{"id":12153,"date":"2015-04-24T00:05:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T07:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=12153"},"modified":"2015-04-23T17:35:43","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T00:35:43","slug":"nostalgias-place-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/04\/24\/nostalgias-place-in-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia\u2019s place in progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were no doubt many emotions surrounding the Israel Prize this year: disdain over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intervening to disqualify some judges apparently on ideological grounds, pride for the winners and disappointment among those forgotten. Even Chaim Topol, this year\u2019s Israel Prize winner for lifetime achievement, said he had mixed feelings about his victory since other deserving candidates have been shut out in recent years. And for those who think about Topol in what is his most popular role, that of Tevye in the 1971 film (and some of the stage productions of) Fiddler on the Roof<\/em>, there is likely one other emotion: nostalgia.<\/p>\n

Nostalgia often gets a bad rap when it is talked about in the context of social maturity. But as I\u2019ve argued elsewhere, the collective experience of nostalgia can also be a source of psychological sustenance for mourning an apparently simpler past in order to embrace a more complex present. In 20th-century Jewish popular culture, nowhere has this been more apparent than in the case of Fiddler<\/em> on the Roof.<\/p>\n

This was a time of emerging feminism and rising divorce rates. Races, religions and ethnicities were mixing as never before. The nature of Jewish religious practice was becoming viewed as a personal choice \u2013 something that Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen have described as the emergence of a \u201cJewish sovereign self.\u201d On this backdrop, Fiddler<\/em>\u2019s audiences were given a \u201csafe space\u201d \u2013 in today\u2019s parlance \u2013 to mourn patriarchy, cultural homogenization, and collective adherence to folkways and cultural conventions.<\/p>\n

Consider the dream sequence. In presenting his concocted reverie as a divine omen in order to convince Golde that Tzeitel should marry Motel, Tevye pulls a trick out of the bag of shtetl superstition. And the conceit works. Though we know it\u2019s a ruse, we become caught up in the ghoulish spin of the costumes, choreography and music. For a few minutes, we bid farewell to outmoded beliefs and traditions without feeling that we are abandoning our past commitments outright.<\/p>\n

Or the ironic and comical number \u201cMatchmaker, Matchmaker,\u201d where the comfort of convention is as thrilling for the daughters initially in the show, as is their fierce independence by the end.<\/p>\n

Or Tevye conceding in the prologue that he doesn\u2019t know the origin of some of the community\u2019s customs. As Judaism becomes increasingly infused with contemporary values \u2013 the ecological dimension of powering down on Shabbat; the blending of new food politics with kashrut and the search for personal spirituality \u2013 Tevye\u2019s proverbial wink directed at the audience allows us to keep one foot in the present of personal autonomy and choice, while the other dips into the comfortable past where automatic adherence to Jewish tradition formed the bonds of community.<\/p>\n

American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick complained that Fiddler<\/em> portrayed Sholem Aleichem\u2019s stories as \u201cnaive,\u201d with \u201cthe occasion of a nostalgia for a sweeter time, pogroms notwithstanding.\u201d Fiddler<\/em>\u2019s Broadway director and choreographer Jerome Robbins was concerned about the play appearing overly nostalgic, writing to his costume designer that he didn\u2019t want audiences viewing the characters \u201cthrough the misty nostalgia of a time past….\u201d<\/p>\n

For allowing Americans to come to terms with a changing America, however, and for American Jews to reflect on the rapid changes within their own communities, the nostalgia in Fiddler<\/em> has been important. As Stephen J. Whitfield has written in his history of the show, Fiddler<\/em> \u201chad the advantage of distance: play-goers were far enough removed to memorialize without honoring any particular claims it might make, and without submitting to any moral mandates it might demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thinking about the role of Fiddler<\/em> in today\u2019s Jewish landscape, I think about the constant tensions between history and tradition on one hand, and modernity and contemporary values on the other. This has been especially important in how Jewish communities negotiate difference.<\/p>\n

From the ashes of the Holocaust, the Zionist struggle for sovereignty and postwar North American Jews fighting against prejudice and discrimination, Jewish concerns now include many additional tensions. There\u2019s intermarriage \u2013 how to broaden the tent enough to include intermarried families who may wish to be part of the Jewish people, but not so much that the meaning of being Jewish is lost; increased women\u2019s ritual participation in North American synagogues and in public space in Israel; and LGBTQ Jews looking to take their place in Jewish communities. For their part, Israelis struggle \u2013 not hard enough, perhaps \u2013 to honor their state\u2019s Jewish identity while extending full equality to the Palestinian minority and contending with the ongoing occupation, all while confronting the difficult plight of African refugees and asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n

With Passover just behind us \u2013 and, for many, its nostalgia-drenched experience of gathering around the seder table \u2013 we might pause to consider how to navigate the uncertain waters of change while being anchored by tradition. And yes, a little nostalgia now and then might just help.<\/p>\n

Mira Sucharov<\/strong> is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and <\/em>the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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There were no doubt many emotions surrounding the Israel Prize this year: disdain over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intervening to disqualify some judges apparently on ideological grounds, pride for the winners and disappointment among those forgotten. Even Chaim Topol, this year\u2019s Israel Prize winner for lifetime achievement, said he had mixed feelings about his victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3638,3299,3639],"class_list":["post-12153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-change","tag-fiddler-on-the-roof","tag-tradition"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}