//literary and arts//
Fall 2018
From Shtetl to Stage:
Perspectives on Fidler Afn Dakh
Maya Bickel, Pammy Brenner, Yaira Kobrin, Miriam Lichtenberg, and Miriam Linz
On July 15, 2018, The National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene’s Production of Fidler Afn Dakh, or Fiddler on the Roof opened at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. Fans of the beloved classic came out in droves to see this reimagination, leading to several extensions of the originally brief run of the show. What makes this version of Fiddler so captivating?
In our attempt to answer this question, we turned to the play itself for inspiration, and found ourselves drawn to Tevye the Milkman’s five daughters. Fiddler on the Roof is, at its core, a story of a family; each of Tevye’s daughters’ stories center around marriage, yet they each confront different challenges. These differences end up revealing a tremendous amount about the community of Anatevka and swiftly changing times.
In this spirit, we present to you five reflections, from five women who, like Tevye’s daughters, all approach the same play with different thoughts and opinions, which allow us to see far beyond the shtetl of this singular production of Fiddler on the Roof.
Tzeitel, Tevye’s oldest daughter, is headstrong, choosing to arrange her own marriage. Tevya, shocked at her behavior, asks, “Isn’t there any use for the father anymore?” In the following reflection, Miriam Lichtenberg writes about seeing Fidler Afn Dakh with her Yiddish-speaking father.
I grew up with a native Yiddish-speaking father, yet, for years the entirety of my Yiddish speaking skills consisted of “Ich ben a sheyna meidel,” “I am a pretty girl.” Given its undeniable truth, for a while I was content with this compact Yiddish lexicon, though my father consistently bemoaned the fact that neither my brothers nor I knew (more) Yiddish (though, really, who is to blame for that?). So, eventually, like any good tachte (daughter), I decided to take Elementary Yiddish I in my second year at Barnard.
Still, when I had the opportunity to see the Yiddish performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, it was my father, not I, who commented on translation choices, quietly correcting when he disagreed and finding bemusement when the translation took artistic leaps. Zalman Mlotek, the music conductor for Fiddler and one of the pioneers and visionaries for this adaptation, explains that the translation that was available for the audience was intentionally not the literal translation that native speakers like my father were looking for. Instead, Mlotek and his team wanted this show to be entirely reminiscent of the original Fiddler on the Roof, and therefore decided to broadcast the words from the original Broadway production that audience members would know and love. The actors’ script, however, contained the Yiddish words, a literal translation of the Yiddish, and the English from the original Fiddler on the Roof allowing them to see how the translation was adapted. For example, when Tevye solidifies a shidduch (arranged marriage) for his daughter, the script reads:
“Oy Tsaytl, mayn sheps, kum nor aher. Tsaytl, s’kumt dir a mazl-tov. Du geyst Khasene hobn in a gutter mazldiker sho!
O, Tsaytly, my sheep, come here. Tsaytl, you have earned a congratulations. You will be married in a good and lucky hour!
Ah, Tzeitel, my lamb, come here tzeitel, you are to be congratulated. You are going to be married!”
As the audience, we were given only the last line.
Even so, Shraga Friedman’s 1965 translation of Fiddler is so rich and laden with cultural references
that the translation shown to the audience was not always just the script from the original English produc- tion. One prominent exception is Tevye’s wishful song, “If I were a rich man” in which Shraga’s translation becomes “If I were a Rothschild” inspired by the famously wealthy Jewish family of the 1960s. In the original, the song ends with “if I were a wealthy man,” while the Yiddish ends with “if I were a wealthy Jew”, which invites certain connotations. I was grateful to have my dad to point out these important nuances.
The performance left me wondering what else I was missing, what other cultural references—from my own heritage— were going over my head. What can be lost in translation is a conversation that can be had ad-nauseum, but my experience at Fidler reminded me of the importance of that consideration. I therefore decided to learn what else I was missing; it was this show that inspired me to take Elementary Yiddish II. So, with brachos (blessings), I have continued this journey. A zei gezunt would certainly be appropriate here.
Hodel, Tevye’s second daughter, shocks her family by marrying an enlightened thinker from Kiev, Perchik, who changes Anatevka forever by encouraging its residents to think differently about time-honored practices. In this piece, Yaira Kobrin reflects on how Fidler Afn Dakh completely changed the way she experienced Fiddler on the Roof.
It’s safe to say that I cry every single time I see Fiddler on the Roof. I know all the words to all the songs, can recite most of the lines by heart, have seen five live performances, and have watched the movie countless times. Each time, a different part of the play speaks to me; each time, a different scene makes me ugly-cry.
I came to the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof expecting more of the same. I was excited as I always am before watching a production of this timeless classic, and curious to see how the foreign language would change my experience (although honestly, I think I would understand Fiddler on the Roof in any language at all).
The Edmond J. Safra Hall, the small theater at the Museum of Jewish Heritage where the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof is performed, is small—walking into the theater feels like walking into a high school auditorium for a low-budget play. The set is simple, the audience mainly people who look like my parents and grandparents and their friends. So I expected a production that matched the ambiance: something small, cute, nice-but-not-overly-impressive.
I was incorrect. Though I speak almost no Yiddish, there was something about hearing a play about life in the shtetl in the language of the shtetl that was incredibly moving. The script was peppered with words that stood out to me as a Hebrew speaker and American Jew: “torah” the Hebrew/Yiddish word for the Hebrew Bible; “shul” the Yiddish word for synagogue; “yid” the Yiddish word for Jew. Something about hearing these words and other small phrases scattered throughout the play brought the fictional shtetl of Anatevka to life for me in ways I had never before experienced.
I cried, as per usual, but much more than I had at previous productions because something about the Yiddish made me suddenly see the story of Fiddler on the Roof as the story of my people, my family. I cried happy tears at their celebrations, bawled at their tragedies, and their story was suddenly my own. The switch from English to Yiddish felt like a switch from the impersonal to the personal; instead of an American production of a Jewish story, it felt like a Jewish telling of a Jewish story. Normally, at productions of Fiddler, I feel like the insider in a sea of unchurched audience members. This, however, was an intimate experience, and felt like a family event, where everyone was a part of a shared narrative.
Translation is often characterized as “betrayal”, or “disloyalty;” we toss around the phrase “lost in translation” all too frequently. But in this instance, something seemed to be gained in translation; a sense of ownership, intimacy, and connection to the past. I think I cried more at this production than any other because, for the first time, instead of crying for the characters, I cried with them. Their tragedies were my tragedies, their celebrations mine. And that was pretty vaunderlikh (amazing).
Tevye’s two youngest daughters, Shprintze and Bielke, often get short shrift. Thought they get none of the spotlight or romantic drama of their older sisters, they are silent observers of every part of the play—we imagine that, if given the opportunity, they’d have fascinating things to say. Here, we present two pieces, by Maya Bickel and Pammy Brenner, who act as silent observers of the audience, and carefully analyze the tears to which Kobrin, in the previous piece, and so many other audience members of Fidler Afn Dakh are reduced.
A few weeks ago my family went to see the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. In joining the throngs of American Jews clamoring to see this play, my family, and the rest of viewers, indulged ourselves in some nostalgia.
In November 1964, around a month after the first performance of Fiddler on The Roof, the prominent Jewish American critic Irving Howe released a scathing review. He criticized the overdone sentimentalism, and the distortion of Shalom Aleichem’s stories (on which the play is based), deprived of the intricate wordplay which makes them so rich. But he reserved special criticism for the American Jews flocking to see the play. “American Jews suffer these days from a feeling of guilt because they have lost touch with the past... and often they compound this guilt by indulging themselves in an unearned nostalgia. The less... they know about East European Jewish life...the more inclined they seem to celebrate it.”
Our wistful longing differed from that of the audiences Irving Howe criticized because ours had an added layer; we were not only reveling in the mythicized shtetl, but in the mythicized Yiddish. This novel staging attempts to either recreate the shtetl in a more authentic way, return Aleichem’s story to its original Yiddish roots, or hearken back to an (imaginary) time when the play’s audience spoke Yiddish. But the Yiddish in the play is not appropriate for any of these scenarios; it is a fully Americanized, simplified Yiddish, right down to the accent. It is not written in one of the many dialects spoken in Eastern Europe, nor Shalom Aleichem’s literary Yiddish full of complex puns and allusions, nor the modernized Yiddish of American immigrants. It is a Yiddish play for an English-speaking audience. In the original Fiddler on the Roof, the audience’s nostalgia emerged from the depiction of the shtetl in a language accessible to everyone, but here the audience can only draw from the sounds and syllables they hear, not even the actual Yiddish words and phrases.
According to Irving Howe, this nostalgia is unearned. It is not elicited by a connection to a real past, but to a simplified version that requires no effort on the audience’s part to learn and understand. Our nostalgia to this generic past, though, allows us to insert ourselves and our own ancestors into the story. I felt empowered by the women in tichels (head coverings) on stage: these were my great-great grandmothers and their story; my story is on proud display! My mother told me she watched my grandfather during the play as he recalled snippets of Yiddish spoken privately between his parents, and I imagined the chain stretching back to Anatevka. Anatevka, of course, is not a real shtetl; the Yiddish, not real Yiddish; but my family, and the rest of the audience, can (and did) still enjoy the very real nostalgia they elicit.
~
When I heard that the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene was producing a Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, I was thrilled. As a Yiddish Studies major, and self-proclaimed Yiddishist, I attend nearly every Yiddish production in New York City, no matter which theater or level of professionalism. This show would not be just any Yiddish performance; it was purportedly the best production that the Folksbiene had ever produced (in my lifetime, at least). As scores of non-Yiddish-speaking Jews in my life flocked to the show, I became the soundboard for all thoughts, perspectives and opinions of my friends and family, from those nearest and dearest to me to the most distant acquaintances. Why? Because, for so many people in my life, I remain the resident (aka only) Yiddish speaker below the age of eighty. It therefore seemed only natural for me to receive daily updates about their first foray into Yiddish theater.
One of the most common reactions from this production that I’ve heard is “I cried the entire time.” Even the co-chief theater critic for the New York Times, Jesse Green, wrote in his NYT review of Fidler Afn Dakh that “...when I saw the new National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene production of Fiddler, I didn’t make it to intermission. I barely made it to the first song. Even the jokes were making me cry.” Why are all these people crying the entire time? The show is not wholly tragic; in fact, much of it is funny. Granted, the first time I read the entire collected tales of Tevye the Milkman, I blubbered like a baby in Butler Library. But, like any reader, my reactions were commensurate to the content: as Forrest Gump would put it, when it was humorous, I laughed, and when it was heartbreaking, I cried. But all these non-Yiddish speakers seemed to bawl the moment that curtain rose.
My theory is that the feeling motivating all of these American Jewish theater-goers is simple: they associate Yiddish with tragedy, as solely a hallmark of Eastern European life that never quite made it out of the ghetto. Yiddish reminds them of their imagined Jewish past, creating a visual of what their bubbies’ and zeydies’ lives must have been like in pre-Holocaust Europe. Yiddish is tragic; it is a metonym for the Holocaust and all things lost therein, and so, when people hear Yiddish, they cry.
But my Yiddish studies have shown me that this common perception of Yiddish is sorely mistaken. Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazi Jewry for one thousand years, is funny and lively. Yes, Yiddish can be tragic, but it was, and remains, vibrant. While Fidler Afn Dakh ends with expulsion from the shtetl, it is merely one of hundreds of thousands of Yiddish stories produced in the past 150 years. I challenge all those who teared up at “Traditisye” (tradition) to read another Yiddish story—I guarantee they’ll find one something that will make them laugh instead of cry. Yiddish, and the people and worlds portrayed therein, represents all facets of life; both the joyous and the melancholy are encapsulated in this wonderful Ashkenazi language. In the spirit of Sholem Aleichem’s “laughter through tears” philosophy, I encourage everyone who encounters Yiddish to look past the tears and find the laughter that is truly the hallmark of the mameloshn (mother tongue).
Finally, daughter number three, Chava, is the black sheep of the family, marrying a non-Jew and ultimately causing Tevya to deny her very existence. In many ways, Chava is the paradigm of the assimilated Jew in Fiddler on the Roof. In this piece, Miriam Linz discusses Jewish assimilation in the nineteenth century, and how it has impacted her view of the Yiddish language.
Fiddler on the Roof examines the tropes of tradition, the all-too-popular topic of marriage, and a message of courage in the face of an uncertain Jewish future. Though written in English, this show details the lives of Yiddish-speaking Jews in an imagined village in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. Despite the familiar tenor of Fiddler on the Roof, the play and the Yiddish cultural revival surrounding it took me by surprise.
I first learned Yiddish from a Chabad Rebbetzin, who only spoke to her children in Yiddish. I was forced to learn the basics of the language in order to babysit her children, and I couldn’t help but develop slight cynicism watching these children learn Yiddish in the twenty-first century. I found it hard to find the religious significance that many hasidic groups claim exists in the Yiddish language. When I witness my peers beginning to learn Yiddish for its cultural significance, or line up for tickets to see a play entirely in Yiddish, I cannot help but judge them with the same cynical eye.
My cynicism is rooted in the history of European Jewry in the nineteenth century. While their Western European counterparts embraced Enlightenment culture, and adopted the languages of their countries as their mother tongue, Eastern European Jews remained staunch in their the separationist attitudes. Eastern European Jews clung to Yiddish as a way to maintain a distinct Jewish language and identity. Today, some Hassidic groups claim that Yiddish is a pure, holy language, spoken by the Jews to avoid assimilation. This narrative seems counter-intuitive, as Yiddish is based largely off Middle-High German—a fact reflecting its embeddedness (however long ago) in a Western European milieu.
The current revival of Yiddish culture in New York seems almost ironic. What the Jewish community in New York City now appreciates as a “traditional Jewish culture” is in fact a language and tradition that was heavily influenced by the broader culture that surrounded and pervaded the lives of our Eastern European ancestors. Perhaps modern New York City Jews, so comfortable in the secular culture that surrounds them, miss feeling distinctly Jewish, or even distinct at all, and would like to connect to the distinct identity that they see in Yiddish-speaking Jewry. Maybe the modern Jew in New York City can relate to their Eastern European nineteenth century counterpart in some way. These modern Jews, too, just want to fit in, but are constantly reminded of their distinct Jewish identity, whether through anti-Semitism, Jewish guilt from family members or the campus Chabad.
The question I am left with is whether those interested in Yiddish revival as a source of Jewish particular identity will eventually have to revise their project once they realize that Yiddish is a multicultural language like any other.
In our attempt to answer this question, we turned to the play itself for inspiration, and found ourselves drawn to Tevye the Milkman’s five daughters. Fiddler on the Roof is, at its core, a story of a family; each of Tevye’s daughters’ stories center around marriage, yet they each confront different challenges. These differences end up revealing a tremendous amount about the community of Anatevka and swiftly changing times.
In this spirit, we present to you five reflections, from five women who, like Tevye’s daughters, all approach the same play with different thoughts and opinions, which allow us to see far beyond the shtetl of this singular production of Fiddler on the Roof.
Tzeitel, Tevye’s oldest daughter, is headstrong, choosing to arrange her own marriage. Tevya, shocked at her behavior, asks, “Isn’t there any use for the father anymore?” In the following reflection, Miriam Lichtenberg writes about seeing Fidler Afn Dakh with her Yiddish-speaking father.
I grew up with a native Yiddish-speaking father, yet, for years the entirety of my Yiddish speaking skills consisted of “Ich ben a sheyna meidel,” “I am a pretty girl.” Given its undeniable truth, for a while I was content with this compact Yiddish lexicon, though my father consistently bemoaned the fact that neither my brothers nor I knew (more) Yiddish (though, really, who is to blame for that?). So, eventually, like any good tachte (daughter), I decided to take Elementary Yiddish I in my second year at Barnard.
Still, when I had the opportunity to see the Yiddish performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, it was my father, not I, who commented on translation choices, quietly correcting when he disagreed and finding bemusement when the translation took artistic leaps. Zalman Mlotek, the music conductor for Fiddler and one of the pioneers and visionaries for this adaptation, explains that the translation that was available for the audience was intentionally not the literal translation that native speakers like my father were looking for. Instead, Mlotek and his team wanted this show to be entirely reminiscent of the original Fiddler on the Roof, and therefore decided to broadcast the words from the original Broadway production that audience members would know and love. The actors’ script, however, contained the Yiddish words, a literal translation of the Yiddish, and the English from the original Fiddler on the Roof allowing them to see how the translation was adapted. For example, when Tevye solidifies a shidduch (arranged marriage) for his daughter, the script reads:
“Oy Tsaytl, mayn sheps, kum nor aher. Tsaytl, s’kumt dir a mazl-tov. Du geyst Khasene hobn in a gutter mazldiker sho!
O, Tsaytly, my sheep, come here. Tsaytl, you have earned a congratulations. You will be married in a good and lucky hour!
Ah, Tzeitel, my lamb, come here tzeitel, you are to be congratulated. You are going to be married!”
As the audience, we were given only the last line.
Even so, Shraga Friedman’s 1965 translation of Fiddler is so rich and laden with cultural references
that the translation shown to the audience was not always just the script from the original English produc- tion. One prominent exception is Tevye’s wishful song, “If I were a rich man” in which Shraga’s translation becomes “If I were a Rothschild” inspired by the famously wealthy Jewish family of the 1960s. In the original, the song ends with “if I were a wealthy man,” while the Yiddish ends with “if I were a wealthy Jew”, which invites certain connotations. I was grateful to have my dad to point out these important nuances.
The performance left me wondering what else I was missing, what other cultural references—from my own heritage— were going over my head. What can be lost in translation is a conversation that can be had ad-nauseum, but my experience at Fidler reminded me of the importance of that consideration. I therefore decided to learn what else I was missing; it was this show that inspired me to take Elementary Yiddish II. So, with brachos (blessings), I have continued this journey. A zei gezunt would certainly be appropriate here.
Hodel, Tevye’s second daughter, shocks her family by marrying an enlightened thinker from Kiev, Perchik, who changes Anatevka forever by encouraging its residents to think differently about time-honored practices. In this piece, Yaira Kobrin reflects on how Fidler Afn Dakh completely changed the way she experienced Fiddler on the Roof.
It’s safe to say that I cry every single time I see Fiddler on the Roof. I know all the words to all the songs, can recite most of the lines by heart, have seen five live performances, and have watched the movie countless times. Each time, a different part of the play speaks to me; each time, a different scene makes me ugly-cry.
I came to the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof expecting more of the same. I was excited as I always am before watching a production of this timeless classic, and curious to see how the foreign language would change my experience (although honestly, I think I would understand Fiddler on the Roof in any language at all).
The Edmond J. Safra Hall, the small theater at the Museum of Jewish Heritage where the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof is performed, is small—walking into the theater feels like walking into a high school auditorium for a low-budget play. The set is simple, the audience mainly people who look like my parents and grandparents and their friends. So I expected a production that matched the ambiance: something small, cute, nice-but-not-overly-impressive.
I was incorrect. Though I speak almost no Yiddish, there was something about hearing a play about life in the shtetl in the language of the shtetl that was incredibly moving. The script was peppered with words that stood out to me as a Hebrew speaker and American Jew: “torah” the Hebrew/Yiddish word for the Hebrew Bible; “shul” the Yiddish word for synagogue; “yid” the Yiddish word for Jew. Something about hearing these words and other small phrases scattered throughout the play brought the fictional shtetl of Anatevka to life for me in ways I had never before experienced.
I cried, as per usual, but much more than I had at previous productions because something about the Yiddish made me suddenly see the story of Fiddler on the Roof as the story of my people, my family. I cried happy tears at their celebrations, bawled at their tragedies, and their story was suddenly my own. The switch from English to Yiddish felt like a switch from the impersonal to the personal; instead of an American production of a Jewish story, it felt like a Jewish telling of a Jewish story. Normally, at productions of Fiddler, I feel like the insider in a sea of unchurched audience members. This, however, was an intimate experience, and felt like a family event, where everyone was a part of a shared narrative.
Translation is often characterized as “betrayal”, or “disloyalty;” we toss around the phrase “lost in translation” all too frequently. But in this instance, something seemed to be gained in translation; a sense of ownership, intimacy, and connection to the past. I think I cried more at this production than any other because, for the first time, instead of crying for the characters, I cried with them. Their tragedies were my tragedies, their celebrations mine. And that was pretty vaunderlikh (amazing).
Tevye’s two youngest daughters, Shprintze and Bielke, often get short shrift. Thought they get none of the spotlight or romantic drama of their older sisters, they are silent observers of every part of the play—we imagine that, if given the opportunity, they’d have fascinating things to say. Here, we present two pieces, by Maya Bickel and Pammy Brenner, who act as silent observers of the audience, and carefully analyze the tears to which Kobrin, in the previous piece, and so many other audience members of Fidler Afn Dakh are reduced.
A few weeks ago my family went to see the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. In joining the throngs of American Jews clamoring to see this play, my family, and the rest of viewers, indulged ourselves in some nostalgia.
In November 1964, around a month after the first performance of Fiddler on The Roof, the prominent Jewish American critic Irving Howe released a scathing review. He criticized the overdone sentimentalism, and the distortion of Shalom Aleichem’s stories (on which the play is based), deprived of the intricate wordplay which makes them so rich. But he reserved special criticism for the American Jews flocking to see the play. “American Jews suffer these days from a feeling of guilt because they have lost touch with the past... and often they compound this guilt by indulging themselves in an unearned nostalgia. The less... they know about East European Jewish life...the more inclined they seem to celebrate it.”
Our wistful longing differed from that of the audiences Irving Howe criticized because ours had an added layer; we were not only reveling in the mythicized shtetl, but in the mythicized Yiddish. This novel staging attempts to either recreate the shtetl in a more authentic way, return Aleichem’s story to its original Yiddish roots, or hearken back to an (imaginary) time when the play’s audience spoke Yiddish. But the Yiddish in the play is not appropriate for any of these scenarios; it is a fully Americanized, simplified Yiddish, right down to the accent. It is not written in one of the many dialects spoken in Eastern Europe, nor Shalom Aleichem’s literary Yiddish full of complex puns and allusions, nor the modernized Yiddish of American immigrants. It is a Yiddish play for an English-speaking audience. In the original Fiddler on the Roof, the audience’s nostalgia emerged from the depiction of the shtetl in a language accessible to everyone, but here the audience can only draw from the sounds and syllables they hear, not even the actual Yiddish words and phrases.
According to Irving Howe, this nostalgia is unearned. It is not elicited by a connection to a real past, but to a simplified version that requires no effort on the audience’s part to learn and understand. Our nostalgia to this generic past, though, allows us to insert ourselves and our own ancestors into the story. I felt empowered by the women in tichels (head coverings) on stage: these were my great-great grandmothers and their story; my story is on proud display! My mother told me she watched my grandfather during the play as he recalled snippets of Yiddish spoken privately between his parents, and I imagined the chain stretching back to Anatevka. Anatevka, of course, is not a real shtetl; the Yiddish, not real Yiddish; but my family, and the rest of the audience, can (and did) still enjoy the very real nostalgia they elicit.
~
When I heard that the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene was producing a Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, I was thrilled. As a Yiddish Studies major, and self-proclaimed Yiddishist, I attend nearly every Yiddish production in New York City, no matter which theater or level of professionalism. This show would not be just any Yiddish performance; it was purportedly the best production that the Folksbiene had ever produced (in my lifetime, at least). As scores of non-Yiddish-speaking Jews in my life flocked to the show, I became the soundboard for all thoughts, perspectives and opinions of my friends and family, from those nearest and dearest to me to the most distant acquaintances. Why? Because, for so many people in my life, I remain the resident (aka only) Yiddish speaker below the age of eighty. It therefore seemed only natural for me to receive daily updates about their first foray into Yiddish theater.
One of the most common reactions from this production that I’ve heard is “I cried the entire time.” Even the co-chief theater critic for the New York Times, Jesse Green, wrote in his NYT review of Fidler Afn Dakh that “...when I saw the new National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene production of Fiddler, I didn’t make it to intermission. I barely made it to the first song. Even the jokes were making me cry.” Why are all these people crying the entire time? The show is not wholly tragic; in fact, much of it is funny. Granted, the first time I read the entire collected tales of Tevye the Milkman, I blubbered like a baby in Butler Library. But, like any reader, my reactions were commensurate to the content: as Forrest Gump would put it, when it was humorous, I laughed, and when it was heartbreaking, I cried. But all these non-Yiddish speakers seemed to bawl the moment that curtain rose.
My theory is that the feeling motivating all of these American Jewish theater-goers is simple: they associate Yiddish with tragedy, as solely a hallmark of Eastern European life that never quite made it out of the ghetto. Yiddish reminds them of their imagined Jewish past, creating a visual of what their bubbies’ and zeydies’ lives must have been like in pre-Holocaust Europe. Yiddish is tragic; it is a metonym for the Holocaust and all things lost therein, and so, when people hear Yiddish, they cry.
But my Yiddish studies have shown me that this common perception of Yiddish is sorely mistaken. Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazi Jewry for one thousand years, is funny and lively. Yes, Yiddish can be tragic, but it was, and remains, vibrant. While Fidler Afn Dakh ends with expulsion from the shtetl, it is merely one of hundreds of thousands of Yiddish stories produced in the past 150 years. I challenge all those who teared up at “Traditisye” (tradition) to read another Yiddish story—I guarantee they’ll find one something that will make them laugh instead of cry. Yiddish, and the people and worlds portrayed therein, represents all facets of life; both the joyous and the melancholy are encapsulated in this wonderful Ashkenazi language. In the spirit of Sholem Aleichem’s “laughter through tears” philosophy, I encourage everyone who encounters Yiddish to look past the tears and find the laughter that is truly the hallmark of the mameloshn (mother tongue).
Finally, daughter number three, Chava, is the black sheep of the family, marrying a non-Jew and ultimately causing Tevya to deny her very existence. In many ways, Chava is the paradigm of the assimilated Jew in Fiddler on the Roof. In this piece, Miriam Linz discusses Jewish assimilation in the nineteenth century, and how it has impacted her view of the Yiddish language.
Fiddler on the Roof examines the tropes of tradition, the all-too-popular topic of marriage, and a message of courage in the face of an uncertain Jewish future. Though written in English, this show details the lives of Yiddish-speaking Jews in an imagined village in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. Despite the familiar tenor of Fiddler on the Roof, the play and the Yiddish cultural revival surrounding it took me by surprise.
I first learned Yiddish from a Chabad Rebbetzin, who only spoke to her children in Yiddish. I was forced to learn the basics of the language in order to babysit her children, and I couldn’t help but develop slight cynicism watching these children learn Yiddish in the twenty-first century. I found it hard to find the religious significance that many hasidic groups claim exists in the Yiddish language. When I witness my peers beginning to learn Yiddish for its cultural significance, or line up for tickets to see a play entirely in Yiddish, I cannot help but judge them with the same cynical eye.
My cynicism is rooted in the history of European Jewry in the nineteenth century. While their Western European counterparts embraced Enlightenment culture, and adopted the languages of their countries as their mother tongue, Eastern European Jews remained staunch in their the separationist attitudes. Eastern European Jews clung to Yiddish as a way to maintain a distinct Jewish language and identity. Today, some Hassidic groups claim that Yiddish is a pure, holy language, spoken by the Jews to avoid assimilation. This narrative seems counter-intuitive, as Yiddish is based largely off Middle-High German—a fact reflecting its embeddedness (however long ago) in a Western European milieu.
The current revival of Yiddish culture in New York seems almost ironic. What the Jewish community in New York City now appreciates as a “traditional Jewish culture” is in fact a language and tradition that was heavily influenced by the broader culture that surrounded and pervaded the lives of our Eastern European ancestors. Perhaps modern New York City Jews, so comfortable in the secular culture that surrounds them, miss feeling distinctly Jewish, or even distinct at all, and would like to connect to the distinct identity that they see in Yiddish-speaking Jewry. Maybe the modern Jew in New York City can relate to their Eastern European nineteenth century counterpart in some way. These modern Jews, too, just want to fit in, but are constantly reminded of their distinct Jewish identity, whether through anti-Semitism, Jewish guilt from family members or the campus Chabad.
The question I am left with is whether those interested in Yiddish revival as a source of Jewish particular identity will eventually have to revise their project once they realize that Yiddish is a multicultural language like any other.
//MAYA BICKEL is a sophomore in Columbia College and Deputy Features Editor of The Current. She can be reached at mb4227@columbia.edu.
//PAMMY BRENNER is a junior in Barnard College. She can be reached at pb2550@barnard.edu.
//YAIRA KOBRIN is sophomore in Columbia College and Deputy Literary & Arts Editor of The Current. She can be reached at yk2761@columbia.edu.
//MIRIAM LICHTENBERG is a senior in Barnard College and a Senior Editor of The Current. She can be reached at mrl2161@columbia.edu.
//MIRIAM LINZ is a sophomore in Columbia College. She can be reached at ml4223@columbia.edu.
Photo courtesy of: https://www.theatermania.com/off- broadway/news/yiddish-fiddler-on-the-roof-extends-again_86473.html.
//PAMMY BRENNER is a junior in Barnard College. She can be reached at pb2550@barnard.edu.
//YAIRA KOBRIN is sophomore in Columbia College and Deputy Literary & Arts Editor of The Current. She can be reached at yk2761@columbia.edu.
//MIRIAM LICHTENBERG is a senior in Barnard College and a Senior Editor of The Current. She can be reached at mrl2161@columbia.edu.
//MIRIAM LINZ is a sophomore in Columbia College. She can be reached at ml4223@columbia.edu.
Photo courtesy of: https://www.theatermania.com/off- broadway/news/yiddish-fiddler-on-the-roof-extends-again_86473.html.