Last night, as I was flipping through the channels and landing on PBS, I was delighted to have caught the beginning of this classic film, that I have seen numerous times throughout my life. The film version of Fiddler on the Roof was released in 1971 and was based on the musical that debuted in 1963. The source material was a series of stories by Sholem Aleichem, the nom de plume for Sholem Rabinovich, which were written over a period of twenty years, between 1894 and 1914. “Tevye der milkhiker,” as the tales were titled, is the Yiddish translation of Tevye the Milkman. Rabinovich was hailed as the “Yiddish Mark Twain”. There is a sweet story about the two literary notables meeting and Mark Twain was said to have greeted his new friend with the statement that he was the “American Sholem Rabinovich”.
Fiddler on the Roof weaves the journey of a family that includes Tevye, his wife Golde and their five daughters, Tzeitel, Hodel, Chava, Shprintze and Bielke as they go about their workaday lives in the midst of unrest in the country where it was rumored that Jews were being evicted from their homes and villages. 1905 was the year and the fictional village or ‘shtetel’ of Anatevka in The Pale Of Settlement where Jews were permitted to reside was the setting. The three older daughters and their love lives were a focus. The two younger sisters had no speaking or singing parts. The multitudinous themes include maintaining tradition in a changing world, love’s sustaining power, and survival in the midst of violence and hatred.
The musical and movie have been translated into numerous languages and watched worldwide. It has become a multi-cultural phenom even though the traditions, speech patterns, and rituals are decidedly Jewish. It reminds me of the concept that “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” could have been my “Big Fat (fill in the blank) Wedding”.
We were only one song into the production when my sister called and asked if I was watching Fiddler. She reminded me that our family had seen the stage production when we were kids as Herschel Bernardi donned the costume and played the role of the dairyman who was financially impoverished, but wealthy in love, family, community and spirit. Neither of us could remember where we saw the performance; whether it was on Broadway or in a theater in Philadelphia. We picked each other’s brains about where our paternal grandparents hailed from. Was it a village like Anatevka or a city? What I had heard was that our grandmother was 16 when she and her parents came here as immigrants who fled the pogrom. I knew nothing about our grandfather’s ocean voyage that landed him in Philadelphia so that they could meet in an arranged marriage. That too, is a theme in Fiddler. They raised four children that include our father. I’m pretty sure we had the soundtrack album to sing and dance along to since music was an important part of our childhood. My grandfather died before I was born so I didn’t hear his story firsthand. I wish I had asked my grandmother who we called Bubbe, what she remembered about her childhood.
Watching it now with current events as a backdrop, I noticed things I hadn’t before. Even though Tevye was sexist in a patriarchal manner and thought he should have the final say in what his wife and children did, he invited Perchik who was an itinerant teacher and activist to come to their home and teach his daughters in exchange for room and board. At that time, girls were not likely to be well educated. My grandmother Rebecca could speak several languages but couldn’t read or write in any of them. My mother said that my grandmother signed her name once when she became a citizen but never again. I wonder now, how she completed the test to become an American. Maybe there were translators in the room. I was aware that even though Tevye put his foot down over and over, his daughters who had him wrapped around their little fingers, as my father would have said, were able to move his foot. As someone who was raised in Conservative (not politically so, but the middle ground between Orthodox and Reform) Judaism, I find it challenging to accept that women are not permitted the freedom to worship as they choose, where they choose, nor dress as they see fit, but rather as proscribed by men. I am not diminishing the beauty that some find in their tradition.
Another throughline in the story is hatred based on seeing people as ‘the other’. Tevye feared change and when his future son-in-law, Perchick brought new ideas that included couples choosing their partners rather than being arranged to marry, and women and men dancing together, Tevye initially resisted. There was one change that he could not accept, that his daughter Chava was in love with a Russian Orthodox Christian man named Fyedka. He forbade them to marry and when she goes beyond her father’s back and marries him anyway, he made the painful decision that many parents did then and some do, to this day, that she was dead to them. Even though the couple steadfastly contend that they can’t stay in a country where people are divided by hatred and leave when the rest of the family does, Tevye can’t bring himself to embrace his daughter. The most he can do, which was likely a stretch for him was to say, “God be with you.”
I appreciated the dialogues Tevye had with the Divine as he expressed gratitude for his blessings, wanted to understand his impoverished conditions and attempted to make sense of the hatred and destruction that he and the villagers were faced with. I too have regular Godversations to clarify the confusion that I witness in the world, with anti-Semitism, white supremacy, and fascism on the rise.
When the family is steadfastly moving forward, Tevye looks back and sees The Fiddler and beckons him to join them on their oceanic journey that will land them in New York City, symbolizing that he, like my grandparents, will carry the traditions with him.
As the granddaughter of immigrants who honors them as ancestors, I can empathize with the people forced out of their homes by war, climate change, violence, political unrest and upheaval. I wonder about the babies and how they are cared for and comforted. I wonder about the ill and injured. I wonder about how basic bodily needs are met. I wonder what keeps their spirits aloft when forces drag them down.
Perfect timing since May is Jewish American Heritage Month.
Also, honoring Chaim Topol who held the film role of Tevye and joined the ancestors this past March. May his memory be for a blessing.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
