Two performance events added immeasurably to my understanding of the events in my grandfather Salomon’s life . The first is a film, Memoir of a War, but more poignant is the title in French, La Doleur. Written by Marguerite Duras who also wrote The Lover,r it painfully shows how difficult it is for the ones who are waiting on word about the survival of loved ones during and after the war is over.
How my uncle Julius wrote letter after letter inquiring after the fate of his brother Wolf and his father!
How my parents waited for those thin blue envelopes to arrive from Switzerland with any news of the parents’.
Yesterday I was privileged to see Fidler Aufn Dach. Otherwise known as Fiddler on the Roof. Played and sung with full orchestral accompaniment in Yiddish language on the stage in the new home of the Folksbiene Players at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the waterfront facing the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Super titles in Russian and in English assisted those with no Yiddish. The spellbound audience understood every word, song and nuance. The performance was sold out and the play will be held over for an extra month.
The poignancy of the story comes alive in Yiddish on the smaller stage in this acoustically amazing venue. How the lives of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century were as precarious as a fiddler playing his music on the roof! The familiar story of the changes Tevye experiences as the head of a family of five daughters has moments of mirth and joy while showing how quickly life was changing as his daughters were growing up. Economically times were tough. They sing that by twelve each boy had learned a trade. The need for these trades diminished as the sewing machine came into broad use. Motl is proud his shirts will be sewn by machine. So many tailors will be put out of business. The role of women was changing. The Torah was the backbone of their lives, but the role of the all knowing rabbi was decreasing in the wake of political
The pogroms which my grandparents and his family experienced were dramatically explained, as the local officers told the family in advance what was going to happen about which they had no control.
And then the people were forced to leave their small town and move wherever they would be accepted.
I do know my grandparents moved from their small town in Poland after one of these pogroms to the big city of a Frankfurt, Germany in 1919. Oy Gevalt! Give us strength.
Change is continual, progress often hurts the poor as their labor is being done by technology. How these populations are treated is our responsibility. New training and compassion are as sorely needed and missing now as they were one hundred thirty years ago.
How my uncle Julius wrote letter after letter inquiring after the fate of his brother Wolf and his father!
How my parents waited for those thin blue envelopes to arrive from Switzerland with any news of the parents’.
Yesterday I was privileged to see Fidler Aufn Dach. Otherwise known as Fiddler on the Roof. Played and sung with full orchestral accompaniment in Yiddish language on the stage in the new home of the Folksbiene Players at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the waterfront facing the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Super titles in Russian and in English assisted those with no Yiddish. The spellbound audience understood every word, song and nuance. The performance was sold out and the play will be held over for an extra month.
The poignancy of the story comes alive in Yiddish on the smaller stage in this acoustically amazing venue. How the lives of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century were as precarious as a fiddler playing his music on the roof! The familiar story of the changes Tevye experiences as the head of a family of five daughters has moments of mirth and joy while showing how quickly life was changing as his daughters were growing up. Economically times were tough. They sing that by twelve each boy had learned a trade. The need for these trades diminished as the sewing machine came into broad use. Motl is proud his shirts will be sewn by machine. So many tailors will be put out of business. The role of women was changing. The Torah was the backbone of their lives, but the role of the all knowing rabbi was decreasing in the wake of political
The pogroms which my grandparents and his family experienced were dramatically explained, as the local officers told the family in advance what was going to happen about which they had no control.
And then the people were forced to leave their small town and move wherever they would be accepted.
I do know my grandparents moved from their small town in Poland after one of these pogroms to the big city of a Frankfurt, Germany in 1919. Oy Gevalt! Give us strength.
Change is continual, progress often hurts the poor as their labor is being done by technology. How these populations are treated is our responsibility. New training and compassion are as sorely needed and missing now as they were one hundred thirty years ago.
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