The Night I Saw ‘Fiddler’

I wept through this show.

For so many reasons.

For being the father of daughters (and a son), wondering how their lives will be, and with whom they will be.

For the ache of the passage of time, some 32 years after I had the great lifelong privilege of playing Tevye on Broadway. (That’s 3080 Broadway, at the corner of 122nd. But ask my parents–it was still Broadway!)

For navigating the generalized open emotional wound of being aware that my father is navigating through the last stage (months? weeks? days?) of his life.  Sometimes all tears need in order to emerge is a portal.  And then they flow from many sources.

And perhaps most poignantly, for the era through which the fictional Tevye’s actual descendants are living.  For the sense that somehow the Cossacks always come and destroy the wedding.  For the fear on Jason-Alexander-qua-Tevye’s face as the Russian/Ukrainian extends his hand at the tavern on the night he makes the deal with Lazar Wolf. Is this Russian…a lamb, or the real wolf? Can he trust that if he takes his hand to dance, he won’t be devoured? Is there any antidote to his powerlessness? (Yes…and it came to life in 1948.)

For wondering how many Fyedkas there really are out there.

For wincing as the actor who played the rabbi erred on the side of slapstick, rather than pathos. Or at least that’s how the audience reacted to him, missing the full weight of his lines, seeing him as a Disney-esque caricature, rather than a personage who carries on his shoulders the burden of the present and the future of the Jewish people.

At the end, as they plan to leave Anatevka (or Amsterdam. Or Kiryat Shemona. Or…could it ever be Los Angeles?)…someone addresses the rabbi, “Rabbi. We have been praying for the Messiah to come for so many years. Wouldn’t this be a good time for him to arrive?” The question is an achy, awful question, redolent with thousands of years of wandering-while-hoping and praying-while-surviving.  The question is scrawled on the walls of barracks in Auschwitz/Birkenau, and etched into (nearly) every Jewish heart. The actor who played the rabbi, IMHO, blew the response. He borscht-belt-ed it. “Vell? I guess ve’ll hev to vait for him somvere else!” 

The audience chuckled. 

I bawled.  

Because so little of the audience, whoever gathered in this southeast corner of LA county (most of whom, by their looks, were not Pico-Robertson Jews. And that’s a good thing. I LOVE that such a diverse crowd is/was drawn to this story. But they just can’t get 1/10th, 1/100th of the nuance and impact)…just has any gosh-darn understanding of why that question, and that answer, reveals how important the State of Israel is. And how and why the Jewish people will respond, must respond, so overwhelmingly when our enemies tell us, show us and blood-let us their determination to make sure that we will have to leave Jerusalem and Tel Aviv just as we left Anatevka. How many present last night understand that when we see our campuses erupt in vile antisemitism, veiled as “just” anti-Zionism, it redoubles, quintuples our certainty that Israel must emerge stronger, not weaker? More secure, so that its Jewish inhabitants will never be forced to pack up their belongings, sell their homes, and march lugubriously off the stage as the fiddler dances and plays his tune.

I hope Perchik found a way to keep Hodel warm in Siberia, and that by leaving it in God’s hands, Tevye did see them again.

I hope Tevye and Lazar Wolf met up in Chicago.

I hope Yente made it to the Promised Land, and helped in her own way to make the desert bloom, with love and companionship.

I hope Fyedka and Chava, whatever my torn emotions may be about their bond, found and modeled the most noble version of a fused life and culture, and I remain inspired that they, too, could not stay even if they were technically permitted to.

I hope Sprintze and Bielka were not raped and murdered by marauders as they journeyed by foot with their family, finding the next place they could temporarily call home.

I hope the good people in La Mirada last night understood in some meaningful way that the Jews have never established a foothold in places like Anatevka, and then were permitted to live there in perpetuity.

I hope the good people in La Mirada last night understood in some meaningful way that the Jews have never established a foothold in places like Anatevka, and then were permitted to live there in perpetuity.

The constable always shows up. Pogroms are always papered over by some as “unofficial demonstrations.”  There are only so many times Tevye can yell indignantly “Get off my land…” until he has to go find a new place to sell his milk.

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld is Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth Am