Snow, Shtetls, and pogroms.

The rehearsal today is snowed out. Sadness. So instead I'm listening to the recordings I made last night of the alto 2 harmonies. I'm still really skeptical that my voice sounds nice in this lower register - it feels really hard, almost as though I'm fighting with it. I guess I have to learn it sometime - and this is baptism by fire.

Also doing some research on the not so pleasant "pogroms" of the late 19th early 20th century. I must confess, that even though I was a history major in college, and took a very wonderful course on Russian through the end of the Czars, I did not know what the word "pogrom" meant. So - I looked it up.

Merriam-Webster's definition is: an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically : such a massacre of Jews

Wikipedia's definition is: The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the nineteenth century.

It seems strange that wikipedia would have a more detached definition, but that is beside the point.

Apparently, the main slew anti-Jewish Pogroms began in 1881 after Czar Alexander II was assassinated. There were 15 assassins involved in the plot, ONE of whom was Jewish, the rest Christian. In such situations, people tend to create a scapegoat and a distinct "other" or "enemy" and in this case, the Russian press pushed the Jews under the wagon. While some pogroms were spontaneous, most of them were apparently incited by the Russian authorities. (Hence the constable in FIDDLER warning Tevye about a possible pogrom - which sadly would take place on Tzeitel's wedding day - during the wedding.)

I found a lovely engraving of a pogrom - where the Russian beat and poke and stab the Jews with pitchforks, canes, and brooms, whilst cossacks on horseback beat them with batons. Thousands of Jews were killed during these pogroms - and it does not look like a fun or glamorous death. It also seems a bit like the Nazis during WWII, where the cossacks claimed they were just "following orders" not anything they themselves believed in. Oh - how noble. (This is even illustrated during Fiddler, when the constable tells Tevye his is sorry for the bad timing of the pogram, it was not his decision, he is just following orders.)

This being said, it makes, in my opinion, Fyedka's decision to go against orders and break from the cossacks all the more noble. I wonder how different Fyedka is from the others throughout the play, and if this alters how Tzeitel would interact with him and view Chava's decision to marry him.

It does not seem like pogroms happened on a daily basis, but there was a fear of them. i suppose it would be similiar to walking down an empty street in Harlem alone on a dark night. You're probably safe, but be on alert, just in case. Try to stay invisible. There is US and there is THEM and just try to stay out of trouble and conflict.

I'm doing my research a little backwards. I also had to learn what the the shtetls were where these progroms were being held.

Well - as you may or may not know - "Fiddler on the Roof" takes place in a fictional town called Anatevka - (somewhere near Kiev Ukraine) in a condensed time period of 1880-1905. (The bulk of pogroms and relocation of Jews were near 1880, but other events allude to 1905 - so it's like Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" let's put the whole of the Roman Empire into 1 month.)

So - what is a Shtetl. "Shtetl" is the Yiddish word for "town." Apparently they were communities of orthodox jewish people who speak Yiddish and speak in a rhetorical style rooted in Talmudic learning. From what I can discern nearly everyone in the Shtetl was extremely poor and therefore - philanthropy between people thrives - everyone helped out where they could.

(From life is with people: the culture of the Shtetl by Zborowski and Herzog):

The shtetl operates on a communal spirit where giving to the needy is not only admired, but expected and essential:

The problems of those who need help are accepted as a responsibility both of the community and of the individual. They will be met either by the community acting as a group, or by the community acting through an individual who identifies the collective responsibility as his own... The rewards for benefaction are manifold and are to be reaped both in this life and in the life to come. On earth, the prestige value of good deeds is second only to that of learning. It is chiefly through the benefactions it makes possible that money can "buy" status and esteem.

This approach to good deeds finds its roots in Jewish religious views, summarized in Pirkei Avot by Shimon Hatzaddik's "three pillars":

On three things the world stands. On Torah, On service [of God], And on acts of human kindness.

This does make a lot of sense within the context of FIDDLER. Everyone does seem to help out when they can - grudges exist - but seem to be overlooked and overcome in times of trouble. (Lazar Wolf DOES offer five Sabbath chickens to Tzeitel - after he is rejected for Motel.) Everyone does work to please God - they do what they feel God would want them to do - none of the Jews are malicious or greedy - just hopefully - accepting - and hard working.

I found this excerpt interesting too:

Material things were neither disdained nor extremely praised in the shtetl. Learning and education were the ultimate measures of worth in the eyes of the community, while money was secondary to status. Menial labor was generally looked down upon as prost, or prole. Even the poorer classes in the shtetl tended to work in jobs that required the use of skills, such as shoe-making or tailoring of clothes. The shtetl had a consistent work ethic which valued hard work and frowned upon laziness. Studying, of course, was considered the most valuable and hard work of all. Learned yeshiva men who did not provide bread and relied on their wives for money were not frowned upon but praised as ideal Jews.

Tevye likes to THINK of himself as a very learned man - and I think his family regards him as one. Motel is NOT a learned man - but he does work a job that provides a useful service - tailoring. He is also in "the poorer classes" of the shtetl - so - Tzeitel is - very poor. (It does not say where "Dairy Man" falls in this caste system.)

The Jewish Virtual Library provided me with this useful bit of information:

The Home

The home of the individual was the basic unit in the culture and life style of the shtetl; it was founded on a patriarchal and closely knit structure on traditional lines. His home was the place where the shtetl Jew enjoyed his Yidishkeyt in the serenity and peace of Sabbath, in the rituals of the Passover seder, or in the dignity and holiness of the High Holidays. It was where he derived the nakhes – the proud pleasure – from the achievement of his children, the son, or the son-in-law. There he fed the stranger on Friday, and provided meals to the poor student in the yeshivah. However the home was also part of the community, and hardly any important activity at home was separable from the synagogue or the total community. Birth and death, bar mitzvahs and weddings, illness and recovery, were family events which tied the home to the synagogue, and by extension to the community. No family event was a private event, for life in the shtetl was life with people, and therefore part of the total community life. Family joys, as well as family sorrows, were shared by the community, which had the right and duty to express its approval or disapproval about the conduct and behavior of the family as a whole or of each of its members. Thus community control over the life of its individual members became one of the major regulating forces in the shtetl society, which succeeded in surviving for centuries without a police force to maintain its internal law and order.

I was always just thought that the characters in FIDDLER were stereoptyped caricatures of gossipy Jews always up in everyone's business. Knowing that everyone's "Private" business was actually the business of the synagogue gives it a whole new meaning. It also makes it all the more important to lead an honorable philanthropic life - abiding by all the laws that would make one a "good Jew." No secrets here. I don't think this created a sense a paranoia or annoyance - but more of compassion - and drive towards living by the Talmud.

In my research I learned that women were very often both the man AND woman of the household. Since learning was so revered - men would often go study, while women earned money AND did the household chores. They were also pregnant for most of their childbearing years - so - it was no easy task being a woman! Additionally, apparently men could file for a divorce for any reason at any time - and the woman would be powerless. Usually the crime was "rebelliousness" or inability to bear children.

Regarding education - women of Tzeitel's generation would have been education enough to read Tiddish. Apparently there were special schools throughout the Russian empire where they could go and the wealthiest would even learn foreign languages. These are mentioned in "TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN." Tevye mentions that these school exist but he is too poor to send any of this girls there. However, he does the best he can and tries to get tutors to come to the house - tutors such as Perchik.

The virtual Jewish Library also mentions this:

"Seductive secularization" gradually led to ruptures within traditional society well into the first three decades of the 20^th century. The most extreme form of rejection was conversion to Christianity and marriage with Christian partners; not surprisingly, women constituted a disproportionate number of Jewish converts in the late 19^th century. Another venue of rebellion was to join a revolutionary movement. Women participated actively in the Bund, various branches of the Zionist movement, as well as general Russian and Polish socialist groups.

This would relate to Chava and inform how we all react to her running off. In the book - Chava DOES indeed convert to Christianity. It is not mentioned in the play. I wonder what we will decide - and how we will treat the issue. My modern day mind says Tzeitel would be ok with it - but perhaps that observation is anachronistic.

Well that's enough Russian Jewish history for now. Hope you learned something.