One of my favorite musicals, Fiddler on the Roof is full of little bits of simple wisdom. We watched the movie last night, and I listed a few of my favorite lines…just for fun ~
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“Tevye: [to God] As the Good Book says, ev…
[chuckles]
Tevye: Why should I tell You what the Good Book says?”
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“Mordcha: May the authorities be like onions with their heads in the ground!”
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Villager: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
Tevye: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.
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“Yente: People! I tell you, Tzeitel, if God lived on earth, people would break his windows!”
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“Tevye: As the good book says, if you spit in the air, it lands in your face.”
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“Perchik: Money is the world’s curse.
Tevye: May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover.”
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“Tevye: As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.
Mendel: Where does the book say that?
Tevye: Well, it doesn’t say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.”
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[about Yente, the matchmaker]
“Tzeitel: But Mama, the men she finds. The last one was so old and he was bald. He had no hair.
Golde: A poor girl without a dowry can’t be so particular. You want hair, marry a monkey.”
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“Tevye: As Abraham said, “I am a stranger in a strange land… ”
Mendel: Moses said that.
Tevye: Ah. Well, as King David said, “I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue.”
Mendel: That was also Moses.
Tevye: For a man who was slow of tongue, he talked a lot.”
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“Fyedka: [introducing himself to Chava] I’m a pleasant fellow, charming, honest, ambitious, quite bright, and very modest.”
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“[Hodel is leaving on a train for Siberia]
Hodel: Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again.
Tevye: Then we will leave it in His hands.”
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Tevye: [to Lazar Wolf] I always wanted a son, but I wanted one a little younger than myself.
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Avram: (gestures at Perchik and Mordcha) He’s right, and he’s right? They can’t both be right. Tevye: You know… you are also right.