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MIRACLE OF MIRACLES: Fiddler on the Roof



 
The USA yesterday had more new COVID-19 cases than the next 10 countries combined.  Our death rate is 4.6 times that of the World.  The USA had 190,165 new cases, while China had 33.  We had 1,987 deaths.  China had none.

About the Georgia Senate run-off elections today, one factor that could make a difference is the current brouhaha between Donald Trump and the Republican leadership of Georgia.  At one time Governor Brian Kemp was Trump's #1 sycophant, who is now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.  So, anyway, if Trump's vitriol toward these Georgia Republican leaders (Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Kemp, right) turns off only 2% of Republican and Independent voters--after all these individuals have some devoted friends in the state--both Democratic Senatorial candidates will prevail.  The election will be awfully close under any circumstance.  It is that tiny margin of difference that will make the difference.

Over the past couple of weeks I recorded two PBS Great Performances:  Holiday Inn and Fiddler on the Roof.  Something about this 2016 Holiday Inn was desultory.  There was little chemistry and I almost deleted it.  But saw it to the end, disappointed.

Of course we've all seen the 1942 film with Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and White Christmas because it returns every holiday season.  Rotten Tomatoes bestowed 100/86 ratings.  However, I'm not sure when I actually last watched the whole movie.

Turns out the second recording was not the Broadway show, it was Fiddler:  A Miracle of Miracles.  It is a documentary that was released in 2019 and played in some theaters at around one hour and 32 minutes.  I was never a big fan of this show and was about to just stop watching quite early, when it really caught my attention.  And no wonder, for Rotten Tomatoes rated it 98/98.  The movie, incidentally, came out in 1971 and got 83/92 ratings from Rotten Tomatoes.  It was just over 3 hours long, and I know because after watching this documentary, felt compelled to follow through, found it, for free on Netflix and 99 cents on Prime, somewhat late at night, and stayed up until past midnight.

Fiddler on the Roof began on Broadway in 1964.  This was the beginning of a terrible time in the USA, that peaked with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968.  Thus, gaining any kind of approval seemed to be a bad idea.  Who wants to see a musical about a Russian milkman marrying off his daughters during a pogrom.  And the setting was Russia in 1905.  

Who knew much about this phase of Russian history, for in that period it was one of the most impoverished countries in Europe with landless peasants.  There was the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 1905 when the nobility reacted with force.  You were all the worse off if you were Jewish, for they were all evicted from their village to go...where?  Many went to America.

That was the setting for a musical by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, produced by Harold Prince and directed/choreographed by Jerome Robbins, about this milkman, Tevye, played by Zero Mostel, trying to marry off three of his five daughters.  There were feuds throughout the production having to do with sexual preference, religion and anti-Communist attitudes.  All it did was become the first musical to surpass 3,000 performances, winning nine Tony awards.  There have been ten revivals on Broadway and the West End in London.

Notice the fiddler on the roof?  Who is he, what does he represent?  I saw the show on Broadway and then the movie.  For half a century I thought this story was about tradition and a sad ending of families kicked off their land.  I missed the whole point, and embarrassingly so.  This was all about the breaking of tradition and the opportunity for a new life under better circumstances.  If I was so mistaken on something so simple, this made me wonder what else I've missed in my life.  This is so discombobulating.

But enough about me.  What about the miracle and the fiddler?  I was not aware that the inspiration was a 1924 painting by Marc Chagall, who was a Hasidic Jew, entitled Le Mort.  The message is timeless:  how do you balance the changing times while holding onto traditions of the past?  Why fiddle on the roof?  It's a metaphor for survival.  Tradition by Topol from the film.

What was the miracle?  Watch Miracle of Miracles.  Was it a simple yes by father, or the fact that the show was ever made?  Is it that we have survived?

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