Comments on: Getting Our Jewish Rage On

By: Mike 71

Mike 71 — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 02:50:54 +0000

Re: the “Lenin-Ono” grant for peace:

Rachel Corrie did her part to reduce the incidence of stupidity in the human gene pool!

Bulldozer: 1; Useful Idiot: 0

By: Inessa

Inessa — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 12:31:49 +0000

Actually, all the Jewish people in the villages only spoke in Yiddish. Hebrew wasn’t really taught as a language, rather the Talmud was taught in heder to boys. Children were forbidden from going to schools with Russian children, and the Jewish schools were fully conducted in Yiddish. They were allowed to join high school with Russian children (more like college) and had to then learn Russian to go to this. So it would be appropriate for literature and plays to be written in the language of the people.

By: Inessa

Inessa — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 12:24:58 +0000

Intermarriage was the one thing that was unacceptable in Russia, even more than in US. The religion went pretty quickly, but the Jewish identity remained. For example, in just 70 years, since revolution, my grandparents completely abandoned any concept of shabbat, kashrut, but they only spoke Yiddish to each other, and everyone in their town knew if they belonged to Ukrainians or Jews. They mixed, but not blended. As for intermarriage, I grew up, an only child, knowing that if I married someone non-Jewish, my mother would sit shiva for me.

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:43:23 +0000

By the way, the part I most liked in the play was the song “Do you love me”, which I think pretty much nails the Jewish attitude towards love (certainly mine). And the throwaway line about the prayer for the Czar is actually a good description of the traditional prayer for the government, if you look at the double meanings. In my opinion we should say it here in Israel also, both those who use the new paryer and those who don’t say one at all.

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:39:46 +0000

By the way, as written on Shalom Rabinowitz’ gravestone, he wrote for those who read Yiddish as opposed to Hebrew, which meant the commmon people and women. Thus he wrote sob stories.

In the stories, one of his daughters marries a rich man, who sends the revolutionary to Japan to take care of his business there, so as not to be an emabarrasment. He is going to send Tevye to Israel (same reason), but then he loses all his money and he goes to America “where the poor people go”. Motel the Tailor dies of the “tailor’s disease” (TB?), and his eldest comes to live with him with the baby. Another daughter kills herself.

At the end of the series, as they are preparing to leave and wander all over Russia,(Golde having, in Tevye’s words, the good sense to die first) his eldest brings home Chava, and he finally takes back his repentant daughter. Not quite like the play or the movie.

And of course the title is just from a Chagall painting, and puzzling if you haven’t seen it.

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:30:26 +0000

Interesting. Not going to agrue with someone who’s been there, but perhaps we’re looking at different things.

I was referring more to the plays. The film actually took the jokes on the Rabbi to jokes by the Rabbi, used real prayers, and so forth.

A female matchmaker (pretty much unheard of there, in fact it Hebrew you have to say “Shadchanit”), mixed dancing “is not exactly forbidden” (only by every book on the subject ever written, and I agree it was becoming an issue), and the crowning point, intermarriage as the one thing that was unacceptable, very much in the spirit of the US at the time the play was written.

I will admit that the latter – with Chava, which translates to “Eve” – was in the original stories, but while in the play Chave asks him to accept her intermarriage, in the story she runs away from her gentile husband and asks her father to take her back, which (it is inferred, he won’t say) he refuses to do, and leaves his deaughter (who to him his dead, he’s seen a ghost, so to speak) in the forest.

By: Inessa

Inessa — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:45:42 +0000

As for Non-Jews playing Jewish parts – that pretty much happens in all musical theatre. Do actors in The Mikado need to be Japanese? Should Les Miserables performers be French? Besides, it’s another example of the fact that we are givers. We create, and share it with the world.
As for the film or play representing view of assimilated Jews, my grandparents lived in a small town in Ukraine, and I stayed with them as a small child. My great grandfather was a kosher butcher, and was like the mayor of town (also the mohel). I have to say, that years after revolution, and with no outward signs of Jewish practice (ie clothes, kippot), they still pretty much nailed the Jewish life in these towns. Besides, it was based fairly closely on Sholem Aleichem’s writing.

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:29:54 +0000

Won’t work, not for us, not for Christians. When Chareidim demontrate, the press just shows the violent stuff. And I presume you know what happened in Migron. It all depends who is doing it.

Also, they know we aren’t really likely to kill anyone. Or rape, for that matter. Both were done to the ambassador.

The rationales that this wasn’t free speech (or more correctly, free press) were absolutely disgusting.

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:25:30 +0000

assimilated

By: mzk1

mzk1 — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:25:15 +0000

How about the fact that for years, major Jewish parts were only played by non-Jews. Even in the late, unlamented, “bridget love Bernie, Bernie was the Gentiles.

You honestly think Fiddler on the Roof protrayed anything but the worldview of two assimalated Jews of the period? Although the movie was much better.