"Does It Hurt Shirley to Learn to Speak Up?": Tevye's New World Legacy in the Jewish Daughter's Father

Abstract

Through an examination of Grace Paley's short story "The Loudest Voice," the author suggests that Jewish fathers, like Sholem Aleichem's Tevye, are often portrayed as "the indulgent fathers of ambitious Jewish girls" who are both "gratified and consoled" by the Jewish women who carry on their legacy, even at the risk of abandoning some elements of Jewish tradition