#yiddish fiddler on the roof

[anonymousdandelion]

The fundamental difference between Fiddler on the Roof and Fidler Afn Dakh:

English Tevye: Tradition!

Yiddish Tevye: Got iz a foter un heylik iz zayn toyre!

[anonymousdandelion]

Courtesy of the lyrics to Fidler Afn Dakh (Yiddish Fiddler)

since the yiddish for little bird is faygeleh, whenever i think of chavaleh (little bird) from fiddler my brain replaces 'chavahleh' with 'faygeleh'

[edenfenixblogs]

My post earlier today got L’Chaim stuck in my head. So I decided to finally listen to the Yiddish soundtrack to Fiddler. Holy shit. I was not prepared for how emotional it made me.

I played Hodel in the traditional stage show, so it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the story at all. But man. To hear it in the Yiddish…

I can’t even put it into words. It’s so vivid. In English it was easy to imagine these people as representations of my own relatives, which is of course the point. But in Yiddish…it’s almost like a science fiction look into an alternate future where Yiddish speakers weren’t all but wiped out and we had a thriving Yiddish-language culture in America.

It imagines a future where it wasn’t tragically obvious what happened to Chava and Fyedka’s children and grandchildren in Krakow.

It imagines a future where Siberia wasn’t as dreadful for Hodel and Perchik as we all knew it would be.

It imagines a future where maybe Tzeidel and her family were able to return to Anatevka rather than getting word in America about which of her sisters and sisters’ children and families didn’t survive.

I just…wow. I don’t have words for it.

[annebrontesrequiem]

Okay who was going to tell me that Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish is hands down the best new musical I've listened to in at least a year

[zooptseyt]

Tevye's in Smash

[unganseylike]

whilst wandering the stacks in library at midnight procrastinating thesis i randomly came across a yiddish poetry section and read a v nice poem that was what i needed at that moment. but now i cant find it online and i cant imagine that ill randomly come across the right book and page again

[supercantaloupe]

not to be an annoying theater kid on main like old times but i’m going up to nyc tomorrow to see a show and i am very excited

[stranger-in-a-strange-new-world]

Thinking about how Tevye says "if I bend that far I will break" when what he means is "who am I without my tradition? If you marry this man what does that make me? How do I bend between the thing that keeps me upright and my child? If I break then I loose my identity and my life becomes as shaky as a fiddler on the roof."

[scottstiles]

topol noooooooooooo :((((

[travsd]

Sholem Aleichem on Stage and Screen

I came across this photo of Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovich, 1859-1916) months ago and held on to it ’til now because I was kind of awestruck by how contemporary he looks. It’s not just this photo, I’ve come across dozens of pictures of him that evince the same quality. Appearances are superficial, and yet it may be that he embodies something eternal that others have wished to emulate. I…

[anonymousdandelion]

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the fact that, in the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof, in "Shadkhnte, Shadkhnte" ("Matchmaker, Matchmaker"), the line which in the English version is:

"For Papa, make him a scholar"

becomes

"Der Tate, darf oyf a minyen"

or, in other words:

"My Dad needs him for a minyan"

[ai-dont-care]

im learning ktav ashuri and hangul on duolingo and im insane bc im finding ktav ashuri to be easier than hangul

[unsolicited-opinions]

I love this, @jewishgay4il, because some words can be all three!

Take "Chutzpah," for an example of a word which is Hebrew, Yiddish, AND English.

It's a word from Mishnaic Hebrew which is written the same way in Yiddish: חוצפה

The word has enjoyed such utility in the Anglophonic world that is has absolutely become an English Language cognate, appearing in all major English language dictionaries, including the OED.

Here are some broad strokes for those interested (I'd welcome additions/corrections if I get anything wrong here!)

Yiddish is mostly High German, with a lot of vocabulary borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic, some Slavic influence, and a smattering of Romance languages, but spoken Yiddish can be mostly comprehensible to a native speaker of modern German. However, because Yiddish is written using Hebrew characters, written Yiddish is unreadable to native readers of German.

I remember being in Hebrew school, coming across a book written in Yiddish, and trying to sound out the words as I would with Hebrew. This baffled me until I realized it was using Hebrew characters to represent the phonemes for pronouncing Germanic sounds/words.

Okay, just a little trivia about a distant relative who was, it seems, beloved in US Yiddish culture: Zvee Scooler.

If you've seen the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof, you've seen Zvee. In this scene, Zvee plays the Rabbi of Anatevka, and offers a blessing for the Czar:

Zvee acted in both Yiddish and English theater, television, and film, but my grandmother told me she was especially fond of hearing her cousin Zvee on WEVD Yiddish radio as he presented, every Sunday from the 1930s until at least the 70s, a 10-minute Yiddish-language segment made up of news and commentary in rhyming Yiddish verse, called "Der Grammeister" ("The Rhyme Master") on the radio show, Forward Hour.

The Forward Hour was produced by The Jewish Daily Forward, a daily, socialist, Yiddish-language newspaper founded in 1897. In the 1920s the circulation of The Forward was greater than that of The New York Times.

The English version of the Forward started in 1990. Since 2019, The Forward publishes only online, in both English and Yiddish.

Jewish culture is...infodumping about Jewish culture...?

not knowing if some words you say are hebrew, english, or in yiddish

.

[thewynne]

Are there like... any indie rock bands that have a song or two in Yiddish

[comepraisetheinfanta]

[supercantaloupe]

i think it's antisemitic that this theater is only half full