Anatevka: A World of Refugees

 

In my car’s back window, I keep a wooden sign with “Anatevka” painted on it in bright red letters, big enough to be seen from the back of a theater or read from the jeep paused behind me at a red light. It was given to me by a middle school cast about eight years ago, and its meaning has shifted as the years have passed. Once, it was a symbol of pride for an amazing production; back then, it was also a connection with my own mentor whose big shoes I knew I had begun to fill. Later, it was a symbol of nostalgia for a piece of my career that ended too abruptly, and a token of grief for a friend whose life ended too soon. More recently, it has morphed into a personal connection with refugees past and present. This week, though, it has become something more.

My Anatevka plaque is suddenly a flag of solidarity with anyone who acts out of love and peace despite pain and loss. It is a flag that transcends cultures and time periods. It is a cry for change and an acclamation for anyone who uses their own spark to help repair the world in any way they can.

In Fiddler on the Roof, a shtetl is torn apart by violence that should be unthinkable, but which unfortunately is all too familiar. Though a father worries that his family might be shattered by modern ways threatening the security of Tradition, it is in fact the savagery of neighbors which shatters a wedding and a community. Eventually, the town of Anatevka is dispersed throughout the world, its children ending up in Siberia, Israel, and the United States. The farewell song is one of anticipatory nostalgia and love for a place that wasn’t perfect, but was home.

I used to think this was my Jewish heritage, but have since come to see that it is our human heritage. We hold up great heroes of strength and kindness, ever encouraging our children to emulate their leadership. At the same time, our newspapers are filled with atrocities of what humans do to one another. My doctorate focused on the horrors of the Holocaust and the angst caused by gang violence. But there’s more than enough human evil to go around; just look at what is happening in places like Somalia, Ukraine and Israel. Look at our own recent history of Asian Hate, Islamophobia, and violence against African Americans. Our world is filled with hurt and hurting. Pain is not the inheritance of one sore culture. It is our human heritage.

I could look at history and despair that this inheritance of pain will ever change. However, our capacity for global communication is better than ever. There are translation tools, filming devices, and GPS transmissions that enable us to know one another better than ever before. We have the awful opportunity to bear witness more immediately than ever before. Shouldn’t the premise of “Know better, do better” apply?

However, the forces which spurred on pogroms against my ancestors are the same as the forces which send children out of their beds into underground shelters in the middle of the night in 2023. Too often, we don’t seek the full truth about people we don’t know. We limit ourselves to sound bytes and use that limited input to inform our opinions and actions. We allow misinformation to fan our fear… and in extreme cases, fear and rage provoke violence.

Most people are good. We may be underinformed or misinformed. We may be lazy or preoccupied with too many demands in an ever-accelerating society. But mostly, we wish one another well. My first graders send each other “bucket tickets” of friendship; former students stay in touch with me and share all the good they are offering to society. I walk through the streets of New York and see strangers who smile back at me, even though I look different. Last weekend, I walked through the streets of Chassidic Lakewood and was invited into a Sukkah even though I was dressed with rainbow pants. Most of us mean well.

Anatevka reminds me that whole worlds can be shattered by hatred. My ancestors’ homelands do not exist anymore. My beloved Ukrainian friends still struggle with post traumatic stress and my Guatemalan buddy wants to protect his family from zombies because they are easier to escape than gangs. “Dear little village, little home I love.” So many people have had to learn to take home with them as they have fled in the hopes of a safer world.

Today, my thoughts turn to Israel. There are children and parents, grandparents and neighbors, teachers and doctors, lawyers and lovers all who have had their lives shattered because of extremists. Sound familiar? For those of us in New York, it should. Hamas uses similar tactics to Isis, both in terms of destruction and brainwashing. Residents of Israel (from all over the world) are under siege just as ordinary people in the US had their lives (and way of life) threatened by the terrorist acts of 9/11.

It is not the Palestinian people who are responsible for the attack. It is extremists. It was not the Saudis or the Iraqis or Iranian people or any “Axis of Evil” that used planes for mass murder. It was extremists. And extremists have a very powerful way of influencing the minds of unhappy or otherwise disconnected people. (Also, extremists are not unique to one faith or culture.)

Do you remember back in 2001 when we saw media footage of people dancing with glee at the devastation in NY, DC, and on a field in western PA? I was outraged at how so many people could express such unadulterated joy at such a horrific event. Again, now, there is footage of one group celebrating another’s despair. And political groups on college campuses and Reddit rooms begin to spar about who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor. This is most emphatically not the time for celebrating or Schadenfreude, nor is it the time to blame people who were living their lives on a kibbutz or at a music festival and are now in ICU, or a morgue.

It is a time to look out for our neighbors, especially the ones we don’t know so well. By knowing one another more and by reaching across cultural, religious and socioeconomic divides, we learn how much we share in common. We learn not to fear one another. We learn that everyone cries saltwater tears. This is the antidote to extremism: real, firsthand knowledge and person-to-person connection.

I have several friends from Ukraine. Their ancestors and mine could have been on opposite sides of a pogrom. More likely, though, their ancestors and mine were both living through oppressive political regimes and trying to simply get by. Fiddler on the Roof shows a tragic act of violence, but it also humanizes people from both communities. It doesn’t condone the pogrom, but it also shows neighbors warning one another, trying to spare one another, toasting to one another even though their faiths and governments differed.

To Life! To Life! L’Chaim! My heritage is one of displacement, but my culture is one of joy. I grew up with blintzes and matzah brei, Purim carnivals and dreidels, goofy stories about the fools of Chelm and songs of resilience. My ancestors have a long history of being evicted from their homelands and threatened with violence. Though antisemitism is on the rise in the US, I am lucky to live in a country where the laws protect me from those who would shun my heritage, and where I am allowed to define myself however I please.

So too, there is joy and dance and stories and food in other oppressed cultures. Not everyone has the freedom I possess now. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be considered a second-class human because my color or culture is different from the mainstream, or because my parents were born in a country that no longer exists on paper. The closest I can get to feeling that fear and rage is remembering how scared I was when local police downplayed the swastika on my house, and how indignant I used to be every time my father guarded me against posting anything online that would tag me as blatantly Jewish. (That cat is out of the bag!) Those feelings are uncomfortable, but my life has never been directly threatened for being myself. I can’t say as much for some of my friends of color, some of my gay and trans friends, or some of my friends who live in countries without the same Bill of Rights.

We all need a place where we can be ourselves and be safe as such. Likewise, everyone should have the ability to belong, the ability to have citizenship and a nationality. If you haven’t read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recently, I encourage you to do so. You’ll probably nod your head at each of the ideals and then shake your head at how far the people of this planet have yet to go in achieving these goals.

The Declaration was written post WWII, in the same year as Israel became a nation. With my understanding of the Holocaust and everything that led up to it, I understand and appreciate how crucial it is that Jewish people have a place where they can be safe. This does not mean I support everything about the Israeli government, past or present. I don’t. But I believe vehemently in every human’s need for a safe place and a nationality, with all the rights and responsibilities citizenship can afford or demand.

The people in Israel are not safe right now. Nor are the people in Palestine. And as I see it, the war is only escalating. Today, I became aware of two people I directly know who have been harmed. My guess is there are many people in my network who have even closer connections.

This is not a time for dancing about Israeli deaths or plotting for revenge by attacking Palestinian children. This is a time to understand how much we have in common, and what sparks we have within ourselves and our communities— sparks that can light the way with hope, healing and outrage.

The team that created Fiddler on the Roof did just that. Sholem Aleichem’s characters mixed with the Bock/Harnick music and Joel Stein’s story have become an internationally relatable tale of loss and change, love and tradition. As Tevye’s family and friends sing their ode to Anatevka, I think about the Trail of Tears, the Lost Boys of Sudan, the death marches of the Armenians, and so many other displaced people. I think of my Palestinian friend, too. He grew up in Abu Dhabi but will have to return to a refugee camp when he turns 65, because he lacks Emiri citizenship. Anatevka speaks to all of us.

Yes, I shed a personal tear every so often when I look at the sign in my car. I miss my mentors, Jerry and Frank, who introduced me to the show when I was a kid. I miss Ally, who I mentored, who didn’t live long enough to have to leave her own home. I miss my middle school theater world, from which I once considered myself exiled, but which now I see as a light in the rearview mirror of my career.

But tonight, I see Anatevka as a reminder that we are all connected in our need for roots and resilience. In the aftermath of the initial attacks in Israel this week, I didn’t have the words to express this. Tonight, I went to see a friend and former student perform excerpts of the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof at a major fundraiser celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Jewish Federation of Metrowest NJ. Watching her sing in Yiddish— a language I was taught because my grandparents didn’t want it to die— I felt so alive and meaningful. She is neither Jewish nor a native Yiddish speaker, and yet she has devoted a large part of her career to crossing a cultural divide and learning to celebrate her neighbor. I try to do that, too, with my writing and with my advocacy for refugees. Many (most) of my friends are activists who cross socio-cultural boundaries to make the world a better place.

Tevye and his family left Anatevka to survive. I keep Anatevka with me to remind me how grateful I am for all the experiences that brought me to this day, and to remind me about how connected we all must be to each other in order to protect each other and our shared humanity.

“Soon I’ll be a stranger in a strange new place, searching for an old familiar face…”

How will you use your own spark to welcome strangers and get to know people who are different from you? Take a bit of my Anatevka with you, and as you do, take a moment to think about all the families and individuals who are scared and mourning tonight. We are as needed now as we ever have been.