Fiddler

Abstract

The author is a junior high school music and drama teacher at I.S. 25, Queens, New York City. This article, prepared especially for MEJ, is based on his recently published book, Black Fiddler (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1971). I expected the outcome. I can't. I had a deadly feeling that, since I had won all the other battles over the years, I was due for a failure and it would be a big failure. I hadn't counted on you. You are the first group that I picked three years ago and literally handmade for this production. No other bunch of students could have done it. I have been investing all I've got in you for so long that it is painful for me to let you go. Letting go of Fiddler means letting go of you. That's what teaching is all about, but every year at this timeinstead of getting easier to bear-it destroys me. For hundreds and hundreds of people this show will never close. We will constantly refer to it because it opened our eyes to many things. If the word "mazeltov" has become a permanent word in your vocabulary, we have been a success. It is not my purpose here to list what has happened as a result of Fiddler, but one of the most exciting things to me and a few other teaciers is the fact that our community (school and home) now shares our views-no, not on Jews and blacks, but our deep belief that the students of our school are firstclass citizens of the world and are capable of delivering first-class contributions to society. Lots of people think they believe this vital fact, but when the ABC and CBS things hit the air, they will not only really believe it but will start acting on that belief. Remember, there are various kinds of poverty and only one of them deals with money. The others deal with poverty of the spirit, poveity of ambitions, and poverty of good feelings about yourself.