Clara Rotter-Laitman last wrote for The Toast about things sold under the name “Great Expectations.” This post was brought to you by Aparajita Misra.
Your friends would describe you as…
a. Practical but romantic
b. Adventurous
c. A rebel
d. A lover
e. A gold-digger
What minor role did you play in Fiddler on the Roof in middle school?
a. Fruma Sarah
b. The Constable
c. Bottle Dancer
d. Avram
e. Villager #4
What would be your favorite household chore?
a. Milking a cow
b. Folding sheets with your sisters
c. Pitching bails of hay
d. Cleaning the house before Sabbath
e. Fetching water from the well
What is your favorite song from Fiddler on the Roof?
a. “Miracle of Miracles”
b. “Matchmaker”
c. “Sunrise, Sunset”
d. “Sabbath Prayer”
e. “Tradition”
Who is your main crush?
a. The bookworm from Hebrew school. He loves his mom and is saving up to buy a new sewing machine! So cute!
b. Your sexy tutor/family friend who is working on “the revolution” in the city. You could listen to her talk about new ideas and the discourse of modern times for hours….
c. The person you know you shouldn’t like and who your family will most certainly hate. He’s Christian, but it’s not like he was part of the pogroms! (At least you think he wasn’t…)
d. The guy who seems like a total dream-boat but has a horrible family who ruins everything.
e. The guy with money, clout and a completely soul-sucking job. He has a gorgeous house, but is obsessed with keeping up appearances.
When Yenta the town matchmaker and very annoying neighbor comes over, you…
a. Act polite but sneak away… Don’t want Yenta to get any ideas!
b. Listen in for the latest gossip and info. Drop hints about sexy, smart, learned guys, like the rabbi’s son.
c. Leave to take a walk. If you have to hear one more word about the dorks in your village you’ll freak out.
d. Make her some tea and get out of there, you’ll meet the right guy when you least expect it.
e. Sit at the table and pretend to fold napkins, while keeping an ear out for mention of wealthy older guys.
What are your pet peeves?
a. Your family always trying to set you up with weird, old men.
b. Your parents not being liberal enough.
c. Not getting to have a Christmas tree.
d. Flakey and/or snobby guys.
e. When all your older siblings leave and you’re all alone in the house with your parents. (Really, Hodel, you had to go to Siberia?!)
***
Mostly a: You are Tzeitl, the eldest daughter who gets engaged to Motl the tailor, behind her father’s back. This is a classic case of the oldest kid getting the strictest rules, because if Tevye could have seen what was coming with next couple daughters, he would have been pleased that Tzeitl was settling down with the town’s adorable nerdy Jewish tailor. Tzeitl is both a realist and a romantic. She never had her eye on the Rabbi’s son or anything crazy, but (perhaps like you) she wanted true love nonetheless.
Mostly b: You are Hodel, the second daughter. Hodel falls for Pertschik the starry-eyed tutor, who gets sentenced to prison in Siberia because of his political ties. She is not a drama queen about having to pack up everything and leave the life and family she loves. In the musical she sings one ballad, kisses her family goodbye and gets on the train. Hodel is a trooper, so you are likely a trooper as well.
Mostly c: You are Chava, the third daughter. She marries Khvedko, a Christian man and gets in serious trouble. Everyone has to pretend she is dead and can’t talk to her. In the end, she comes back to ask for forgiveness. Chava, like you, has strong convictions but knows when to fold her cards.
Mostly d: You are Schprintze, the fourth daughter. Actually nobody should be her because her story is really too sad. She falls for a guy with a rich snobby family who drop the bomb that they don’t want their poor milkman (Tevye) marrying into their family. Schprinze drowns herself in a nearby pond a few weeks later and everyone is devastated. Basically, she gets screwed over by a family of jerks, but her characteristics of hope and optimism for a better (richer, more comfortable) life are actually really admirable.
Mostly e: You are Beilke, the fifth daughter. She ends up with Padhatzur, a young bachelor who made a fortune in Japan. He worked his way to riches but has a serious image issue where he needs everyone to think he is amazing. So much so that he lies and tells everyone his father in law (Tevye) is very rich, when we all know he’s a milkman. One day he calls Tevye to his mansion and offers to send him out of town, to Palestine even, so Padhatzur can maintain this lie. Beilke is super sorry but says she’s not going to be like Hodel and live with no money, because they grew up in different times and have different values. Beilke chooses money over good character with her husband, but has rational, realistic reasons for her choice. Also, don’t you hate being compared with your older sister?!
***
If none of these answers sound like you then there’s a possibility that you are Teibel the sixth daughter. She is mentioned approximately one time, which shows the large impact she made on family life. She wasn’t part of the quiz because no one knows anything about her. If I could guess, I bet she ended up happiest out of all of them, because Tevye seems like the kind of person who only wrote home when there’s something to complain about. If I were you, I would go with being Teibl, except then you wouldn’t be in the movie.
Tags: clara rotter-laitman, fiddler on the roof, movies, musical theater, quizzes, the jewish people
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1. There was a sixth daughter???? Jesus, this is like finding out there was a fifth Little Woman.
2. Somewhere in my parents’ house there is a picture of me, age 12, dressed in my “Villager #4” costume, which consists of a long blue skirt from the thrift shop, a cream-coloured blouse, and a headscarf, with a very incongruous 1920s-style bob and round red glasses. It’s epic in its shame.
what kind of RICH PROFESSIONAL-GRADE JUNIOR HIGH PUTS ON PRODUCTIONS OF FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
as an 8th grade fruma sarah I COULD TELL YOU STORIES
No one said it was a good production of Fiddler on the Roof! (My junior high put on Brigadoon. Everyone got to be in it and it was amazing/hilarious. But you would not describe it as “quality theater.”)
BRIGADOON. The most boring musical of all time.
It might actually be more entertaining as put on by, like, 11-year-olds. (Highlight: the very end of the show. The “mist” (a sheer curtain, we can’t afford a smoke machine, what kind of junior high theater program do you think this is) is descending, cutting the village of Brigadoon off from the world once more. The characters are saying their goodbyes. Suddenly my classmate Jason realizes he is holding the only microphone, and has to bend over and hoist the mist back up so he can pass the microphone under it to the people staying in Brigadoon.)
EVERY JEWISH DAY SCHOOL THERE EVER WAS.
No joke. I was in it twice. Once in English, and once in Hebrew (at camp, in a forty-five minute long “production” in which double casting meant that you would have multiple people playing Tevye in the same performance. Like they would trade off the beard in the wings, and no one thought this was weird.)
A musical in Hebrew? SOUNDS LIKE CAMP RAMAH TO ME.
My elementary school put on a production, and it was neither rich, nor professional grade, and I’m quite certain very few of the redneck dirtbags in my town had never heard of nor seen the movie/play. So at least we went in with no expectations.
I caused so much trouble as the Wicked Witch in the previous year’s Wizard of Oz production that I was barred from participating in FoTR. I don’t blame them, I was an asshole 7th grader.
I was a 9 year old Community Theater bottle dancer *holla* (I also deeply wanted to be Hodel–got her in the quiz–but I kind of wish I was a Tzeitl)
My all-girls middle school did this, and I “music directed” from the lofty perch of 10th or 11th grade. There was only one boy, Tevye (obvi), and my brother played the role. He was pretty good, even though I’m still mad that he failed fully to take my direction on “If I Were a Rich Man.” It has to start smaller and end bigger! Tevye is selling *himself* on the idea! Basically I was a directorial prodigy who totally missed her calling. But little bro is still petty solid on stage!
I got a tie of 3 of them! Guess I’m the 6th one :p
Clara have you read Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof by Alisa Solomon? It’s a wonderful analysis of the Tevye stories, the play, and its lasting impact on American and Jewish culture.
Also, Mad Magazine did a parody of Fiddler in the 70s, “Antenna on the Roof”, that was amazing and I’m sadI couldn’t find it online.
Thank you for confirming my recall of Mad magazine! “I’m (soooome-one) the free sex fanatic who answers the phone with quotations from Maooooo” is the only line I remember, but it’s tattooed on my gray matter after all these years)
Brace yourself. I’m about to geek out on you. From memory:
I’m Sheila
A free sex fanatic
I’m Nancy
A speed freak just now
I’m Joy who
Makes bombs in the attic and answers the phone with quotations from Mao!
You just officially blew my mind.
Man I don’t remember this plot at all. However I always wanna be the rebel, so I slid my answers into C.
When I googled for Fiddler lyrics just now, Google politely informed me that Fiddler lyricist Sheldon Harnick turned 90 yesterday. Dang.
And he was still working as late as 2007! On a Phantom Tollbooth musical! Double dang!
He did, he did! And there’s a birthday interview with him on yesterday’s Fresh Air. He seems like a delightful human being.
I am Beilke, but I would rather be Tzeitl, because I like the name better and because I’ve always been hot for the guy who plays Motl in the movie. (Seriously, there’s a Beilke? Does she have any lines or big numbers?)
I was Beilke in a school play when I was 14. She has a couple of lines, if I recall correctly, and no big numbers, which was good because I can’t sing. The two youngest daughters pretty much just quietly hung around on stage a lot, and we did sing the Sabbath Prayer with the rest of the family.
(According to the book, though, Beilke is the prettiest daughter, so I took solace in that.)
Beilke is the prettiest daughter, you say? No wonder I got that result. This proves this poll is 100% SCIENTIFICALLY VALID.
This could quickly be adapted to “which Bennet daughter are you”
I want to be Hodel, but I think I’m really a Tzeitl. The minimal amount of rebellion.
The quiz told me I was Hodel, but I also think I’m more of a Tzeitl because “adorable nerdy Jewish tailor” sounds pretty damn appealing, and Siberia does not.
I have never seen Fiddler on the Roof but apparently I am Tzeitl. I am satisfied with this, given the descriptions. I prefer not to have to put in the effort for a stronger rebellion.
Now I’m morally obligated to mention the remarkably-good-for-a-parody musical by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, A Shoggoth on the Roof:
You may ask: How does it stay up there, if it’s so difficult?
That, I can tell you in one word: Tentacles!
Tentacles, tentacles! Tentacles!
Tentacles, tentacles! Tentacles!
I would of course be Asenath, the daughter we *cough* do not speak of:
Victim of victims
Asenath oh Asenath
I knew that you would fit the bill
But since Cthulhu must come back and attack
I love one whom I must kill
Byakhee, Byakhee, fly me through space
take me away, far from this place
Byakhee, Byakhee, what must I do
to go for a ride with you?
I played Tzeitl in my 10th grade production of Fiddler, and I used a tablecloth for a headscarf. The boy who played Motel messed up in the middle of singing Miracle of Miracles and tried to start the orchestra over again from the stage. When he wasn’t ruining my time in the spotlight as his devoted fiancee, he was in the band room with his hands down his much younger girlfriend’s pants. Later, at the cast party, his mother announced that their family was inbred.
My name is Sharone, and this is my Fiddler on the Roof story.
*applause*
Definitely a Hodel here. Sexy Jewish leftist intellectuals? Yes please. Two funny Fiddler related things:
1. My amazing holocaust survivor grandma LOVED Fiddler On the Roof but didn’t speak much English. She once askes me what “PETISHOOON!” meant and why everyone was singing about it. (Tradition, Babulya, they are saying “tradition.”)
2. My little brother ALSO loved Fiddler, so much so that as a toddler he would wake up in the night and demand to be shown the “violin man.” We had to cut him off though because he was so terrified of Fruma Sarah that she was giving him nightmares.
True Story: In college, I dance captained a production of Fiddler with a cast dominated by rabbinical and cantorial students. Because of stupid university space problems, the show was the same week as Passover. Let me tell you, you have not seen cranky until you’ve seen the fifth hour of a tech rehearsal full of 20-year-olds who can’t eat carbs.
HOWEVER we had an improvised seder at the cast party and drank a lot of potato vodka and it was GREAT FUN and I can still do great knee slides so it all worked out for the best.
I was never in Fiddler as a kid, but my best friend in high school was Grandma Tzeitl when we were sophomores. And years later, my dad played Reb Tevye in a local production. My sister and I and our husbands all went to see it, and brought him 2 dozen white roses and a cupid on a stick.
He was magnificent, and got a standing ovation at the end. He told us that he loved all his songs, but his favorite was the “Little Bird” song because it reminded him of how hard it was to watch his daughters grow up and move on. And so now it’s my favorite too, and I can’t even think about it without getting all teary.
Little bird! I love Chava’s song. That part of the movie always gutted me, even as a kid. Also, I think it’s not long after where you would switch to the second VHS cassette, which was definitely the grimmer of the cassettes. A herald of the things to come. Weeping all round!
God, I still love that movie.
DEFINITELY the grimmer of the cassettes.
I had to scrap question 2 because I wasn’t on stage, I was the clarinetist in the pit orchestra.
I got a split between Tzeitl and Hodel, though.
Also, Teibl, what a name.
It’s actually better transliterated as “Taybl,” and it means “Little Dove,” so it’s not like she’s named for furniture or anything. So there’s that.
Sorry ladies, put on your shades because my super-coolness is gonna blind you when I walk into the room: I was a *stagehand* for our high school’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. That’s right, that’s right, keep your panties on. While others were “interpreting” “dramatically” the “written word,” I got to wear all black and hold up the roof apparatus that held our fiddler. I was the person behind the scenes, the CIA agent hidden in plain view, the Josh Lyman to the Jeb Bartletts on stage. If coolness were a color, I was the fucking pantone library.
I think it’s kind of great that the iconic Jewish Musical has such badass female characters. And I’m a Tzeitl all the way. Revolutionaries are hot but no way I’m following my husband’s career to a Siberian prison you know?
I am not Jewish and yet every time I have seen Fiddler — the film version or a play of any level of professionalism — I am FURIOUS with Tevye for talking to his daughter who married the Russian Christian, even though in real life I would think it was terrible for someone to refuse to talk to his daughter for marrying a Russian Christian. I cannot explain myself to myself.
The stories by Sholem Aleykhem are even worse — they sit shivah for her, and that’s it. There’s no half-reconciliation scene, or sideways blessing of Khavele as she and her husband go to Krakow. The filmmakers knew that in 1970s intermarried America, that shit would not fly, so they came up with a sort of humane alternative.
My terrible, awful 8th grade Moral and Religious Education teacher insisted on teaching us about Judaism by screening FOTR. She paused “Sunrise, Sunset” to point at the screen and say “this is very traditional”. DONE.
Which was, I suppose, better than the time she told us “Mohammed is the god of Islam.”
It’s like she was forcing us to educate each other.
I FORGOT TO TELL YOU GUYS THAT MY DAD WAS TEVYE IN HIS HIGH SCHOOL PRODUCTION OF FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
Bad-Toastie confession. I played Hodel opposite a very gay Perchik and I lorded it over the other girls shamelessly and flirted constantly with the two-years-younger-boy playing Motel just because it wasn’t enough to sing “Far From The Home I Love” and secretly sew seams into my costume so it was straining against my adolescent boobs.
Theatre kids.
I was a younger daughter in one school production, Yenta in another, and the fiddler in both. That’s what happens when you are the only quasi-competent violinist in your tiny Jewish schools. As Yenta I did get to wear a shawl my mother had knitted for me- grey with a red border stripe- and now I want to know where that shawl went!
You just officially blew my mind.
There was suicide in Fiddler on the Roof?!
…The Shoreham Village Players must have left that part out.
I was Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof. Not only did it lead to me watching Molly Picon in the movie no less than eighty-four times, but Yente’s lines in FotR are the only ones I fully remember, out of every musical production I did. All in an impeccable Yiddish accent.