How we cite our quotes: Story Number.Paragraph
Quote #4
"And Tzeitl herself," I said, "has to be asked. As it is said: All the relatives came to the wedding and they left the bridegroom at home."
"Nonsense," he said, "why do you need to ask? You tell her, Reb Tevye. You go home and tell her this is the way it is and put up the wedding canopy. One word from you, and it's done!" (4.42-43)
So yeah, obviously this whole daughters-don't-get-a-say-in-their-husbands thing is culturally standard for this village, but it's still kind of shocking to hear Lazer-Wolf casually dismiss the idea that Tzeitl could have any say at all.
Quote #5
"Then tell me, since you know who I am, tell me who you are."
"Who am I? I am a person."
"I see you're not a horse. I mean whose are you?"
"Whose should I be? I am God's."
"I know," I said, "you are God's. It is written: All creatures and all cattle. I mean where do you come from? Are you one of ours or maybe from Lithuania?"
"I come from Adam, the first man," he said, "but am from around here. You know me." […]
"Tell me, my young rascal, what do you live on?"
"I live on what I eat."
"Aha, that's good. But what," I said, "do you eat?"
"Everything," he said, "that they give me." (5.18-33)
Is this a battle of wits, or is it some kind of friendship mating dance?
Quote #6
"Is it a fault in your eyes," [Chava] said, "that a person works with his hands? Don't you yourself work? And don't we work?"
"Yes, yes, you're right. We have a special verse in the Bible: For thou shall eat the labor of thy hands—if you don't work, you won't eat. But still and all […] you mustn't forget whence you come and whither you go—who you are and who he is."
"God created all people equal," she said to me.
"Yes, yes, God created Adam in His own image," I said. "But you mustn't forget that everyone must seek his own, as it says, To every man as he is able."
"Amazing!" she said. "You have a quotation for everything! Maybe you can find about how people separated themselves into Jews and Gentiles, into masters and slaves, into landowners and beggars?"
[…] I gave her to understand that the world had been that way since the Creation.
"Why should the world be like that? […] Why did He create it like that? […] That's why God gave us reason, so we could ask questions."
"We have a custom that when a hen begins to crow like a rooster, you should take it immediately to the slaughterer." (6.23-34)
Check it out: Tevye and Chava are using an aspect of religion to boost the argument, but in really different ways. Tevye is all trees and no forest—he's plucking out phrases here and there, and some of them don't even have anything to do with what he's talking about (um, "to every man as he is able" is about fairness, not us-vs.-them mentality). Meanwhile, Chava can't quote, but she's using the big-picture themes of the Torah to buttress her argument. And then when Tevye's had enough, and she's talked him into a corner, he shuts it down with a pretty brutally sexist image—a female that talks the talk of a male getting killed. Nice one, dad.