Everyone has probably heard of Fiddler on the Roof, the Broadway musical (and movie) based on the Tevye stories of Sholem Aleichem.
Fiddler opened on Broadway on September 22, 1964. An immediate hit, the show is one of the great achievements of American musical theatre, and Tevye the Milkman one of its most beloved characters.
The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his family and religious traditions while outside influences encroach upon their lives.
"Art imitates Life," goes the old cliché. This is certainly so (and the better the art, the truer the imitation); but the greatest works of art can go well beyond imitation, not only holding a mirror up to the world as it is (as Hamlet advised his actors to do), but prophesying a world that does not yet exist.
Nineteen Sixty-Four saw America shaken to its core by the murder of the President and riven by the ongoing Civil Rights movement for racial equality. The world was changing, and no one knew quite what direction that change would take. The agony of Vietnam; hippies; women's lib; gay rights: these were still in the future, unguessed-at by all but a few — but unmistakeable tremors were beginning to be felt. Tevye's struggle to find his way in his own changing world — which also reflected 1964 America — made him an archetype then, and a harbinger, a prophet for the decades to come.
Fiddler on the Roof begins with Tevye and his community celebrating the traditions that define their lives and give them meaning. He shares with us his philosophy: "Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof."
But (as Tevye begins to learn) tradition may not be enough, especially when opposed by love. His eldest daughter, who he's promised in marriage to an older, wealthy man — to all appearances a wonderful match — has other ideas: she's in love, with a poor young man, a tailor, and asks her father's permission to marry him. Tevye loves his daugher, so, after an internal struggle, he gives his blessing to the match. So far, so good. But there's more to come.
Tevye's next daughter pushes his boundaries further: she falls in love with a leftist radical; worse, she tells her father that she does not seek his permission, asking only that he bless her marriage.
After more soul searching, Tevye relents – the world is changing, and he must change with it. He informs the young couple that he gives them his blessing and his permission.
"It's a new world. Love," he muses to his wife.
Finally, his third daughter's love for a Russian (gentile) boy drives Tevye to his limits and beyond: this union he cannot accept.
Again Tevye reaches deep into his soul, but marriage outside the Jewish faith is a line he will not cross.
His world shifting on its axis and his heart breaking, in a desperate attempt to resist change and uphold his values Tevye disowns his daughter, declaring that she is dead to him. But as they go their separate ways, unable to deny what's in his heart (though stubbornly unwilling to speak to her himself), he prompts another of his daughters to convey his love through a blessing.
"God be with you," he murmurs; "God be with you," she calls out to her sister.
As the story ends, Tevye, the rest of his family, and their community leave their homes forever for a new life in America; and we're left with the feeling that Tevye, his philosophy tempered by experience and transformed by love, will manage — aided by his rich humanity and wry humor — to face the daunting challenges ahead. Like the fiddler on the roof (to whom he gives one final nod of acknowledgement), Tevye will maintain his sometimes precarious balance.
Traditions have value; but sometimes clinging to them holds us back, as individuals and as a culture. I'd like to think that if some 21st-century analogue of Tevye's story were to include a gay son (or, perhaps, if one of his two littlest daughters were to grow up lesbian in the New World), that the good, honest and pragmatic milkman's world view would have enlarged sufficiently to adapt and accept; in short, to follow the promptings of a loving heart.