In ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ there is a Passover scene in which the mother and father gather all the children dressed in their best clothes. The table is set with everything in its rightful place then the children ask the question, “Why are we doing this?” Their eyes, especially those of the younger ones say, “I don’t understand. “Why do we go to all this trouble?”The answer, in the parents’ eyes and in everything they are doing, is “because we are Jews.” They are Jews in Russia. They are in danger but they will never forget the fact that they are Jews. They do this, all this, to remember who they are. They do it because their fathers and mothers did it before them beginning at a time when they too were too young to understand it fully.
Geoff Pound
Image: Cast from Fiddler on the Roof
