What has happened to evidence, rationality, and critical thinking at a time when Donald Trump’s mendacious performance of guilelessness commands the airwaves, and when the news industry — especially arts criticism — has foundered?

The Bottle Dance in Fiddler on the Roof was inspired by what the director/choreographer Jerome Robbins called “field research” at Orthodox Jewish weddings. Reshaped and expanded by Robbins's masterful showbiz sensibility, it became a show-stopping number—and, thus transformed, filtered back out of the musical into Jewish celebrations to confer “tradition.”