Sholem Aleichem's plays, it shows the Jewish world of tailors and small craftsmen, forever chasing a bargain and never quite acquiring anything beyond the treasure of honesty and human dignity. Reading him, or hearing him from the stage, you wonder how the author could still laugh, having seen so much bitterness, humiliation and defeat. The answer is simple. He drew the strength to laugh from his own characters: the world he painted found the strength to exist, to survive and to rise above its condition in its ability to laugh at its troubles. The wretched tailor of The Jackpot faces poverty laughing; he laughs at his creditors, laughs at himself when he finds himself rich overnight, and laughs when he loses it all. Sholem Aleichem rarely laughs with sarcasm; more often his irony carries great tenderness and has the air of a parental scolding. What we read in his message is a deep humanism, a profound love for his fellow human beings.