How we cite our quotes: Story Number.Paragraph
Quote #7
I told no one of my seeing Chava, and I spoke to no one of her, and I asked no one about her, although I knew quite well where she was and where he was and what they were doing. But they could croak before I'd let anyone know. My enemies would never live to see me complain. That's the kind of person Tevye is! (6.109)
Gee, way to make your daughter's disinheritance all about yourself, Tevye.
Quote #8
"Either you are playing dumb or you are an oaf, although you don't look like one. If you were an oaf, you wouldn't have dragged my nephew into this mess, inviting him for Shevuos blintzes and tempting him with a pretty girl. I won't get into whether she is really your daughter. He fell in love with her, and she with him. It's possible she is a very special child and means well, I won't get into that. But you mustn't forget who you are and who we are. You are a man of learning, so how can you even consider that Tevye the dairyman, who delivers cheese and butter to us, could be our in-law?" (7.125)
Let's just set aside that grossness this dude is implying about Shprintze (which we don't even totally get—is he saying that she is secretly a prostitute?). Ahronchik's uncle is clearly trying to protect his family, even if it seems questionable to us. The uncle is able to draw powerful boundaries around his family. Why is Tevye unable to do this—why does his family seem to ooze out into the world without his protection? Is it his relative poverty? Is he an ineffective father? Or is this actually a good thing for his daughters (well, not Shprintze so much)?
Quote #9
"And the heartache that gnaws at me to this very day when I remember what she did to me and for whom she forsook us? […] She is no longer my daughter! She died long ago!"
"No, she didn't die, and she is your daughter again as always. Because from the first minute she found out we were being sent away, she decided they would send all of us, she too along with us. Wherever we go—so Chava herself said—she will go. Our exile is her exile." (9.66-73)
So, context for this: Chava saying that she'll go wherever they go is almost straight from the Hebrew Bible Book of Ruth, when widow Ruth decides to leave her people and return to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law: "wherever you go," she says, "I will go […] Your people shall be my people" (Ruth 1:16-17). But Chava reverses the story of Ruth by leaving her adopted people to go back to her birth people.