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'Right-wing and centrist Jews hear leftist Jews protest the sins of power, such as the murder, theft, and displacement practiced by the State of Israel, and accuse the critical Jews of not loving the Jewish people, of severing ourselves from the people through our protest.

the thing is that fiddler on the roof is basically an examination of what it takes to break Tevye of his initially stated confident claim that adhering to tradition will keep the jews of anatevka safe, and the respective boyfriends of his daughters ARE characters, but they also are essentially psychological hurdles for Tevye to face. like, they represent challenges to his cultural and societal instincts, and his instincts as a father, and they are set in a pattern of increasing difficulty of acceptance. so in some ways it is unfair to be like "well obviously Motel is the objectively superior boyfriend" because like, that is the position he occupies in the narrative. he is Tzeitel's childhood friend and they know each other very well and he loves her more than anything and he is a member of the community and while he is poor and doesn't have great social standing, he has transferrable skills and is clever and savvy about scouting out opportunities to increase those things & dedicated to providing for a wife. and crucially he isn't asking Tzeitel to leave her support network! it is easiest for Tevye to accept him, and it is generally also easiest for us to accept him. I feel like something that gets lost a little bit is that... like, Tevye's hesitation to give his blessing to his two youngest daughters is not *entirely* based on his cultural inflexibility. it's also based in concern for his daughters. like yeah, if you were a parent you probably wouldn't want your daughter meeting a guy and then a couple of weeks later leaving everyone she knows and loves to go live with him in a prison camp in Siberia. that's not great. it's intentional that that is an aspect of Perchik's storyline and that it isn't just, like, "this guy is a revolutionary but he's also a member of our community" or whatever. it's not just his politics or the fact that he doesn't have any money and can't provide stability it's *also* that he is asking her to go with him to a prison camp in Siberia! this is explicitly stated by Golde, even. and she's right! it isn't the behavior of a man who is prepared to prioritize his partner. the point isnt that she's made a good decision. it's that given that she has made *this* decision, what does Tevye do? how much does what he decides to do really change or impact anything? and it's interesting to see that with Perchik he ultimately comes down on "well I can't change your mind but I'm your father and I love you" whereas with Fyedka it's simply a bridge too far for him and it breaks him. I think that makes contrasting the choices the younger two daughters make re: boyfriends much more interesting and relevant than comparing them to the situation with Motel. Motel is basically the introduction situation to ease us into understanding how Tevye handles having his ideas and values and decisions challenged.

judaism: dont marry two sisters

this morning i noticed my cat was freaking out more than usual. he's an anxious kitty (he'd been a stray for 3 years when we got him, then we had two moves with a very rough period in between). usually he has a routine that i do with him that helps him calm down but today it just wasn't working and i couldn't figure out why he was so stressed out. he kept bapping me on the head and waking me up and running around and eventually i realized what the issue was.