In the musical...
Illustration
Object:
In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, set in a small Jewish village in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, one of the townspeople asks the rabbi if there is a blessing for the Tsar. Russian Jews at the time were being harassed and forcibly relocated by the government. The rabbi pauses a moment, as if stumped by the question, and then answers: "May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!"
In the complex social and political arrangement we now call the "feudal system," there were intricate layers of authority and loyalty. Dukes, counts, viscounts, knights, and countless other classes of nobility we all arranged in an intricate pecking order. For most people who worked and lived day to day, however, the one person that they paid most attention to was the one who owned the land on which they lived and worked. The one who owned the land also owned them, in a very real sense. The title used for that person was "Lord." Our politics are much different now, but we also use that word to mean to the one to whom our true loyalty is due. We too belong to the one we call "Lord."
In the complex social and political arrangement we now call the "feudal system," there were intricate layers of authority and loyalty. Dukes, counts, viscounts, knights, and countless other classes of nobility we all arranged in an intricate pecking order. For most people who worked and lived day to day, however, the one person that they paid most attention to was the one who owned the land on which they lived and worked. The one who owned the land also owned them, in a very real sense. The title used for that person was "Lord." Our politics are much different now, but we also use that word to mean to the one to whom our true loyalty is due. We too belong to the one we call "Lord."
