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In the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye, a man devoted to tradition, finds his thinking challenged when his oldest daughter wants to marry for love, instead of having her marriage arranged by her parents. It had never occurred to him that one would marry for love, and one night he cannot help but ask his own wife the question (in song, of course!): “Do You Love Me?”
T: Golde, do you love me?
G: Do I what?
T: Do you love me?
G: You’re a fool!
T: I know! But do you love me?
G: Do I love him? For twenty five years I’ve cooked for him, cleaned for him, starved with him. Twenty five years my bed is his. If that’s not love - what is?
There are times when going through the motions just doesn’t cut it. There are even times when a commitment to “going through the motions” can cause us to miss what’s most important. For 25 years, Tevye and Golde had been going through the motions of a loving marriage, without ever thinking about whether they loved one another or not.
Two longstanding church members were in a boat fishing with a new Christian. Fishing is a great time for conversation and each was proclaiming his fervent faith and devotion to God. As they were discussing their faith, one’s hat blew into the water. So he stood up, calmly stepped onto the water, walked over to his hat, picked it up off the water, and walked backed to the boat. The new Christian was amazed how this Christian could seemingly walk on water. As the new Christian was pondering this, the other church member’s hat blew into the water. He also very calmly stepped onto the water, walked over to his hat, picked it up off the water, and walked backed to the boat. The new Christian was overwhelmed at how spiritual these men must be to have walked on the water as they did. Then the new Christian thought to himself, "Well, if these guys can do it, so can I", and he "helped" his hat blow into the water. He very calmly stepped out of the boat and was inhaling water instantly. As he fought his way to the surface, gasping for breath, the two long-standing church members turned to each other and said, "I think we should have told him about the sand bar on this side of the boat."
Remember the opening scene: the village and you see a fiddler on the roof and Tevye says:"A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? but in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask, why do we stay here if it's so dangerous? We stay because Anatevaka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in a word--TRADITION--Because of our traditions, we've kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything---how to eat, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our head covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you---I don't know.
[Fiddler on the Roof]
Tevye: "Golde, I have decided to give Perchik permission to become engaged to our daughter, Hodel."
Golde: "What? He’s poor! He has nothing, absolutely nothing!"
Tevye: "He’s a good man, Golde. I like him. And what’s more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So what can we do? It’s a new world... A new world. Love. Golde..." Do you love me?
Golde: Do I what?
Tevye: Do you love me?
Golde: Do I love you?
With our daughters getting married
And this trouble in the town
You’re upset, you’re worn out
Go inside, go lie down!
Maybe it’s indigestion
Tevye: "Golde I’m asking you a question..." Do you love me?
Golde: You’re a fool
Tevye: "I know..." But do you love me?
Golde: Do I love you?
For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked the cow
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?
Tevye: Golde, The first time I met you
Was on our wedding day
I was scared
Golde: I was shy
Tevye: I was nervous
Golde: So was I
Tevye: But my father and my mother
Said we’d learn to love each other
And now I’m asking, Golde
Do you love me?
Golde: I’m your wife
Tevye: "I know..." But do you love me?
Golde: Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him
Fought him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that’s not love, what is?
Tevye: Then you love me?
Golde: I suppose I do
Tevye, the Jewish dairy farmer in the Fiddler on the Roof, lives with his wife and five daughters in czarist Russia. Change is taking place all around him and the new patterns are nowhere more obvious to Tevye than in the relationship between the sexes. First, one of his daughters announces that she and a young tailor have pledged themselves to each other, even though Tevye had already promised her to the village butcher, a widower. Initially Tevye will not hear of his daughter’’ plans, but he finally has an argument with himself and decides to give in to the young lover’s wishes. A second daughter also chooses the man she wants to marry: An idealist revolutionary. Tevye is rather fond of him, and, after another argument with himself, he again concedes to the changing times.
A while later, Tevye’s third daughter wishes to marry. She has fallen in love with a young Gentile. A no-no among faithful Jewish people. This violates Tevye’s deepest religious convictions: It is unthinkable that one of his daughters would marry outside the faith. Once again, he has an argument with himself. He knows that his daughter is deeply in love, and he does not want her to be unhappy. Still, he cannot deny his convictions. “How can I turn my back on my faith, my people?” he asks himself. “If I try and bend that far, I’ll break!” Tevye pauses and begins a response: “On the other hand…” He pauses again, and then he shouts: “No! There is no other hand!”
With his first two daughters he gave some ground, compromised his positions. However, with his last daughter, he would not because he had to remain true to the Word of God. “No other hand.”
Research is exemplified in the problem-solving mind as contrasted with the let-well-enough-alone mind. It is the composer mind instead of the fiddler mind. It is the tomorrow mind instead of the yesterday mind.
Philip Yancey writes in his book, Prayer, that
“… Keeping company with God also includes expressing the times of trial and frustration. In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye keeps up a running dialogue with God, giving credit for the good things but also lamenting all that goes wrong.
In one scene he sits dejected by the side of the road with his lame horse.
“I can understand it,” he says to God, “when you punish me when I am bad; or my wife because she talks too much; or my daughter because she wants to go off and marry a Gentile, but … What have you got against my horse?!”
Checkout this quote from; Your God Is Too Safe, about studying the word of God,
“Curious times, these. There is simultaneously a glut of the word of God and a famine of it, a drought and deluge. We have every translation of the Bible you can imagine – the NIV, the NEVG, the KJV, the NJKV, the NASR, NRSAV, the preacher’s bible, the worshippers bible, the spirit-filled believers bible, the left handed bald gypsy fiddler’s bible, with versions for the nearsighted and the farsighted. (The last was made up).
You can have it in hardback, paper, leather, cloth, in pink, red, oxblood, turtle shell, iridescent orange, psychedelic paisley, with maps and charts and indices and appendices and concordances and holograms of the temple in the back , and a little sleeve with a CD-ROM that takes you on a guided tour of the Holy Land.”
The food is out there – and it’s a banqueting table. We’re just picky eaters. Oh, w...
VIDEO: YOUTUBE: Joshua Bell; Washington Post in Metro DC, Length 2:44
Gene Weingarten from the Washington post writes: "HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin.
Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by."
Weingarten says: "No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.”
But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell, the international acclaimed virtuoso, playing a seventeenth century violin valued at 3.5 million dollars was just another noisemaker competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.
He can command as much as $1,000 per minute for his skills with the violin, but on this average busy day only a handful of people actually stopped to listen. After his masterful 43 minute performance, he managed to amass a whopping $32 dollars and seventeen cents. The Washington Post arranged this experiment to find out if musical genius would be recognized by the masses if it were played in an ordinary place. It was not. (www.startribune.com/465/story/1110380.html)
In the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”, a russian peasant named Tevye asks his wife a simple question “Do you love me.”
Love him? Golde had never even met Tevye until the day of their arranged wedding. Now, after 25 years of marriage he wants to talk of love? It sounds so, so ... ridiculous, so foreign that she thinks he must have indigestion and should go and lie down for a while.
Tevye repeats the question however more earnestly this time.
“Golde wonders at his thinking, then explains how hard she has worked as his wife - cooking his meals, washing his clothes, having his children.
Still, it doesn’t satisfy Tevye and he asks again.
This time, Golde falls back on the obvious: she’s his Wife!
Even so, Tevye persists - does she love him?
After some reflection, she answers that she does indeed love him, realizing that her life hasn’t been just meaningless busy work. She has worked so hard because of her love for Tevye.
