By the time you read this, my thesis is almost ready to be lodged for examination (all going well). This is the last, then, in the exploration of my past writing. If you enjoyed it, let me know, because I have nearly a thousand pieces lurking on my computer, mostly written over 25 years. Tell me what subjects you like and I’ll see what I can find.
Last week I mentioned “a Jewish view of everything.” That’s pretty much my life in the late 1990s. I’d been made redundant from my public service job and hadn’t yet given myself permission to be a writer. I knew I would, but there were two years when I needed to find out who I was after my time as a policy wonk and an activist.
I spent a lot of that time in the Jewish community and in the folk community. This led to my being recommended as historical consultant to a production of Fiddler on the Roof by the choreographer. There were newspaper articles about the production and one of the first requests (for a Jewish magazine) of something by me, myself. This is that something. Another thing is the reason for this particular production of Fiddler on the Roof. We need this attitude right now. The hate has come full circle (again) and it would be very helpful to have more people like that wonderful cast of Fiddler, learning and understanding.
Golde and Tevye – to dinner?
Being asked questions always throws a strange light on reality. Being asked questions by sixty actors and various production team members from the cast of Fiddler on the Roof gives the word “questions” a whole new meaning. Especially when the production is by Queanbeyan Players.
Queanbeyan is not well-known for its dynamic Jewish community. The few (very few) Jews who live in Queanbeyan commute to Canberra for their Jewish communal activity. When I say “commute” to Canberra, I mean drive for maybe 15-20 minutes. When I say “Canberra’ I mean the ACT Jewish Community, total membership of about 300, no rabbi, everyone active wearing as many hats as possible without collapsing of overwork. Canberra’s tiny community luxuriates in two congregations: Orthodox downstairs, Liberal upstairs -More than one of us attend both.
This production of Fiddler on the Roof is different. It is Queanbeyan Players’ answer to their immense discomfort at the rise of certain attitudes to a very large number of minority groups. The director, Vivien Arnold, feels very strongly about racism of all varieties, and sees Fiddler as a powerful vehicle for addressing many negative assumptions about culture and cultural difference. This is why they asked me to advise – not because I am an historical expert or a religious expert (I am neither) but because I know what it is like to be Jewish, and I have the research skills to flesh that out as far as the cast needs. I have family help in that endeavour, as you will see.
What this production aims to do is make the audience see that Jews are ordinary and interesting human beings and can lead a full and happy life unless forcibly prevented from doing so. In May, Canberra and Queanbeyan residents will hopefully feel, strongly, that the forcible prevention of normal living can be agonising.
Why Jews and not other groups? Because Fiddler on the Roof is such a very good vehicle. The music is wonderful fun, and the characters still have that very warm feel that is the legacy of the original stories by Sholom Aleichem. It is very easy to relate to good music and delightful people, even when they wear clothes that are different and follow rituals that are alien.
I am learning over and over again that what is ‘normal’ in Jewish life is totally unheard of outside. I am reminded over and over again that stereotypes about Jews can be subtle and often change. Little things like wine on Friday night, like the shape of havdalah candles, like the idea of pareve food, can throw non-Jews remarkably at first. On a daily basis, it is easy to forget this, as the friends and work colleagues we mix with tend to understand a lot about our lives simply through knowing us as individuals. Either that or the subjects do not come up. But when you explain such a wide range of Jewish tidbits to sixty odd people over and again, the sudden blink of the eye and the eager questions begin to mount up. It becomes a joyous task, helping people understand that we are human and non-threatening and that the rules and regulation we often live by have rhyme and reason (well, mostly).
It helps, I must admit, when I admit to ignorance and say, “Do you mind if I ask my Mum?” I had to do this with tsitsis, for example, as I could not describe how to make them for on-stage wear. Mum gave me an answer, but, being thorough, also checked it out. She collared every single Orthodox male in sight one Sunday (for some reason I envisage her doing this in the queue at Glick’s, but it is just as likely to have happened at the Jewish Museum) and asked how much of what showed in what circumstances, and what the costume people should do for the production. If you are an orthodox male and were asked the question, you will be pleased to know that the costume lady still wanted to see what the garment looked like. She could not believe that men would wear a whole garment of which only eight cords were visible. We are still arguing that one.
The differences in the production is not merely in the amount of detail being consulted. The director announced at the first full meeting of the cast that she did not want a ‘Jewish burlesque’. It is still a musical based on Sholom Aleichem’s stories. The script and songs are still old and familiar. The ghost of Fruma-Sarah has developed a love of screeching that rivals none, and Tseitl has a decidedly scornful and sarcastic manner when she answers her younger sisters in “Matchmaker”. All this is straightforward.
What is less straightforward is that the whole cast has been divided into families, given occupations and are responsible for creating their parts of the shtetl. Not just for creating viable backgrounds and raisons d’être for the family, but actually helping build their parts of the set, and furnish it, and behave towards their bits of plyboard as if they have lived there fifty years. Cast members are seldom offstage. The houses spill out into the auditorium, enveloping the audience in the village atmosphere. Even when hearts are breaking in song, the water carrier will continue to fill the water barrels, and the greengrocer’s wife will get the daily round ready for delivery.
This has resulted in such a flow of questions! I cannot answer them all. The historical ones are sometimes easier than the religious ones (yes, there were restrictions on Jewish access to State education, but that did not stop the Jewish community working towards literacy, is one answer that I have had to give over and over again) but I have had recourse to Sonya Oberman where my knowledge fails (a guide at the Jewish Museum in Melbourne, and, purely coincidentally, the mother I mentioned earlier) and to the administrator at Bentleigh Progressive Synagogue in Melbourne when I have an “Ask the Rabbi” question thrown at me (Suzie Eisfelder – she’s my sister and has no objection to acting as a go-between – I keep things in the family wherever possible!). A lot of the questions involve putting my background knowledge together in the most surprising ways. It is really astonishing how much you can find out about how your family celebrated weddings a century ago or what death customs were, when you put your mind to it.
Being an inveterate Net-hound and also a practising historian (so I’m better on Medieval cookery or on King Arthur than on most Jewish history, but at least I know how to research) has really helped. The YIVO Institute has some lovely photos on the Web which have been very useful for the costume and set design people, as have the books my family and I have scraped together. The genealogically-minded branch of my family (making use of their particular addiction has added whole dimensions to telephone conversations) helped the cast find suitable names and produced more photos and descriptions of shtetl life. For anyone interested in shtetl life, in fact, there is a world of information on the Net. Certainly enough for an amateur theatre production with a small budget. My folk studies background has paid off, as it helped me locate material for the choreographer, an Israeli dance teacher of mine, Robyn Priddle, who got me into this mess in the first place. It serves her right that she has to teach dancing to sixty singers with 450 left feet!
Right now I am in the process at tearing out my hair at the inevitable compromises that production dictates. The historian in me is desperately rebellious. We will be using modern yarmulkas, for instance (bought from Gold’s, sent up to Queanbeyan by my devoted mother) and there is a real problem in finding headgear of any sort, not to mention frockcoats. Everyone will be hatted, although the hats may not be the right ones, and all the women will have their heads covered: it was a classic moment when I told the ‘married’ women about shaving their heads. They are not willing to get that authentic. Not even the Rabbi’s wife. Mum and I had this lovely moment when we envisaged Golde’s scarf coming off during the Dream sequence, but, alas, it is not to be. Golde adamantly says that her curls are staying. And the men – well, they are reluctantly prepared to grow beards but are drawing the line at peyot. The costume team is experimenting with all sorts of fake versions. This was just when I was delighting (drat it) in the thought of 16 men wandering around the Canberra region in full turn-of -the century Ashkenazi garb. It would have been so beautiful, and so good for their acting, to be comfortable wearing the clothes. They won’t even do it to make me happy, or to give unbelievable photograph opportunities to tourists. They will practise the hats, I am told, and maybe yarmulkas.
Other things they will practise with much more pleasure. Eating challah was practised very thoroughly the first night the Sabbath Prayer scene was worked on in detail. And proper washing of hands. One cast member is making her own challah cover, to remember the show by.
Some things do not require practice. They do not even require questions. One afternoon I invited anyone in the cast around to afternoon tea who wanted to see a Jewish home in situ and make sensible decisions about mezuzot, candlesticks and so on. Every cast member who turned up was a ‘Mama’ in the production. So we have a cast which is delineating itself very naturally. The mothers do all the work.
Their questions that day went far beyond what they needed for the play. Two admitted that one of the reasons they auditioned for the production was to learn a bit more about Judaism. Ten ‘mothers’ demolished tayglach and biscuits and borrowed my cookbooks. They fell in love with the family seder plate and learned how to light Shabbos candles.
Until that session, questions had focused more on the historical aspect: what regulations were around at the time that affected Jewish life, what was the town water supply, what were houses built of? Then the cast turned to the ritual. Now there is another shift, as most people want to go beyond a formal knowledge of Judaism and understand what it is like to be Jewish.
It is a very positive form of understanding. Instead of asking about Anti-Semitism and various forms of hatred, they are getting to the nitty gritty. What do all these rituals mean? How do they affect the way Jews lead their lives? I have found myself giving practical explanations as best I can of tsedakah and of Jewish attitudes to learning and women. The symbolism of the candles at Shabbos has come up, and the reasons for kashruth. I find myself grateful to my extra-religious sister (I am well-supplied with siblings) whose dedication to Jewish learning and willingness to explain has kept a lot of the information they need somewhere in my life.
Really, this group need a Rabbi with an outstanding historical knowledge as advisor. Instead they have me. This is a worry. What is even more of a worry is that Golde and Tevye are coming to Shabbos dinner on Friday. They tell me they have some questions to ask.