Fiddler on the Roof

I happened to tune into The Fiddler on the Roof yesterday. It is, after all, not only the Easter season but the Passover season. I had seen a professional stage production my freshman year at Michigan State and remember going to see the movie in East Lansing the summer after I graduated. 

On a Spartan side note, MSU lost its Final Four match against Duke Saturday, but the University of Wisconsin Badgers surprised everyone and beat Kentucky. I am sure you are wondering, how on earth do I even know this?

I only caught the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie, some of the most heartbreaking things I have ever seen in a musical. The expulsion of the Jews from Anatevka is based on the pogroms and persecutions in nineteenth-century Imperial Russia. It is a sad comment on the human capacity to inflict pain on those perceived as other, often under the guise of religious principle. As we know all too well, this capacity remains strong among us in many parts of the world, including our own.

My friend Fr. Steven Payne is Principal (President) of a Catholic college in Nairobi. This past week, terrorists attacked a dorm at another college, demanding to know if students were Christian or Muslim and killing those who gave the wrong answer. I mention this to put being asked to bake a cake for someone of different beliefs into a broader context.

The movie ended about seven minutes before the hour, and I was treated to seven minutes of commercials. Four minutes were devoted to lawyers offering to sue doctors, hospitals and health care companies for you. Two minutes were devoted to games for your iPhone. And the final minute was for an adjustable bed with heat and massage.

It was a stark contrast to the line of villagers trudging through the muddy snow out of Anatevka.