The residents in the small Ukrainian town of Anatevka, populated primarily by Jews, have settled for a life of tradition and customs. Yet the spirit of change ultimately finds its way into even the most remote areas of their lives, something the milkman Tevye has to learn the hard way. When his oldest three daughters resist their parents’ plans for arranged marriages, the good-natured Tevye allows them to have their will, though in Chava’s case – who gets involved with a ‘goi’ (a non-Jew) – this causes a significant crack in the relationship between father and child. Meanwhile, rumors have begun to spread throughout the country, and the Jews begin to fear the affects of the approaching revolution. Tevye and his family are forced to leave Anatevka for an uncertain future. With unshakable faith in God, he submits himself to this grave fate.

Based on three Yiddish short stories and in appreciation of the paintings by Marc Chagall that examined the motif of the fiddler on the roof, the authors created a musical in the 1960s that depicts life in a lost world, the Eastern European ‘shtetl,’ and does not shy away from the delicate subject of the persecution of Jews (here in the form of the brutal pogroms in Russia on the evening before the February Revolution of 1905). The fact that a family story is woven into this framework whose conflicts are still directly relatable today has secured ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ continual popularity ever since its premiere in spite of its underlying sadness. And this success is due in no small part to melodies such as ‘If I Were a Rich Man,’ which have remained famous throughout the decades.