#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.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Abi Gezunt was released in 1938 in the Polish film Mamale, but the Barry Sisters (US artists, given names Minnie and Clara Bagelman) recorded their version in 1957:

I love the Barry Sisters version. For comparison, here's the 1938 original, performed by Molly Picon (US actor, given name Malka Opiekun) in the Polish film Mamale:

More on the Barry Sisters

More on Molly Picon

You've probably seen Molly Picon perform before. She played Yente the matchmaker in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof.

[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

[thewynne]

Is there Yiddish music that is neither klezmer nor a labor song and is possibly younger than 50 years old

[hanukkitty]

yiddish and yiddishkayt and ashkenazi culture feel so cozy in my soul. i'm feeling embarrassingly mushy about it

[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

.

[traumaticemphaticfantastic]

I have been concocting a new art style over the course of this year! But don’t worry, this style isn’t replacing my old one, it is actually just a secondary art style for when I feel like I want to try something different or need a different “Vibe” as it were. And today I want to present to you the first two true pieces that I completed with the finalized aesthetic!

The first piece (Left) is called “Mr. Velt-Wide” and it is meant to be a more positive or playful take on the diaspora, as I am a part of the diaspora and I quite enjoy it! The piece depicts a Jewish man wearing all black holding a suitcase with a Magen David on it, he is tipping his hat and winking at the observer, a big smile on his face, as he balances on a globe of the Earth, taking one big step from one continent to another. Behind the man is the Moon and the void of space with a few stars dotted about, and in big stylized text it says “Mr. VELT-WiDE.” The word “Velt” in Yiddish translates to “World” and is derived from the German word “Welt.”

The second piece is titled “Jewish Man 1” and is a simple portrait of a young Jewish man, he has a beard and a darkness surrounding his eyes, his styled to look old-fashioned, with one of those old-style blazer jackets with the leather elbows, I was inspired to give him this particular jacket because I rewatched Fiddler On The Roof and saw Perchik (Who’s my favourite character) wearing one. As for the rest of the outfit, the man wears a simple vintage cap, a white button-up shirt, and his pants and shoes are more stylized, coloured in black and with no separation of the pant leg and shoes. The man stands on an impressionistic, almost abstract snowy background and surrounding his head is a rather messily painted black square, he stares into the camera, a neutral, if not solemn look upon his face.

I’m quite happy with these two pieces, and with the style I have created. I would like to credit the artist Eugene Ivanov on the stock photo website dreamstime.com (Sorry for not adding the link to his page the feature is not working for me right now) and also thank him for his amazing selection of incredible Jewish art, it inspired a lot of this art style for me and his work is just leagues better than anything I could come up with myself.

I hope you like these pieces as much as I do, I’ve actually made a few more in this new style very very recently that I’m just so excited to show off so keep an eye out for that! But anyways, that will be all for today! Be well all of you, good morning, afternoon, evening, or night!

[eretzyisrael]

by Shiryn Ghermezian

Anti-Israel protesters in London were accused of antisemitism for harassing theatergoers who were attending a production on Monday of the famed 1964 musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

As seen in videos shared on social media, the protesters held Palestinian flags and gathered at a cafe next to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Some of them confronted patrons of the theater and one male protester, who had a black and white keffiyeh draped on his shoulders, yelled at theatergoers “Bye Zios!” Another male protester shouted “Palestine will live forever,” told “Fiddler” ticket holders “you are an embarrassment to England,” and criticized one Israel supporter for being “a Zionist.”

The performance reportedly proceeded as planned after the protest at the cafe.

“Fiddler on the Roof,” which has also been adapted into a film of the same name, has no connection to Israel. Its protagonist is a Jewish milkman named Tevye who wants to preserve his family’s traditions in a tiny village, also known in Yiddish as a shtetl, in imperial Russia in 1905 while aiming to marry off his five daughters, who each challenge his traditions. “Fiddler on the Roof” features the famous songs “If I Were A Rich Man,” “Tradition,” “Matchmaker,” and “Sunrise, Sunset.” The theater’s content advisory warns audiences that the play includes “themes of displacement and some scenes of violence and antisemitism.” All but two of the characters in the play at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre are Jewish.

The production is playing at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre from July 27-Sept. 21.

“The play has nothing to do with Israel. It has nothing to do with Zionism. Targeting a symbol of Jewish culture shows that these people hate Jews,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement wrote in a post on X/Twitter.

[jewishsimming]

So I have been doing some thinking and research about my shtetl idea.

For those of you who don't know, a shtetl is a Yiddish word (Jewish-Germanic language) for a small town. Specifically the term refers to small towns in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe, usually (but not always) in the Pale of Settlement - countries like Poland, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine etc - but I believe also included some parts of the Austrian Empire and Hungary?). These towns were not entirely Jewish but a lot of them were majority Jewish. So I'm thinking agricultural, artisan, small town mentality where everyone knows everyone else's business and there's class tension.

(If you want a pop culture frame of reference, Fiddler on the Roof's Anatevka is a fictional shtetl).

I'm just trying to think of where to put it. I want to say Henford-on-Bagley but I'm not sure.

It'd have to be a modified Decades Challenge. With respect to the original rules, they are very American-centric and Christian-centric and focus more on a middle or upper class situation, especially with regards to women not being able to work (lower and middle-class women do not have the option not to work, mostly).

IDK. I'm having a good think about it. I feel like modified rules could also lend itself to a generic Small Town Challenge without it having to be Jewish (but making it Jewish makes it more fun).

[shmuel-ben-sarah-kcd2]

poorly constructed intro post

Sholem Alechem! You don’t need to know my name. You don’t need to know my age. All you need to know is that I need to talk to people about the media I’ve hyper focused on.

PFP by the lovely @malonowar

media (and Relevant Characters):

Kingdom Come Deliverance II. Specifically Samuel (duh). He’s my everything. I need to rant about the Jewish condition in medival Bohemia (and Europe in general.) expect mad rambling.

X-Men: Max Eisenhart/Erik Lensherr/Magneto. He’s a Polish Jew and yall can fight me, I’m making him an Ostjuden if it kills me. My favorite fictional terrorist.

Fiddler on the Roof: I mean, all Yiddish language media really. I beg of you, talk to me about Got Fun Nekome. And also Yentel the Yeshiva Boy. Please.

Les Miserables: what, a non Jewish thing? Shut up. Victor Hugo invented gay people. Enjolraire is cannon

Historical Dumbasses: Sholem Schwarzbard, David Frankfurter, Herschel Grynszpan. you know the drill. We could use more of them.

anyway

[edenfenixblogs]

For some reason this one really wrecked me, more than most. What a complete disregard for culture and peace.

Yiddish is a language of diaspora Jews desperately clinging to a shred of their heritage while being oppressed in Western Europe. It is the language of European Jews forced to live in shtetls. It is a language that predates modern Israel and the resurrection of Hebrew. It is the language of the diaspora in which antisemites and anti-zionists so desperately want Jews to remain. It is a language of the oppressed. It is a language of loss. It is a language of exclusion. It is a language of community. Of Jews finding each other and building community in the face of oppression.

Sholem Aleichem was a Yiddish author and playwright. His works inspired Fiddler on the Roof, a musical about literal Jewish expulsion from Russia after continued violent assault.

Additionally, the related Hebrew greeting (Shalom aleichem) means, “peace be upon you”)

Also, it nearly exact to the traditional Arabic greeting “As-salamu alaykum” which means the exact same thing. And is used by Muslims as well as Arab Jews who were expelled by Muslim countries between 1948 and 1972.

Finally, shalom aleichem is a Jewish liturgical song—one of my favorites—and it explicitly calls on G-d and angels to bring peace.

It’s used to ring in Shabbat

I cannot put into words how deeply offensive this is to me personally. I am so wounded by this.

[dragoneyes613]

Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof speaks of his people's loyalty to "Tradition" where the original Yiddish version of the story has "Torah." The change may have been unconscious but is revealing. The idea of Jewish observances being carried out because such is the Jewish way of life or the tradition is comparatively new. The classical sources prefer to speak of the Torah, which has to be followed because it is true and not because it is a way that others have tried. For the religious mind there is even a kind of betrayal in the appeal to tradition in that it might pander to ancestor worship and act as a barrier between the individual and his God. Kierkegaard, for instance, protested against the notion that he should obey the demands of his religion because millions of others had obeyed in the past. For Kierkegaard, the fact that others had obeyed was a reason for him not to obey. The religious man wishes to know what God would have him do, not what the tradition would have him do, even whe nhe sees the demands of God conveyed to him through the tradition. Rabbi S. Zevin has acutely said that in modern times some Jewish thinkers have inverted the old saying that the minhag ("custom") of Israel is Torah, so that it reads: the Torah of Israel is minhag. That is why in the later development of Jewish law not every custom of the past has to be followed and one frequently comes across such sayings as "This is a foolish custom," "This custom is unfounded," "The Hebrew word for custom (minhag) has the same letters as those of the word for Hell (gehinnom)."

The classical Jewish view in this matter is that tradition is of great value but only insofar as it serves as a means of worshiping God. Judaism as a historical religion naturally gives considerable binding force to the ways of the past because it is in these that God's will becomes revealed. There is an appeal to tradition in Moses' song (Deutoronomy 32:7):

Remember the days of old,

Consider the years of many generations

Ask thy father, and he will declare unto thee,

Thine elders, and they will tell thee.

David Gans (1541-1613), the author of Zemah David, one of the earliest works on Jewish history, quotes this verse as Biblical support for the study of Jewish history. A Talmudic interpretation (Berakhot 35b) understands the "father" in the verse: "Hear my son, the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the teaching of thy mother" (Proverbs 1:8) to be God and the "mother" the Community of Israel. Solomon Schechter's idea of "Catholic Israel" as the source of Jewish teaching and its deciding factor is based on Rabbinic views of this kind. The verse in Proverbs is also applies by the Rabbis (Pesahim 50b) to local and parental customs which are binding upon those affected by them.

In short, the Jewish tradition itself is that of Jewish tradition deriving its authority not from and in itself but from God. Tradition is helpful as a guide. It is not a god to be worshiped.

- What Does Judaism Say About...? Louis Jacobs, pages 320-321

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6aRc_XN-EE

Here’s Yossele Rosenblatt, possibly the greatest cantor who ever lived, not singing a liturgical piece.  He’s singing a Yiddish song about a political cause that was probably still fresh and urgent when this recording was made.

The song, composed by Simon Frug and Abraham Bernstein, describes the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903.  In 1903, Easter coincided with the last day of Pesach.  The local antisemitic rag, the most popular newspaper in the area (Kishinev, in what is now Moldova), had been publishing headlines like “Death to the Jews!” for quite some time, and two local children had died in the weeks leading up to Easter.  This of course led the newspaper to spread blood libel.

When Easter Sunday services ended, the people of Kishinev streamed out of the churches and commenced to murdering Jews over two full days of riots.  The news of this spread around the Jewish world like lightning, and Jewish communities in relatively safer areas like the US and the UK started running collection drives for money to help either rebuild the Jewish community of Kishinev or help the Jews emigrate.  

This song was part of the advertising around that financial drive.  It describes the blood running through the streets, mothers crying for murdered children, and the immediate need for shrouds for the dead and food for the living.  It’s very likely that Rosenblatt made this record as part of this fundraising drive.  The great publicity helped bring awareness to the danger threatening the Jews in the Russian Empire at the time -- this pogrom happened roughly two years before my grandfather was born, and around the same time that Fiddler on the Roof is set.

The 1903 Kishinev pogrom was hardly an isolated event.  There was a second pogrom in Kishinev two and a half years later, in 1905, that was part of an organized series of them that lasted for many years and inspired many families, including mine, to nope out of Europe and go to safer places like the US, the UK, the Levant, Argentina, and other countries.

[thewynne]

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