I must confess that I dislike “Fiddler on the Roof.” I agree that the songs are cute and memorable and that it is wholesome entertainment. But as a story about tradition and the melancholy of cultural demise, it is vastly overrated.
It is hard not to have seen the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof or a stage performance of the play. It is a staple in high school drama clubs across the United States and the world. Many communities have a local playhouse that has at one time or another put on a production of this recurrent musical. It was based on the short story, “Tevye and his Daughters” by Sholem Aleichem. First produced on Broadway with Zero Mostel as the lovable Russian Jewish village milkman, Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof is one of the most popular modern musicals.
But at the risk of seeming the spoilsport, I must confess that I dislike Fiddler on the Roof. Yes, I agree that the songs are cute and memorable and that it is wholesome and family-friendly entertainment. But as a story about tradition and the melancholy of cultural demise, it is vastly overrated.
I say this as a Jew who is very proud of my tradition. I believe Fiddler on the Roof does a great disservice to the greatness of Torah-based Judaism as a way of life. More than that, it sends the wrong message about what tradition actually means and why for all people of the world traditions “keep our balance.” And yet, the opening number, “Tradition!” is so iconic that when many people think of tradition—particularly Jewish tradition—they think of Fiddler on the Roof.
The play’s major flaw is that it mistakes tradition for habit, conformity, and comfort. Real tradition is about a life of quality, which necessitates a devotion to high precepts. As Michael Oakeshott has explained in his famous essay on political education, “What has to be learned is not an abstract idea, or a set of tricks, not even a ritual, but a concrete coherent manner of living in all its intricateness.” That is not what we see of tradition in Fiddler on the Roof. What we see are just tricks and rituals.
In the prologue, Tevye tells the audience: “Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything: how to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition get started? I’ll tell you. I don’t know. But it’s a tradition. And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”
But observant Jews certainly do know how their rituals got started. They have very specific origins and purposes. For example, the commandment Tevye mentions for Jewish men to wear prayer shawls with strings attached to the corners, or tzitzit, as they are called in Hebrew, derives from Numbers 15:37, which says, “You will put fringes on the corners of your garments.” And then in Numbers 15:39, the purpose is revealed: “You will see it and remember all the commandments.” It is a reminder to live a holy life. There is no way a pious Jew in those Russian villages would not have been aware of the origin and purpose of one of the most basic holy commandments.
In Anatevka, the villagers seem to be unaware and unconcerned about why they adhere to their traditions. They just follow them as a matter of convention. This was not the way shtetl life really was. Life involved a deep relationship with God, not as a memory of the distant ancestral past, nor as an invisible spirit in the sky. It was, rather, as if God was standing right there beside them, speaking to them, encouraging them, wanting to be worshipped, wanting to be loved and wanting to be feared. The late socialist scholar Irving Howe understood it far better than Tevye. In his book, World of Our Fathers, he explains:
“Yiddish culture was a culture of speech, and its God a God who spoke. He was a plebian God, perhaps immanent but hardly transcendent. Towards Him the Jews could feel a peculiar sense of intimacy: had they not suffered enough in His behalf? In prayer His name could not be spoken, yet in or out of prayer he could always be spoken to. Because the east European Jew felt so close to God he could complain to him freely, and complain about Him too. The relation between God and man was social, intimate, critical, seeming at times to follow like a series of rationalistic deductions from the premise of the Chosen People.”
We are used to thinking of tradition as a source of comfort. That is how Tevye sees it and it is why audiences sympathize with him over the destruction of the cozy world in which he does not have to think but just act. But tradition is not meant to make us comfortable. It is meant to guide us towards a meaningful existence, no matter how difficult. Observance of tradition is a constant struggle. If it were easy, we as conservatives would not have to worry about its collapse from within.
Defenders of Fiddler on the Roof might counter that the struggle to hold on to traditions is the entire point of the show. It is true that the fiddler is indeed a metaphor for that theme. The fiddler, as Tevye says, is “trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck.” But Tevye adds, “You may ask, why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous? Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home.” That is the problem with the play. No civilized man strives to preserve his ways merely because those ways are his. He grapples with their extinction because those ways are right.
On the contrary, Fiddler on the Roof paints a society of traditional Judaism as if it were suspended in time and soon to be sucked up into a more enlightened modern age. But Tevye’s traditions are actually timeless Jewish principles. It is an ancient heritage long predating Tevye’s time and still existing today in our century and in our country. In fact, many times before dress rehearsals, the cast and crew of Fiddler on the Roof productions prepare by visiting their local Orthodox synagogue to make sure they are getting the aesthetics accurate. But do they ever look beyond the aesthetics and ask the communal members, “Why do you live this way?” If so, in the confines of a shallow, limited script there is never an opportunity to showcase the answer.
The life they are drinking “L’Chaim!” to in Fiddler on the Roof is not a life anyone in the audience would really want for themselves, nor would the actors. Secularized Jews enjoy this play immensely because it reminds them of their ancestors, but watching it never inspires them to live like their ancestors and return to their birth religion. These commandments from God are shown to be nothing more than relics of an antiquated, unenlightened era. While we feel sad for Tevye that his culture is lost, there is never a compelling case made for that culture. Only because the Czar represents a great evil do we lament the conquest of Anatevka. When the curtain closes and the talented performers take their bows we still never actually feel sorrow for the life Tevye is leaving behind.
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Thank you, Dr. Fuller, for a beautiful, well-written article. I particularly appreciated this: “But tradition is not meant to make us comfortable. It is meant to guide us towards a meaningful existence, no matter how difficult. Observance of tradition is a constant struggle. If it were easy, we as conservatives would not have to worry about its collapse from within.”
I love that last paragraph! It’s spot on with my own experience.
While I agree with your sentiment, perhaps Fiddler on the Roof is not truly about the Russian Jews, but about the turn of the century.
In my interpretation, Fiddler on the Roof is about how rural, agricultural societies are painfully yanked into the fascinating, expanding, but brutal modern world. Interestingly, the three most important (and arguably climatic) sense are not the opening of the ‘traditional’ village—nor the destruction of it—-but the father’s reaction to each of his daughter’s marriage choices (to three very different men: a poor Jew, a secular soviet Jew, and a Russian Christian). In that sense, this story could be told about many different communities across the world in the late 19th century.
This focus on the changing of the times, and not on those specific traditions themselves (the lack of detail and accuracy about the nature of having been revealed by yourself) suggests that the film is interested more in that painful process of transition that the modern world brings. We the audience know that the world he is going into is far worse in some ways (indeed the depiction of the village is romantic and reminds me of the film ‘The Mission’). He is not enlightened, but is rather forced into a new way of life. What strikes us is not that his traditions are outdated or based on nothing, but that they’ve had them for so long, and that a few short decades and a few simple inventions are all it takes to shatter his world apart. The conclusion portrays him as ever able to adjust to change, and that that is what has kept his people alive.
That balance between the past and the future, and the way the turn of the century shatters a slumberous world, breaking it to pieces all for ‘progress’ and ‘the future’ is a universal story.
I understand your perspective but I respectfully disagree.
The whole point of Fiddler on the Roof is that their traditions were what helped the Jews survive two millennia of exile and oppression, but that those traditions were really much more flexible than they might appear.
Being able to adapt to new circumstances was one of the skills that allowed Judaism to survive. The traditions that existed in 1905 were not entirely the same as those in 1805, or 1705.
No one in their right mind wants to return to the way of life in 1905. Life was much less comfortable, much more precarious, much worse for almost everyone. Fiddler doesn’t whitewash this. It was a hard life, with poverty, pogroms and little security.
But it was also the foundation of modern Jewry, both religious and secular. The Jews that helped the Civil Rights movement were inspired by the suffering of their parents and grandparents. The disproportionate number of Jews with Nobel Prizes won them because of the Jewish tradition to value learning, even though they study subjects other than the Torah.
The traditions at the start of Fiddler are not lost by the end of it, some just evolve a little. They are becoming new traditions that will hopefully carry Judaism through the next two millennia.
Oh, and even educated Jews don’t know the reason for all of the traditions… Notably the head covering, though Tevye does suggest a possible answer. Indeed, why Jews avoid pork is an open question even now.
This is an excellent post. You bring up a very good question: Is the author mocking tradition or holding up the struggle for tradition as a noble effort? I haven’t seen the movie in decades, so I can’t really say. However, I suspect he’s ambivalent and probably inconsistent. We envision all works to be finely crafted works of art, but this one is probably muddled. In fact, like most operas/musicals, the artistry is in the music and song and not in the literary craftsmanship.
Shame on me, I am sure, but I love Fiddler. For me, a Christian woman, the three sons represent Faith, Hope, and Love. I have read the stories from which the musical is taken and I cannot help but feel that Sholem Aleichem was searching for truth. You cannot dim my love for Fiddler and the stories of the milkman.
This was what I was looking for. I was specifically looking for the cultural accuracy of Fiddler (everything is all about how it’s historically accurate), as while I do love it, a few things seemed off to me. I have several Jewish friends, some traditional some more secular, but even the secular ones could rattle off at least a general idea of where in the Torah to find the origins of the Jewish traditions. I realize some of it was likely entirely for comedic reasons, but there are other ways to do it. It really is more the atmosphere they give off about their traditions in the movie than the traditions themselves and couldn’t they have used the original Yiddish names for their Holy items? As you said, tzitzit rather than prayer shawl (or mention what it’s called, since you’re pointing it out in the first place?).
Thought provoking article indeed. I would like to point out that the paragraph you cited is one of my favorites ever written into any script. Why because it perfectly illustrates (for me at least) the masterpiece that is Jewish humor. “You might wonder how this tradition started… etc.” and he leads us right into a left turn with “I don’t know.” You are right, he should have known and we now know. I bet it made you laugh the first time you saw it.
Excellent article. I saw this movie first when I was 4 with my Catholic family and we all loved it. I’ve seen it many times since and still love the movie.
However I very much understand your point that this misrepresents how tradition allows us to exist with God. The Catholic church also struggles with a misunderstanding, even within our own faithful, of the meaning and roots of our sacred traditions.
If you look at the movie from a very high level. I think it still has value. As traditions are broken, the mood of the movie becomes gloomier, almost hopeless, but hope follows the main character in the form of the Fiddler following him out of town.
I don’t think ‘Fiddler’ intends to create a real, accurate picture of Russian Jews at the time of the Soviet pograms any more than ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ recreates meridian of time Palestine.
Allegory is a teacher and a reading of ‘Tevye and his Daughters’ may make a bit more clear the intent of the allegory.
I may be shallow but much prefer to look at such an awesome, long-lived art work as ‘Fiddler on the Roof” as an allegory about every generation, Jew or Gentile, and how human nature adapts and lives in changing conditions–technological, political, moral–and how the human spirit finds a way to survive and thrive and yet retain a cultural identity.
Of course, in the preceding comment, I meant Czarist–not Soviet pograms.
Hmm. ..the more things change….
Not everyone knew the reasons for the traditions. There was often a reluctance to explain them, ppl were often told ‘it doesn’t matter so much you know why we do them, you just do them because that’s what God wants you to do’.
Well thought out post. But my perspective is different. While Fiddler might not get the theology right, the palpable, living, breathing love of God comes through to Christian Gentiles like me. It made me and many others wonder what this wonderful tradition was. We soon learned the tradition was ‘Torah.’ So even though Fiddler!/ tradition might be Torah lite, it is an important bridge or gateway for many people to discover or, as was the case with some culturally Jewish friends, rediscover the deep and profound roots and tree of life that is the Torah. L‘Chaim!
I agree with the author. The playwright takes the normal modernist perspective of tradition, that it is a sentimental crutch for the less intelligent common person. Enlightened moderns can hold it up as a museum piece, and condescendingly sympathize with the plight of the commoner. But, no modern would in their right mind take tradition seriously on its own terms. Who really believes there is an invisible supernatural supreme being that is intimately connected with every aspect of life? At best, invocation of the divine is invocation of ignorance, that there are some things we still do not understand. Who really believes there is an absolute moral order to the universe? It all came about through random coincidence from primordial chaos, as Homer taught, before busybody philosophers like Socrates came along questioning whether in fact there is a Mind behind it all.
At any rate, it is a fun play, with fun tunes and performances. I enjoy listening to the soundtrack myself. But, it does not do justice to the Jewish life, nor the progroms, nor the brutality of the Soviet empire soon to follow. In a sense, it serves as a sort of apology for what was to come, as in, “Hey look at these poor backwards people following a silly religion oppressed by the czar. Good thing the rational communists were right around the corner. Of course they didn’t get everything right either, but who does? At least it is better than an arranged marriage to the abusive, drunken butcher in a patriarchal, small minded village.”