I read this and as a Christian I see the same. Tradition isn’t enough, nor is living in the land or reading Torah. Our kids need to be grounded in the knowledge of Gd, of truth and wisdom. Of justice and morality and it’s the hardest thing to teach if we’re busy with other “important” stuff like work, housekeeping and making money.
It’s not about religious schools either. Kids need a grounding in love and an authentic knowledge of Gd and His-story
“If Tevya had come to Palestine his kids would still be Jewish.” Not necessarily. Plenty of Jews have come and leave because they didn’t know what being a Jew means and being Israeli just wasn’t enough. Or they stay , but their children don’t know about being a Jew. Coming to Israel should include learning about being a Jew or it won’t stick.
You are correct in that plenty of Jews have left Israel but not because they were forced out or left to assimilate. They left because this can be a hard place to live both physically and emotionally. But notice how they came running back when they were needed after October 7th.
As for not knowing what it means to be Jewish, there you are wrong. Almost every Jew who lives here considers themselves to be part of Am Yisrael…the Jewish people. They may not be religious. They may not even be Jewish by halachic (religious ) standards but they know they are part of Am Yisrael living in Medinat Yisrael (the land of Israel) with a lifestyle that is uniquely Jewish even when not religious.
I’m not judging anyone. I’m just pointing out that one usually remains strongly connected to Israel and the Jewish people even when they do leave for whatever reason.
Sounds good. It’s wrong but it sounds good. Not that we shouldn’t be giving our kids a strong Jewish education full of purpose and meaning. Of course we should. But it’s not enough.
The story of Tevya is the story of Jews in exile. Like a three legged stool Judaism is founded on three pillars, Am Yisrael (the Jews as a nation), Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) and Torat Yisrael (Jewish religious practice). When in exile all you have is the religious leg to stand on. Even when we educate our children it’s not enough. Just ask any parent who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate their kids in the day school system only to have them assimilate into American culture leaving their Judaism behind. Even if they still identify as being Jewish the chance are that their children will not.
The only answer is Aliyah. Here in Israel we live as a Jewish people in our own land 24 by 7.
If Tevya had come to Palestine his kids would still be Jewish. If the people of Anatevka had come to Palestine instead of going to America their kids would still be Jewish. It may not be perfect but if you want your kids to stay Jewish it’s the only answer.
What kind of assimilation? They lived in shtetl totally separate from the Ukranians. No one assimilated until Chava decided to marry Fyedka the Ukranian. Tevye had no ability to stop it. He cut her off from the family.
No. The end of the play shows Tevye smiling and gesturing for the Fiddler to join them meaning Jewish tradition and life is not tied to any place but to the people.
I disagree 100 percent with your take. Tevye and the Jewish people in the awful Russian Empire survive BY their tradition. That is the point of the story. Tevye is, despite the traipings of tradition, a free thinker. He maintains a personal relationship with God who he speaks to. He has his own interpretations of scripture. Despite his shock, he allows his oldest daughter to marry for love, recognizing that this tradition is changing. He like Perchik because Perchik is an educated man with fire and passion despite his rejection of tradition. What does Tevye know about Marxism or what is to come from Perchik's work? He doesn't want his daughter to marry him. But ultimately he gives his blessing because he recognizes he cannot stop it. The scene where he says goodbye (likely forever) to Hodel is heartbreaking. But he does it because he is in reality a man able to accept things he cannot change. He does not accept that his beloved Chava is marrying a gentile. He cuts her off entirely saying she is dead to them. For once his dominating wife Golde is reduced to a quivering mess and it is Tevye that puts his foot down. This is too far. What is he supposed to do when the constable informs him of the coming pogrom? Fight back? Leave? When he has no further option when they are ordered out of Anatevke he tells the constable "Get off my land. This is still my land." Ultimately he leaves with his head held high and at the last moment makes a gesture to his "dead" daughter muttering "go in peace." At the last minute he spies the Fiddler fiddling behind him, smiles and gestures for him to follow. He will bring the Jewish tradition with him wherever he goes as Jews did for two thousand years. Tevye is a great character, a great man and a great Jew.
I am a musical theatre enthusiast. I've performed in countless musicals (all amateur), including 4 (count 'em!) FOUR productions of "Fiddler," including one last summer (now age 59). So, it is very near and dear to my heart, and I'd do a hundred more, if given the opportunity. I think "Fiddler" is being performed by many companies these days, mainly due to the events in Israel and the antisemitism around the world. It definitely is a reminder of our past and our present.
I would suggest also looking at this through a gendered lens. Tevye loved his five daughters, but saw them mostly as mouths to feed until he could marry them off, preferably to someone like Lazare Wolf, who had the wherewithal to support and take care of them (though in real life, Golda would have been at least a partial breadwinner, as would the daughters eventually). And their lack of a deep Jewish education would have had everything to do with their being female--at a time when conventional wisdom was that a girl could learn all she needed to know about being Jewish at home by osmosis, which proved not to be the case when young Jewish women in this world became attracted to other possibilities. And this was what Sorah Schenirer's Bais Yaakov movement was originally about. Bottom line, a thorough Jewish education must include Jews of all genders.
Tevye was a free thinker. He wanted Perchik to teach his daughters. Daughters were not taught then. That is how it was. He gave in when Tzeitel begged him not to make her marry Lazar Wolf. He loved her. He cared for her. He was worried that she would starve with the poor tailor.
Regarding nostalgia--an older relative of mine who was alive when the show first opened and saw it then, said "It was a nice play, but it wasn't my shtetl."
Seeing Tevya on screen loudly singing that he does what he does because of "Tradition" was profoundly disquieting. Tradition is performance behaviour. We do something because others have done it before us not because it has any intrinsic meaning or value. This hollowness of Jewish tradition echoes the Christian belief that Judaism is an outdated religion, hidebound, following empty, meaningless laws. We Jews seem to have drunk deeply the grape Kool-Aid they gave us.
"Is Judaism something I am, or just something my parents were?"
How many times when the media and Wikipedia can't escape having to acknowledge that they are describing a Jew, they use terms like "of Jewish descent," "of Jewish heritage," or "his/her parents were Jewish," as if s/he had escaped that disgraceful taint.
The author's question carries the grief that we are witnessing assimilation doing its dirty work of slowly, inexorably erasing our people.
Of course we don’t know…they are fictional characters…-but based on the statistics they probably would not be. Leaving that aside, the key point of my response is that the best way to achieve Jewish continuity is to live in Israel. Everything else, including Jewish education, is a crap shoot.
I was 6 or 7 years old, certainly not over 10 years old, when I saw the movie Fiddler on the Roof. I was confused, deeply moved, and fell in love with klesmer music, I have not met or heard any musical that speaks, at least not the ones I have listened to and seen, like Fiddler on the Roof.. I didn't quite understand everything at that time, especially speaking to the invisible, but awareness hit me like a bolt from the blue, having found the יהוה of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Sorry for writing the name).
After reading about Jewish history, it's hard to imagine any other musical to better describe the identity of the people. Not for me at least.
Even though it's been ~60 years since I saw the movie (musical), those feelings still rise, and with the awareness of history, sadness for all the persecution the Jewish people experienced. Even today, pagans have not understood the extent of God's love and concern for property.
When I read the Holy Scriptures, I see in everything how God's love is above you despite all your worries, fears, and doubts. The Torah is the book of life, Like the ABC (alef beyt Gimmel) of life. Since God does not interfere in the actions of humanity, we ourselves must learn to live righteously. However, not everyone can do it.
The problem is the Jewish people have ignored God-they have replaced The Torah with their Talmudand rabbis. Return to YHWH. Read yadayah.com - this is urgent.
Apropos of nothing: My uncle was for a time an actor. His peak exposure was as the main villain on Kojak in one episode. His girlfriend of many years was Rosalind Harris who played Tzeitel in the movie. Nice lady.
I've been a reform Jew for 68 years in America-land of the Free. I grew up in a kosher Conservative house, and my Grandfather and GrandMother were Orthodox Jews from eastern Europe. I think the Jewish community has been so devastated by their Christian and Muslim neighbors over the last 2,000 years, that Jews are UNABLE TO HAVE NORMAL RELATIONSHIPS AND NORMAL LIVES. Our history of Pogroms and Hatred and Holocaust is too much to handle-so we just go through life like ZOMBIES-FEARING the next POGROM.
I'm very much the opposite. My grandfather was at one time president of his Reform Temple, making his father judge him to be an extremist. I was initially given no Jewish education at all, until my parents realized that I didn't even know I was Jewish. So they joined the local Reform Temple and signed me up for Hebrew school.
In my twenties, I started learning about Judaism from books, and a couple of decades later, I became Orthodox, understanding how much there was to learn. Two of my boys now live in Israel, having married frum girls whose families had made aliyah a few years earlier.
I am convinced that the liberal branches of Judaism are now dead ends. I have six grandkids; so far, none of my siblings have any, and two of my nieces have intermarried. None of us fear pograms, but at least I expect eventually to wind up in Israel.
I read this and as a Christian I see the same. Tradition isn’t enough, nor is living in the land or reading Torah. Our kids need to be grounded in the knowledge of Gd, of truth and wisdom. Of justice and morality and it’s the hardest thing to teach if we’re busy with other “important” stuff like work, housekeeping and making money.
It’s not about religious schools either. Kids need a grounding in love and an authentic knowledge of Gd and His-story
“If Tevya had come to Palestine his kids would still be Jewish.” Not necessarily. Plenty of Jews have come and leave because they didn’t know what being a Jew means and being Israeli just wasn’t enough. Or they stay , but their children don’t know about being a Jew. Coming to Israel should include learning about being a Jew or it won’t stick.
You are correct in that plenty of Jews have left Israel but not because they were forced out or left to assimilate. They left because this can be a hard place to live both physically and emotionally. But notice how they came running back when they were needed after October 7th.
As for not knowing what it means to be Jewish, there you are wrong. Almost every Jew who lives here considers themselves to be part of Am Yisrael…the Jewish people. They may not be religious. They may not even be Jewish by halachic (religious ) standards but they know they are part of Am Yisrael living in Medinat Yisrael (the land of Israel) with a lifestyle that is uniquely Jewish even when not religious.
I totally agree with most of your points. I’ve lived here for 40 years, and you are quite right.
I still say that the difficulty is taken into account when one is committed to a Jewish life.Sometimes that mitigates the difficulties.
Still, I don’t judge anyone who leaves for any reason.
I’m not judging anyone. I’m just pointing out that one usually remains strongly connected to Israel and the Jewish people even when they do leave for whatever reason.
Definitely. And you are so right about how everyone came back on October 7th. It was amazing.
Sounds good. It’s wrong but it sounds good. Not that we shouldn’t be giving our kids a strong Jewish education full of purpose and meaning. Of course we should. But it’s not enough.
The story of Tevya is the story of Jews in exile. Like a three legged stool Judaism is founded on three pillars, Am Yisrael (the Jews as a nation), Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) and Torat Yisrael (Jewish religious practice). When in exile all you have is the religious leg to stand on. Even when we educate our children it’s not enough. Just ask any parent who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate their kids in the day school system only to have them assimilate into American culture leaving their Judaism behind. Even if they still identify as being Jewish the chance are that their children will not.
The only answer is Aliyah. Here in Israel we live as a Jewish people in our own land 24 by 7.
If Tevya had come to Palestine his kids would still be Jewish. If the people of Anatevka had come to Palestine instead of going to America their kids would still be Jewish. It may not be perfect but if you want your kids to stay Jewish it’s the only answer.
Who says his descendants aren't still Jewish? Aside from the daughter who married aUkranian of course.
An important wake up call. Thank you 🙏🏼
This essay is an excellent description of what “Tradition” means as opposed to the assimilation portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof
What kind of assimilation? They lived in shtetl totally separate from the Ukranians. No one assimilated until Chava decided to marry Fyedka the Ukranian. Tevye had no ability to stop it. He cut her off from the family.
The end of the play depicts the end of the shetl as a vestige of the past
No. The end of the play shows Tevye smiling and gesturing for the Fiddler to join them meaning Jewish tradition and life is not tied to any place but to the people.
I disagree 100 percent with your take. Tevye and the Jewish people in the awful Russian Empire survive BY their tradition. That is the point of the story. Tevye is, despite the traipings of tradition, a free thinker. He maintains a personal relationship with God who he speaks to. He has his own interpretations of scripture. Despite his shock, he allows his oldest daughter to marry for love, recognizing that this tradition is changing. He like Perchik because Perchik is an educated man with fire and passion despite his rejection of tradition. What does Tevye know about Marxism or what is to come from Perchik's work? He doesn't want his daughter to marry him. But ultimately he gives his blessing because he recognizes he cannot stop it. The scene where he says goodbye (likely forever) to Hodel is heartbreaking. But he does it because he is in reality a man able to accept things he cannot change. He does not accept that his beloved Chava is marrying a gentile. He cuts her off entirely saying she is dead to them. For once his dominating wife Golde is reduced to a quivering mess and it is Tevye that puts his foot down. This is too far. What is he supposed to do when the constable informs him of the coming pogrom? Fight back? Leave? When he has no further option when they are ordered out of Anatevke he tells the constable "Get off my land. This is still my land." Ultimately he leaves with his head held high and at the last moment makes a gesture to his "dead" daughter muttering "go in peace." At the last minute he spies the Fiddler fiddling behind him, smiles and gestures for him to follow. He will bring the Jewish tradition with him wherever he goes as Jews did for two thousand years. Tevye is a great character, a great man and a great Jew.
I am a musical theatre enthusiast. I've performed in countless musicals (all amateur), including 4 (count 'em!) FOUR productions of "Fiddler," including one last summer (now age 59). So, it is very near and dear to my heart, and I'd do a hundred more, if given the opportunity. I think "Fiddler" is being performed by many companies these days, mainly due to the events in Israel and the antisemitism around the world. It definitely is a reminder of our past and our present.
I would suggest also looking at this through a gendered lens. Tevye loved his five daughters, but saw them mostly as mouths to feed until he could marry them off, preferably to someone like Lazare Wolf, who had the wherewithal to support and take care of them (though in real life, Golda would have been at least a partial breadwinner, as would the daughters eventually). And their lack of a deep Jewish education would have had everything to do with their being female--at a time when conventional wisdom was that a girl could learn all she needed to know about being Jewish at home by osmosis, which proved not to be the case when young Jewish women in this world became attracted to other possibilities. And this was what Sorah Schenirer's Bais Yaakov movement was originally about. Bottom line, a thorough Jewish education must include Jews of all genders.
Tevye was a free thinker. He wanted Perchik to teach his daughters. Daughters were not taught then. That is how it was. He gave in when Tzeitel begged him not to make her marry Lazar Wolf. He loved her. He cared for her. He was worried that she would starve with the poor tailor.
Regarding nostalgia--an older relative of mine who was alive when the show first opened and saw it then, said "It was a nice play, but it wasn't my shtetl."
The story takes place in 1905 in a shtetl in Ukraine. What is the point of comparing it to current Orthodx families?
SPOT ON!!!!
Seeing Tevya on screen loudly singing that he does what he does because of "Tradition" was profoundly disquieting. Tradition is performance behaviour. We do something because others have done it before us not because it has any intrinsic meaning or value. This hollowness of Jewish tradition echoes the Christian belief that Judaism is an outdated religion, hidebound, following empty, meaningless laws. We Jews seem to have drunk deeply the grape Kool-Aid they gave us.
"Is Judaism something I am, or just something my parents were?"
How many times when the media and Wikipedia can't escape having to acknowledge that they are describing a Jew, they use terms like "of Jewish descent," "of Jewish heritage," or "his/her parents were Jewish," as if s/he had escaped that disgraceful taint.
The author's question carries the grief that we are witnessing assimilation doing its dirty work of slowly, inexorably erasing our people.
Thanks for the comment.
Of course we don’t know…they are fictional characters…-but based on the statistics they probably would not be. Leaving that aside, the key point of my response is that the best way to achieve Jewish continuity is to live in Israel. Everything else, including Jewish education, is a crap shoot.
I was 6 or 7 years old, certainly not over 10 years old, when I saw the movie Fiddler on the Roof. I was confused, deeply moved, and fell in love with klesmer music, I have not met or heard any musical that speaks, at least not the ones I have listened to and seen, like Fiddler on the Roof.. I didn't quite understand everything at that time, especially speaking to the invisible, but awareness hit me like a bolt from the blue, having found the יהוה of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Sorry for writing the name).
After reading about Jewish history, it's hard to imagine any other musical to better describe the identity of the people. Not for me at least.
Even though it's been ~60 years since I saw the movie (musical), those feelings still rise, and with the awareness of history, sadness for all the persecution the Jewish people experienced. Even today, pagans have not understood the extent of God's love and concern for property.
When I read the Holy Scriptures, I see in everything how God's love is above you despite all your worries, fears, and doubts. The Torah is the book of life, Like the ABC (alef beyt Gimmel) of life. Since God does not interfere in the actions of humanity, we ourselves must learn to live righteously. However, not everyone can do it.
I agree 100%
The problem is the Jewish people have ignored God-they have replaced The Torah with their Talmudand rabbis. Return to YHWH. Read yadayah.com - this is urgent.
Apropos of nothing: My uncle was for a time an actor. His peak exposure was as the main villain on Kojak in one episode. His girlfriend of many years was Rosalind Harris who played Tzeitel in the movie. Nice lady.
Great points about the characters of Fiddler and their arcs. We do our best as parents and hope our adult children will celebrate their Jewish souls.
I've been a reform Jew for 68 years in America-land of the Free. I grew up in a kosher Conservative house, and my Grandfather and GrandMother were Orthodox Jews from eastern Europe. I think the Jewish community has been so devastated by their Christian and Muslim neighbors over the last 2,000 years, that Jews are UNABLE TO HAVE NORMAL RELATIONSHIPS AND NORMAL LIVES. Our history of Pogroms and Hatred and Holocaust is too much to handle-so we just go through life like ZOMBIES-FEARING the next POGROM.
I'm very much the opposite. My grandfather was at one time president of his Reform Temple, making his father judge him to be an extremist. I was initially given no Jewish education at all, until my parents realized that I didn't even know I was Jewish. So they joined the local Reform Temple and signed me up for Hebrew school.
In my twenties, I started learning about Judaism from books, and a couple of decades later, I became Orthodox, understanding how much there was to learn. Two of my boys now live in Israel, having married frum girls whose families had made aliyah a few years earlier.
I am convinced that the liberal branches of Judaism are now dead ends. I have six grandkids; so far, none of my siblings have any, and two of my nieces have intermarried. None of us fear pograms, but at least I expect eventually to wind up in Israel.