Fiddler Roof Jews Are Miserable

The events related in the fiddler on the roof take place in anatevka a fictional town inside the pale during the year of 1905.

Fiddler roof jews are miserable.

From 1880 to 1920 when there was a political social crisis the russian government would incite the population against the jews trying to divert its attention from the real problems. Fiddler on the roof is a reminder of how difficult it has historically been to put a secure roof over the heads of the jewish people. Tevye pours out his complaints in an ongoing and unrequited dialogue with god. Once again i found myself in one of the least jewish places imaginable.

Ermelo a town with 27 000 residents in the middle of the dutch bible belt. The jews had their torah to comfort them although women were rarely taught hebrew so as to be able to read it. In this way fiddler on the roof the enduring musical about a jewish milkman in tsarist russia. Albin evoked the evening s theme speaking and even singing about fiddler on the roof s fictional town anatevka in 1905.

It could never bring in a general audience. Of course any reasonably informed and intellectually honest. Shortly after this life altering high school production of fiddler on the roof my family moved back to the netherlands where my parents had grown up and my extended family still lived. Jewish backwardness from fiddler on the roof the audience gets no sense of the downside of the jewish reformation as it left its impress on jewish life in the pale in the nineteenth century.