Fiddler on the Roof

It’s fun to watch childhood favourites as an adult.

I found Fiddler on the Roof unbearably painful as a teen especially the story of Motel, the earnest well-meaning tailor, who saves all his life for a sewing machine, only to–like the rest of the town’s Jewish community–have his dreams, hopes, ambitions, and material possessions swept away by a pogrom during which they were forcibly relocated.

Still sad now, but I enjoyed the humour this time, esp. the charming milkman Tevye, who thinks aloud as each of his daughters make love matches. “On the one hand. On the other hand. But the light in my daughter’s eyes.” And ultimately gives permission. I enjoyed his comic renderings of interior debate.

However, when one daughter marries a Russian, one of the family’s persecutors, he says, “There is no other hand. How can a fish marry a bird? Where would they make a home?”

A charming celebration of Eastern European shtetl life.