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Random side note from the discussion of Fiddler:
I feel like Chava (Tevye's daughter who marries a Christian & is disowned) & Feydka (her husband) are one of the clearest signs of the musical being aimed at an assimilating Jews and a much larger Christian audience.
I feel like Chava (Tevye's daughter who marries a Christian & is disowned) & Feydka (her husband) are one of the clearest signs of the musical being aimed at an assimilating Jews and a much larger Christian audience.
I feel very strongly about Chava's inclusion in the plot bc, as the child of an interfaith marriage whose mother never formally converted, it resonates very close to home for me, and there's something very heartwarming about the musical ultimately validating it.
But.
But.
The thing is, Fiddler's actual text is not especially flattering to the Gentile majority around Anatevka. Textually, they're a bunch of, at best, bigots who stand by or even participate in a brutal pogrom ruining someone's *wedding night*.
Chava's arc demands we ignore this.
Chava's arc demands we ignore this.
We don't really get any strong reason to view Fyedka very positively for most of Fiddler. As I recall from the film, he's mostly SILENT; his interactions with Chava are always distant and mostly longing gazes. This feels deliberate; he's a cipher, of sorts.
Because of Christian normativity & assumed virtue, Fyedka is given benefit of the doubt - but imagine if the film actually hammered home on the bigotry of the Gentiles around Anatevka? Strip Fyedka of his unearned individualism and virtue, and the picture turns rather uglier.
This is the perspective *Tevye* sees - as far as he's concerned, it's, by analogy, as if his daughter has functionally run off with a white supremacist gang member! The very people who torment him and his neighbors!
of COURSE he can't bring himself to give his blessing to that!
of COURSE he can't bring himself to give his blessing to that!
But Fiddler is performed for a mixed audience, and so its Fyedka must be humanized, he must represent the potential for Gentile (and specifically) Christian innocence from the collective guilt of his society for their crimes against the people of Anatevka.
That's all meta, tho.
That's all meta, tho.
"but wait, Penitent, Fyedka marries Chava, doesn't that imply he's not a bigot? that he doesn't hate Jews?"
uh, no? not at all? Chava's marrying Fyedka in a Christian ceremony in a traditional segregated society btwn Christians & Jews - she's leaving her Jewish community!
uh, no? not at all? Chava's marrying Fyedka in a Christian ceremony in a traditional segregated society btwn Christians & Jews - she's leaving her Jewish community!
This is why it is so important that we get that one last scene where Chava and Fyedka REFUSE to stay in the area of Anatevka after the Jews are expelled. "We cannot live among such people."
This is the proof - the ONLY textual proof - that Fyedka is actually a good person!
This is the proof - the ONLY textual proof - that Fyedka is actually a good person!
This key line of dialogue is what lets Teyve accept Chava and Fyedka enough to wish them well & let Golde tell them where they're going, and that warms my interfaith heart. It's lovely.
It's also the key absolution to the Christians in the audience about systemic antisemitism.
It's also the key absolution to the Christians in the audience about systemic antisemitism.
By giving Fyedka, one of the only named non-Jewish characters, this largely offscreen demonstration of his moral virtue it reassures the Gentiles in the audience their share in antisemitism is not absolute.
And this is very beautiful, very important & also very desperate.
And this is very beautiful, very important & also very desperate.
Even in an elegy for a murdered traditional Jewish culture, the narrative must fit in a desperate appeal - a token Good Christian, if you will, who gets a major demonstration of his personal virtue despite not actually having an onscreen arc or many lines of dialogue.
Idunno, it's just a surprisingly telling and interesting expression of the play's tensions and its anxieties - and by extension an anxiety common to many Jews - demonstrated so concretely in a minor barely-a-character.
