Until. Enter the (Gentile) Russians on horseback, carrying torches and clubs. The gaiety stops, the wedding guests freeze. I do not know what is about to happen, but I sense I should be frightened. The horses charge, swords are drawn. The celebrating Jews (Christ-killers, troublemakers) scatter in terror.
But it isn’t such a big deal. It’s a few seconds of melee, some ripped-open feather pillows, some broken glass, a few spilled cups of wine. A table is overturned. A drunken wedding-guest uncle would do more damage. I won’t realize until many years later that this depicts The Most Benign Pogrom Ever; there is no blood, no crushed skulls, no degradation. Just as the Constable had said, in his friendly warning; nothing too serious. He even apologizes to Tevye, in a way:
CONSTABLE
Orders are orders, understand?
Tevye’s face is stricken, he is silent, unmanned, powerless to do or say anything, but we would not be able to hear him anyway over the suddenly overwrought music that tells us this is traumatic, a Tragedy. I’m not buying it. No real damage has been done, after all. I suppose a pogrom really isn’t such a big deal. More like a rudeness, an inconvenience.
No, the big deal comes toward the end of the movie. Tevye has given his blessing to Hodel marrying Perchik; they have asked for his blessing, not his permission, once again breaking Tradition!, and once again Tevye is swayed by his desire for his daughter’s happiness. But when the third daughter, Chava, wants to marry Fyedka, a strapping and sensitive Russian youth, Tevye has had enough. He’s done. “I am the Man in the House! I am the Head of the Family!” he asserts, outraged. Told by Golde that Chava has run off and married her Gentile Russian boyfriend anyway, he declares:
TEVYE
Chava is dead to us! We’ll forget her!
Chava shows up (no wig, her hair visible beneath her shawl) to plead:
CHAVA
Papa, stop! At least listen to me! Papa, I beg you to accept us!
And he pauses, one final time, to ask of God:
TEVYE
How can I accept them? Can I deny everything I believe in? On the other hand, can I deny my own daughter? On the other hand, how can I turn my back on my faith, my people? No! If I try to bend that far, I will break!
And he roars away from her, plodding off with his milk cart while she stands, abandoned at the side of the road, still begging him to look at her, listen to her. But he is deaf to her pleas. “Our daughter is dead,” he will repeat to Golde, and the rest of the family now cowers before him and his cold, deadening rage. And so Chava is disappeared, erased, snipped out of the family album, and I feel the chill of this in my bones. His cuddly warmth has turned terrifying, turned to threat. No, it has now gone well beyond threat: It is an actual retraction of his love, the cancellation of a relationship, the abandonment of a human being. It is an act of deliberate cruelty. Like Chava, I am crying, disconsolate. This is frightening.
But the ostensible tragedy of the story arrives with the Constable, and the edict that everyone, that is, all the Jews, must leave Anatevka. They are cast out from their home, their beloved village. Final shots of everyone packing up, the Rabbi praying, holding the Torah like a baby, the golden color palette now bleached of color, reduced to grays, black mud and white snow, desolate and cold to match the bleakness of loss and defeat. All warmth is drained from this movie — except when Tevye says a loving, gentle good-bye to his animals. Leaving them behind has him in tears, turns him tender with grief. Softhearted, sentimental Tevye.
And then Chava arrives, with her Gentile now-husband Fyedka.
CHAVA
Papa? We came to say good-bye.
Tevye, packing up the wagon, ignores her.
CHAVA
We are also leaving this place. We are going to Cracow.
FYEDKA
We cannot stay among people who can do such things to others.
CHAVA
We wanted you to know that.
Tevye ignores them louder.
FYEDKA
Some are driven away by edicts. Some by silence.
CHAVA
Good-bye, Papa!
Stony silence from Tevye. I guess he is still too sad and upset about having to leave his animals to acknowledge his daughter’s existence. Chava says good-bye to Golde, to Tzeitel. Good-bye! Goodbye! Then, a quiet:
TEVYE
And God be with you.
It’s a mumble, barely audible. No embrace, no real farewell. He doesn’t even look her in the eye. What good will God “being with her” do her? I wonder. Without her beloved Papa?
Because isn’t her Papa, in a way, her religion? Isn’t that, shouldn’t that be the real faith, the sanctified, sustaining love between them?
But she is grateful, promises to write to them in America. Will they ever be truly reconciled? Ever embrace, or touch? Ever see each other again?
And these unanswered questions are the most disturbing thing to me, as the village empties out, everyone trudging through the snow, burdened with their meager belongings, their bundles and wheelbarrows, the old men stopping one last time to stand in a circle and pray together (just the men, only the men), and the Fiddler following after them to play his final violin song, a sweetly mournful refrain of Tradition! The true tragedy of the story is not the eviction from Anatevka; they’re off to America, aren’t they, the Promised Land? They’ll find a place to live; Tevye can find a job. (And as I grow older and watch and rewatch this movie on network television, I will think they are actually lucky to be evicted, for surely it’s better to settle into a Lower East Side tenement existence than to live — or not live — as Ukrainian Jews in Revolutionary Russia, or World War II. Doesn’t the eviction ultimately save their lives?)
No, the true Tragedy, the saddest and most chilling thing, is a father choosing faith over his daughter. Choosing a belief in a set of arbitrary rules, some fantasy Tradition! What about your actual daughter? I think. Isn’t she your “people,” your own family, your own daughter, that you are turning your back on? Flesh and blood and breath, standing right there in front of you, begging for your love, your acknowledgement? She is not a concept, a philosophical abstraction. She is not a thing to be believed in or not. She is real, she exists.