Why Fiddler On The Roof is misunderstood

One of the best movie I saw this movie in Iran around 1972 in city call Abadan

The "comedy" in Fiddler is of the if-I-didn't-laugh-I'd-cry variety, like when Tevye complains to God that his horse is lame, to the effect of, "I know I'm a sinner and deserve punishment, but what did the horse ever do to You?"

Read the original story, it shows the three eldest daughters and their tragic lives, the first becomes poor(poverty is as death), the second ends up in Siberia and dies, the third converts and is dead to her parents. Very tragic story.

Rest In Peace Chaim Topol (1935-2023) Incredible actor. He WAS Tevye, having played the role on over 3000 times on stage. And his performance is forever immortalized in the film.

-When a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick. I swear, this is one of the best one-liners from the first act. That and: -For a man with a slow tongue, he spoke a lot. Tevye gets so delightfully salted, when his knowledge is questioned.

I married into a family of Russian Jews that came over after the collapse of the USSR. Fiddler on the Roof always makes me think of them and how the soviets brutally pressed all their traditions out of them. They're completely secular atheists now, lost all connection to Judaism, the Yiddish language, etc. My mother-in-law sometimes talks about how her grandmother--the last generation of her family born in a shtetl--sometimes tried to teach her grandkids little prayers and what not in their cramped little Moscow apartment, but she never got very far. She was afraid of being overheard by one of the other tenants and reported. Fiddler on the Roof isn't just about tradition yielding to modernity, but the inherent violence of that process. Even when it happens peacefully as with the marriage of Tevye's daughters, it can be this awful, traumatic struggle. What a nightmare it is when that change comes at the barrel of a gun.

Being African-American, there is a parallel I can draw between Fiddler On The Roof and the life my grandparents. Being in a rural, agricultural living a hard life, being oppressed, it's something that resonates with me.

I'm a 57 year old living in Melb Australia, i am NOT Jewish. I saw this film when I was 8 or 9 and still remember being both sad and somehow inspired at same time, thank you for an in-depth look at the ideas and central themes that still run true for all of us.

My mother's very Catholic family left Latvia in 1910 - they were Polish speakers but they were also ethnically Lithuanian. One of them tried to contact the family left in Europe in the 1920's and found that they couldn't find information about anyone left. So, it was happening to so many people in the Russian Empire. Most of the Jewish people I have known in my life came from the Russian Empire.

I don’t expect many people to understand this, but as an Acadian who knows the story of his own people and their ethnic cleansing from land they literally pulled out of the sea for themselves, and whose ancestor survived the massacre at St-Anne’s when they were a 12 year old boy, the song “Anatevka” always hits home for me. There are more than a few parallels between the Jewish story and our own.

Anyone who has seen the musical or the film and has a nonzero IQ knows that this is not a happy story. The part where Tevya renounces his youngest daughter and the inhabitants are forced to leave their home is particularly heartbreaking. So I think the claim that Fiddler on the roof has been misunderstood is far-fetched. Incidentally, Yugoslavia no longer exists; the film was shot in Croatia.

When I was a young teenager I got to play Tevye twice. And I concur, though it has some comic relief, it is about a family coming to terms with a new world, and how that impacts them emotionally.

Thank you so much for this. Born in Washington, DC, a year affer my father the soldier, came home from WWII--an ''early boomer"", I knew this play very well. At 13, I joined ''Habonim"", the Zionist youth group, and that became the focus of my life. At 17, I spent a year on a Kibbutz in Israel..then.returned to the U..S .to go to the University (as I had promised my parents). Then I met my Israeli love at the age of 19. I'm 77 now ...still in Israel from 1970 , with 2 grown up childrren, 6 grandchildren --all sabras . It's been hard , sometimes nearly unbearable--but I am not sorry, but proud: I wanted to make a positive difference in the world, and especially for my people. Although I never saw the movie, the musical play was my Zionist group's present to the Kibbutz (Gesher Haziv), so I knew it well, including all the songs by heart. Right now, with 4 grandsons in the war, tears came to my eyes at the end of the movie. ..and now I will find it, as I remember not just my past, but my grandparents', theirs, etc.! I'd love to hear any comments. Elinore Liebersohn Koenigsfeld

When the books were written I think it was about "Modernity vs Tradition", but by the time the play was staged in 1964 it had taken on a different meaning. With the scars still fresh "Fiddler" is a reminder that the Jews are never truly safe and that history is always cyclical. Whether it be Renaissance Spain and forced conversions, the Progroms of both Czarist and Communist Russia, or Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Warsaw of the 1930s and 40s to this very day. That's the true tragedy hiding behind the catchy songs and story of "Fiddler"

I remember a podcast episode where Mike Pesca remarks that Fiddler of the Roof is structured differently than any other musical. Most Musicals the issues expand in the first act leading to a breaking conflict at intermission, then resolved to a joyous conclusion at the end. Fiddler breaks for intermission at a wedding, and the finale is the destruction of the town

I'm sorry, who thinks Fiddler on the Roof is quaint and fun? I mean, there's a lot of humor in the first act, but it is deeply depressing and existential, while still hopeful. It's one of the movies guaranteed to make me cry.

Fiddler on the Roof is basically my family's story, specifically the daughter that married Perchik. Nothing good came out of it, except for generations of people hated for the Jewishness that they lost. No traditions, fractured, dying community. The luckiest of Tevye's daughters, in my view, ended up being the little ones who hopefully had a chance to grow up in their tradition and prosper. Thank you for a good analysis of the movie!

The fact that Nicholas II was a rabid anti-Semite gives a whole new meaning to "May God bless and keep the tsar, far away from us!"

Omigosh, who can see Fiddler as a cheerful show? One of my favorites. My son played in it in a school production and I watched every show. Have seen numerous productions. I cry at the end every time. I'm crying now, just thinking about it.

The saddest thing? That it was necessary to explain this at all. How could anyone NOT recognize the tragic themes in Fiddler?