The 2018 New York recording of Jerry Bock’s and Sheldon Harnick’s masterpiece — you know which show I’m talking about — begins like all of the others, with a solo violin.
It jigs its little figure, its instantly-recognisable 25-note theme, and we Jews know where we are — the town of Anatevka, preparing to be shown around by Tevye the milkman — and we know who we are. Fiddler On The Roof is part of us. It is one of the things that defines us, to ourselves as much as to others. And then, lead actor Steven Skybell starts to speak. “A fiddler afn dakh,” he intones , and that’s when I have issues.
Because this is the cast recording of the much-praised National Yiddish Theater Folksbien production. Its credentials couldn’t be finer; Broadway (and Jewish) royalty Joel Grey directs, lyricist Sheldon Harnick has given his enthusiastic blessing, and there’s nothing wrong with Skybell’s Tevye.
So why, after a few songs, did I switch off and — get this — turn instead to a German-language recording emanating from the Seefestispiele Morbisch festival in Austria (thank you, Spotify)? A vibrant performance to which, I might add, I listened all the way through and greatly enjoyed.
That’s right. Loved the one in German, couldn’t take the one in Yiddish. Sounds crazy, no (spot the quote)? Embracing this iconic Jewish work in the language of our former tormentors, rejecting it in a Jewish tongue. It’s not the German part of that paradox that troubles me.
German may have been the language of the Nazis, but it’s also the language of many great works that were antecedents of the Broadway musical, so one can listen as if to a German-language operetta and enjoy the fascinating classical undertones that reveals, especially with a full symphony orchestra accompanying.
But the Yiddish recording falls ugly on my ear and I’ll tell you why, and it’s the same reason that the production’s very popularity has made me a touch uneasy. Yiddish is going through a remarkable resurgence at the moment, centred around New York City in particular. In some ways, that’s wonderful.
The vast majority of Yiddish-speakers in the world were murdered in the Holocaust and to breathe life back into a language that (outside of Charedi communities) seemed on life support, surely enables us to understand a swathe of our Jewish history in a much more tactile way, as if we could feel what that world was like, as if we could touch it. I understand the value of that.
It doesn’t stop there, however. And I sense an agenda.
When I was very young, and my great-grandmother would unleash a torrent of affectionate Yiddish in my direction and I would later ask my father why we didn’t speak Yiddish, he would reply, solemnly and seriously, “Yiddish is the language of persecution.
"We needed it when we were being driven from country to country but we don’t need it anymore because now we have our home back, where they speak Hebrew. If you want to learn the Jewish language, learn Hebrew.”
I feel that today, deeply. Jews worked hard to revive Hebrew as well. We should celebrate our identity and our power of self-determination by learning our own ancient language, not a makeshift one that we pieced together from various countries to which we were exiled. Yiddish is the very definition of a people without a home.
But that idea, that vision, is bound up with a celebration of our return to Israel. And there is where I sense the divide, the agenda. It can be overstated, but increasing numbers of diaspora — especially American — Jews do not feel the deep connection to Israel that previous generations did.
As we get further from the Holocaust and the centuries of murderous antisemitism that preceded it, and as Israel has evolved into a relatively strong, largely self-sufficient nation (despite the existential threats that still surround it), it has become less present in the lives of some American Jews. Zionism in some quarters of America - has dimmed.
So some non-Zionist Jews look elsewhere for their Jewish identity. They find Yiddish, a link back to a thriving, bustling pre-Shoah culture, and they find riches there and they find pride there and they don’t have to engage with Hebrew, with its overtones of religion and Zionism.
Yet Zionism is part of who we are as Jews, a confirmation of the fact and rights of Jews as a people. Zionism is an ideal, of the kind of society for which we should strive. Israel falls short sometimes, often maybe, but we as Jews should be in that process. And Hebrew is fundamental to it.
Yiddish can be fascinating, is undoubtedly important. But it’s a relic, and — I can’t shake the worry, especially when listening to a show about our exile— it could be a threat.
