One ritual I was not privy to, but was mentioned by my mother, was the existence of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement; my grandmother had an old record of Kol Nidre, the ancient prayer or declaration of repentance, and according to my mother, my grandmother would once a year on Yom Kippur lock herself in her bedroom alone, play this record, and cry and cry. I didn’t know then, and never will now, what need for repentance drove her to this, moved her so strongly, and in secret, yet: Was it guilt over leading a not-Jewish-enough life? Her failure to pass a true Jewish legacy along to her daughter, her grandchildren? For marrying a man who rejected Judaism? Was she thinking of relatives left behind in a Polish village? Her own long-dead mother and father, that fading Jewish heritage?
As a child, being Jewish meant virtually nothing to me. No one explained exactly what it did mean, or might mean; apparently my exposure to all those wedding horas and bar mitzvah chantings was considered religious education enough: Judaism by social osmosis. I once asked a more-Jewish friend to phonetically write out the Hebrew prayer for candles (or was it bread, or wine?) on a paper napkin, so I could memorize it to impress my grandmother, who didn’t speak any Hebrew. Being Jewish basically meant making self-deprecatory Jewish jokes when I got a nose job at seventeen. It meant incorporating my grandmother’s occasional Yiddish phrases into my speech (Oy vey! Chutzpah! Kine-ahora!) to make her laugh. It meant refusing to take the side of Palestine in a sixth-grade debate between Palestine and Israel over territorial rights because it was “against everything I believe in!” although I believed in absolutely nothing and had no clue what any of it was about. Nor did I care. It meant wearing a tiny gold mezuzah necklace my grandfather bought me at a pawn shop, which I loved because it was gold, a grown-up-looking piece of jewelry, and still having no idea what a mezuzah actually was. (And I didn’t ask: I’m no simpleton child.)
And it meant the entire family going to see some movie called Fiddler on the Roof the moment it hit theatres.18
In 1894 Russian writer Sholem Aleichem published several stories, in Yiddish, about a pious, warm-hearted Jewish milkman named Tevye, scratching out a living in late-tsarist Russia, dealing with his strong-willed wife and household of challenging daughters while struggling to maintain his unsteady foothold on tradition and faith. There were multiple Yiddish-language stage adaptations of Tevye the Milkman, or Tevye and His Daughters, plus a 1939 Yiddish film version called Tevye, until its incarnation as a big-budget Broadway musical in 1964 called Fiddler on the Roof. The title was inspired by early Modernist Jewish-themed paintings by Chagall, and you can see the Chagallian influence in the faintly Cubist set design, the color palette, even Jerome Robbins’s innovative angular choreography. Fiddler on the Roof was a massive hit: Record-setting performances, international acclaim, a slew of Tony awards (including one for Zero Mostel’s colorful, iconic Tevye), and endless touring productions and revivals ever since. No surprise it would become a big-budget, wildly successful and much-loved Hollywood musical in 1971, produced and directed by Norman Jewison (no, not a Jew), who created an uproar by casting the thirty-seven-year-old Israeli actor Topol as Tevye instead of Zero Mosteclass="underline" He felt Topol’s earthy Tevye would be less clownish, more realistic.
But it is not reality, to my seven-year-old eyes; it is magic. Movie-going is still a novelty for me, a wonder, a wholly immersive experience; I am enraptured by the beautiful opening images of sunrise over a small village, golden fields and blue sky, and the stunning but perplexing silhouette of a man precariously perched on the roof of house, playing a violin (the haunting violin supplied by Isaac Stern). What is he doing up there, this violinist, this fiddle player, I wonder? Fortunately, it is explained to me — to me, directly, intimately, by a smiling, warmth-exuding, worn-faced man:
TEVYE
A fiddler on the roof? It sounds crazy, no? But here in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word! Tradition! Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!
My introduction to metaphor, and I am in love with Tevye, his paternal wisdom and humor and diastematic grin; I am unaware of the makeup designed to age Topol to Tevye’s weary grizzle, the fake white hairs placed strategically into his dark eyebrows. Tevye introduces me to the characters of our village: Our beloved Rabbi, Yente the Matchmaker, and all the Papas and Mamas, the sons and daughters, everyone going about their chores and their Traditions! Tevye’s three oldest daughters are excited by a visit from Yente; will she bring the man of their dreams, someone slender and pale, or an old, fat, drunken, abusive man? Whatever, they will be lucky to get a man (any man, it is explicitly stated), and I am oblivious to the gender politics here, the disempowerment of the girls, or the valuing of even the most distasteful of men as a “good catch” for these low-rung, dowryless daughters; I’m too curious about the odd wig Yente wears, the wigs I will see on all married women in this village of ours, when their hair is not fully covered by a scarf. With one exception, later.
Tevye dreams of being a rich man, the pride he would take in his home, the leisure he craves to study and discuss his faith with other men of the village; when Tevye is not talking directly to me, he is talking to God, they are on intimate terms: It is a bromance. His daughters run to him for hugs when he enters the house, and it is time for the Sabbath Prayer; Golde, our Mama, lights candles, her bewigged head covered in lace, she and Tevye sing of their wishes for their five daughters, May the Lord protect and defend you, may you be deserving of praise. . may he make you good mothers and wives, may he send you husbands who will care for you, but it is clear the girls need no other care than this golden home, the love of their Mama, but especially their cuddly, adoring Papa; in this house full of women, the Papa’s love is even more precious, the thing to be treasured.
I am charmed by the flavor and simplicity of this rural life, the quaint traditions, all the sepia glow (which Norman Jewison achieved by filming through a woman’s nylon stocking stretched across the lens). The colorful characters of this village are somehow, oddly, identifiable to me; how is it I recognize the rhythms of their speech? I don’t know any Jewish people like this. I don’t know any Ukrainian peasants, any rabbis or matchmakers, and my grandmother shed her accent forty years earlier. Why do the candles and lace, the exuberance and bluster of this life, feel so familiar? How can I possibly identify with these long-ago Eastern European peasants as kin? Why do they tap into my blood, why does their song send my DNA spinning in a homey helix’d dance?