Fiddler on the Roof: The Specific Is Universal

Anyone can relate to Tevye as he struggles to adapt to a changing world.

Fiddler on the Roof depicts a specific place at a particular moment in time, and yet the story has maintained international appeal for decades. It will no doubt continue to endure long into the future.

My high school performed it my senior year. I played Fyedka (as did my father before me—it’s tradition!). The way Fyedka doesn’t sing and the way I can’t sing, it was a perfect match.

I stumbled upon the 1971 movie on cable several years later and was instantly drawn in. I recently rewatched it, and it truly is masterful. Topol commands the screen as Tevye. The rest of the cast and all aspects of the production are impeccable. None other than John Williams adapted the score, and of course it sounds amazing (and won him his first Oscar).

Fiddler, like any good story, gets us to empathize with people from vastly different circumstances. It demonstrates our common humanity and shared nature.

Tevye, a milkman, holds tight to his Jewish faith and traditions in pre-revolutionary Russia, but change is coming. In fact, it’s already started. It shakes the foundation of his family, and it ultimately threatens the village of Anatevka.

The story centers on Tevye’s three oldest daughters marrying non-traditional suitors. Each young man introduces tension between Tevye’s values and his love for his children, and each is increasingly objectionable and poses a greater test for Tevye, a test he ultimately fails.

He can, with great difficulty, bring himself to support Tzeitel’s and Hodel’s choices, because he loves his daughters and he can see some good in Motel and Perchik even if he doesn’t consider either one to be prime husband material. These are not circumstances Tevye had ever imagined himself accepting, but he wants his daughters to be happy, so he makes the effort to adjust.

But then the third daughter, Chava, gets involved with a Russian soldier named Fyedka, and this proves too much for Tevye. He can’t condone this mixing of cultures. When Chava marries Fyedka in secret, Tevye disowns her entirely.

Tevye is neither a great man nor a bad man. He’s just a man trying to hold things together in the only way he knows how. Meanwhile, the world keeps having other ideas.

Strip away the specifics of Tevye’s character, and there’s much to relate to. He wants more in life and wants to provide for the people he loves (“Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?”). He has specific ideas about how his children should live their lives, but their generation has its own ideas (“You gave each other a … pledge?”). The world is changing, and he’s not sure how to handle it (“I know, I know we are the chosen people. But once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?”). There’s love in his heart (“Do you love me?” “Do I what?”), but also some ugliness (“I said no! Never talk about it again. Never mention his name again. Never see him again. Do you understand me?”).

Tevye is complex and fully formed, and that specificity has given countless audiences something solid to connect with. The parts we relate to help us understand the parts we don’t.

Tevye: A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, “Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?” Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

None of us ever stepped foot in early 20th-century Russia. We have not faced those specific hardships or that specific persecution. Most of us do not have precisely five daughters, plus three sons-in-law we would not have chosen. But we still understand Tevye and all the main characters.

They, like us, are fundamentally human. All our lives are as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.

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