22 Comments

• Mominch

  Ugh! Shalom aleichem’s works were the biggest blasphemy- to celebrate it just seems wrong on so many levels.

  • Son of a Shliach

    To: Mom in CH: Which of Sholem Aleichem’s works have you actually read?

  • Pedant

    It’s possible that Mom in Ch doesn’t come from beitzim and knows from sources reliable to her who that author is and what message he conveyed. Only people who come from beiztim need verify everything for themselves no matter how trivial or dangerous.

• movie is not about hasids

  it is about shtetl. it is an offensive play/story to show the decimation of shtetl life in the 21st century. It may be entertaining, but it has nothing to do with religious jews, nor does it have the least of a connection to Hasidism.

• Pedant

  Fiddler on the roof, the movie, at the very least, is tragedy. It was for many yidden, for a very long time, their only ‘contact’ with frum Judiasm and it was a sham. Nobody watches that movie and doesn’t root for the meidle to go with the ivan. The Rabbi is a buffoon and nothing has any meaning beyond tradition….happily this generation has no interest in that kind of subversive claptrap.

  • Son of a Shliach

    To Pendant: I’m from this generation, and I’ve read a lot of Sholem Aleichem. Found nothing subversive, claptrap or blasphemous about this greatest Jewish storyteller. Sholem Aleichem wrote about a Jewish character Tevye der Milkhiger. “Hollywood” made a movie called Fiddler on the Roof.

    People who come from “Beitzim?” This I don’t understand.

    Which “reliable” sources does mom in CH have?

• maybe it's you

  it is a musical and there are many aspects of it which are real and were a part of European jewry so what are you all complaining about?There was a traditional life of matchmakers and there still are, intermarriage,the pogroms, shabbos etc. What was so wrong?It was a musical-that’s all and they took bits and pieces as part of the show.What was so innacurate and a tragedy?Do any of you really know what you are talking about?

  • Pedant

    No it’s you. We are acutely aware of life back in Europe because it is our very recent history and we weren’t hatched from eggs like the bulk of modern men. The shtetle as portrayed in that file was pernicious parody.

• Son of a Shliach

  To Pendant:

  “We are acutely aware of life back in Europe …”

  What sources have you used to gain this acute awareness? And specifically which part of (Eastern) Europe are you (and whoever else you speak for) acutely aware of?

  • Pedant

    Recountings of live and recently departed human beings. And memoirs of same. And you?

    Drop the sholom aleichem shtick and start reading the previous Rebbe’s memoirs.

    Modern humanities are for pretenders.

• Andrea Schonberger

  Read Shalom Aleichem’s actual stories about Tevye the Milkman–they’re nothing like the kitschy movie. Or see the original Yiddish movie which is 100 times better.

• May G-d be with you

  Is this benign?:

  At first Tevye is angry at the prospect of his daughter, Chava, marrying a goy. But they stubbornly decide to marry anyway. Later on, as they are walking away from Tevye, he tells them,”and may G-d be with you.” Chava’s sister, with a glowing, radiant smile, echos,”and may G-d be with you.”

  • Son of a Shliach

    Is this benign: Are you taking issue with “Hollywood” or Sholem Aleichem? You understand there is a difference, right? You know that the movie THE 10 COMMANDMENTS isn’t a reflection on the Chumash, right?

  • Son of a Shliach

    You know this scene you describe is from the Fiddler movie. In the Sholem Aleichem story about Chave (Tevye’s 3rd daughter) the way Tevye finds out is that after a long hard day on the road the Galach greets Tevye on the way into the village and mocks Tevye with the news about his daughter. Tevye is humiliated and broken and most of all powerless. His response is to go into his broken down hovel and tell his wife they have to sit Shiva for their (most precious) daughter.

• this has reached new depths

  are people not embarrassed at being filmed whilst being oiver a issur deoraisa and broadcasting it?

  is a chabad website really posting and advertising G-D fearing ‘hasidic’ jews watching a movie?

  viyetmu chatoim velo chotiim!

• Son of a Shliach

  To Pendant: Sholem Aleichem was born 150 years ago. There are no live or recently departed people who knew his Europe. And which memoirs are you referring to? I want to read those too.

  One of my best childhood memories is my father reading to me from Lekutei Diburim on Shabbos. I remember going to Kehos to buy my own set of Lekutei Deburim. What does this have to do with Sholem Aleichem?

  And regarding the “bulk of modern men being hatched from eggs,” surely you know what the Baal Shem Tov said about people who notice character defects in others. Could it be the “ignorance” you’re sensing is your own?

• CR

  I have seen the film several times so far. Yes, it is clearly meant as a satire of shtetl life. That said, Topol’s performance of Tevye is that of someone who is in on the joke, not the unfortunate “mark”. The same cannot be said of Sholem Aleichem’s portrayals of Tevye and others in his stories. They are, to a man, ridiculous caricatures meant to heap scorn. His worst offender, I think, was called “Sholem Shachnah Rattlebrain”. That name leaves little room for spin-doctoring.

• Son of a Shliach

  Jews are renowned for being able to laugh at ourselves. If you think “Sholem Shachnah Rattlebrain” is “heaping scorn” their may be something off with your perception. Tens of thousands of Jews attended Sholem Aleichem’s funeral in N.Y. He was beloved. He brought joy to Jews.

• Zalmy Schapiro

  very funny

• WOW

  So exciting that there are 19 mumchim, chozrim and meinichim of Fiddler on the Roof. Personally, this is a chillul shem Lubavitch, nothing one would be proud to send in to The Rebbe, certainly not what we are supposed to be occupied with.
  As a media person, we must be aware that, more than any other Chassidus, organization, movement etc., Lubavitch is in the public eye. Every shtus that a Lubavitcher says or done is immediately publicized. l’tov or l’mutov.

  We are not private people, none of us. Not only official Shluchim. The Rebbe made every home a Bais Chabad for a very good reason. Possibly to avoid blunders and shame like this.
  MOSHIACH NOW

• MaidofCH

  My first contact with Judaism was through FIDDLER ON THE ROOF & Isaac Bashevis Singer’s fiction. Both painted a slanted view of the shtetl, both by authors who left the religion although they retained ethnic ties. (Sholem Aleichem, actually, grew to regret the growing secularization.)

  Although the music of FOTR is charming, the show is irritating and dated, along with all the bagels ‘n lox stuff. I would have difficulty watching it now, or even listening to the music. At the same time, though, I would have trouble accepting the Chareidi version, especially among the Hungarians, that all the Jews in that part of the world floated around the room either praying or lighting Shabbos candles. The shtetl was in decline even before the Holocaust, or for that matter World War I, as East European Jews either assimilated or emigrated. I think Sholom Aleichem makes that point, as the second daughter marries a revolutionary. There is a little bit of mussar in FOTR, as he shows what “marrying for love” can lead to.

• ARYEH LASKEY

  WHEN I WAS a young teenager in early 70s, living and growing up in a totally not frum home , in Grand Rapids , Michigan, our family belonging to the local reformed temple, with absolutely no awareness of any other universe , my neshama was first touched and kindled by this story and musical. It truely was my first stepping stone to real true yiddishkeit….