Don’t Be A Fiddler on the Roof Jew

Chaim Topol, the actor who played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof—both on stage as well as in the 1971 movie—died last week, and that got me thinking about my somewhat complicated relationship with the musical and soundtrack.

To be clear, up until last week I had never heard the name, “Chaim Topol,” and—full disclosure—I have never seen Fiddler on the Roof. Yet, despite that, Fiddler on the Roof, and particularly the song, “Tradition!,” loomed large in my childhood and adolescence.

I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a boring town with a handful of other Jews. My parents sent me to Hebrew school, made sure I had a bar mitzvah, and made me skip school for the high holidays each fall. I was apathetic, although as I got older I started asking questions like, “Why are you making me do this?” My parents didn’t have good answers, which I accepted, but if I was feeling ornery or rebellious I’d push, and, inevitably, my father would sing “Tradition!” from Fiddler on the Roof, and that usually ended the conversation.

I didn’t like that answer, but I wasn’t getting any more out of my parents.

“Tradition!” didn’t explain why I had to miss school or why I was different which, especially in high school, was a very big deal.

Ok, I’ll be honest, I hated that answer. To me, singing “Tradition!” as if it meant something seemed vacuous and empty. It was a non-answer. It didn’t explain why I had to miss school. It didn’t explain why I was different, or felt different, or had to do something—or be something—that was different from everyone else, which, especially in high school, was a very big deal.

As I got older and learned something about being Jewish, it continued to boggle my mind that my father—who’s not a stupid person—had such a superficial explanation for living a Jewish life, or thought, somehow, that singing a song from a musical would be good enough for me.

But then Chaim Topol died, and as I thought about it I realized that maybe my father’s answer wasn’t so bad, or, at least, wasn’t so bad for him.

My Father’s Jewish World

My father was born in 1943. Soon after his birth, my grandfather, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, was shipped off to Europe (he crossed on D-Day) and my grandmother took her baby and moved back in with her parents.

My great grandparents lived in Brooklyn. They immigrated from Europe. Their first language was Yiddish. They had 10 children—my grandmother was number eight—and although they weren’t religious, their home was basically kosher, my great grandfather knew the Passover Haggadah by heart, and their world was overflowing with family, Jews, Jewish characters, Jewish businesses, and a vibrant Jewish community.

My father lived in that neighborhood after the War until 1950, and then my grandparents moved seven miles away to Queens. According to my great grandmother, moving was a tragedy of epic proportions—it was so far away—although my father’s new neighborhood was still very Jewish. His friends were Jewish, his classmates were Jewish, and his large extended Jewish family was just a stone’s throw away. His world was a rich, vibrant, culturally Jewish world filled with Yiddish and Jewish foods and Jewish people who remembered the old days. Judaism was everywhere.

When my father sings “Tradition!”—and he still does it, even now—it means something to him. It resonates. But feelings like that are hard to give over.

Judaism, or at least a rich Jewish identity, is in my father’s bones. He has a strong, emotional, intuitive bond to a now lost Jewish world. When my father sings “Tradition!”—and he still does it, even now—it means something to him. It resonates. It brings back a flood of memories and feelings and associations and a world he takes completely for granted.

And that’s great, but it’s emotional. It’s fuzzy and undefined. And feelings like that are hard to give over. It’s like those jokes where you had to be there: you had to be there. It touches your psyche, but is meaningless to someone lacking context or similar points of reference. And I hadn’t been there. I wasn’t in on the joke.

You Can’t Transfer Feelings

There weren’t a lot of Jews where I grew up, and almost everyone, like my grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and cousins lived an hour-plus drive away in New York or elsewhere. My great grandmother—the last link to that Yiddish-speaking immigrant community—was in a nursing home and very old. The foods I ate weren’t kosher. I wasn’t immersed in an overwhelming, all-encompassing Jewish environment. I had some Jewish friends, but many more who weren’t, and I didn’t spend my time in a rich, cultural, urban, post-War Jewish neighborhood that just oozed tradition and flavor and vibes. My friends and I went to the mall (it was the 1980s), watched cable TV, and listened to heavy metal.

A Jewish identity cannot be built on that, and it can’t be built on someone else’s emotions. You may love Jewish foods, or think Jews have a wicked sense of humor, or tear up when you talk to Holocaust survivors—and those may be important and essential to how you see yourself and your world—but that won’t resonate with your children. They won’t get it. Times change. Your favorite deli will close. Your favorite comedians will sound dated and corny. Holocaust survivors won’t live forever, and that era’s villains and symbols will be appropriated by others (they already are).

You can’t transfer feelings, and the images and songs that mean so much to you won’t mean anything to the next generation. Singing them may stir something in you, but your kids are going to wonder why you’re not answering their questions.

A Jewish identity can only be built on one thing, and that’s Jewish wisdom. Jewish wisdom is timeless and eternal and infused with meaning and depth. It’s a study, and something to talk and think about, but it’s also how you live and behave, your values, and how you treat people. It’s real. It’s tangible.

If you don’t internalize Jewish wisdom and have it oozing out of you the way herring and schmaltz oozed from the pores of your immigrant grandparents, don’t act shocked when your children don’t express any interest in being Jewish. Living a Jewish life is a choice, and no one will make that choice without a good reason to do so.

Although that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy Fiddler on the Roof (unless you’re like me, and hate Broadway musicals), just enjoy it with a sense of perspective. Your children probably won’t get it, and even if they do, they won’t get it like you do.