Remembering Tevye the Milkman: A Reflection on Jewish Life in Eastern Europe

Some sad news. Chaim Topol, the actor who played Tevye the milkman in the 1971 movie, Fiddler on the Roof, has passed away at age 87.  I saw the movie in 1971. I was 22 years old and it had such an impact on me. I was well aware of the struggles of my immigrant grandparents, so I thought, who came to America from Poland, Lithuania and Russia (through Ellis Island) at the beginning of the 20th century, prior to World War I, and settled in Brooklyn where my parents were born and where I was born.

Tevye shined a whole new light on what life was like for my Jewish family in Europe and Russia. I learned so much about how “life has a way of abusing us, Blessing and bruising us…”  He brought the struggles of that generation “To Life” and helped the children of Jewish immigrants of my generation understand the history of our own stories that we would have otherwise been detached from to a significant degree, mostly because our grandparents never talked about life in the old country. 

I got to see Topol live on stage and in the movie a million times. You have to show it to your kids and grandkids till they’ve memorized it all. I have to say that he was such a great character of Jewish life that when he passed away a few days ago, it was like losing a member of the family. 

The life of Tevye and his family in the shtetl community of Anatevka may have been from a time long ago and far away, yet at the same time the characters were so familiar. When we saw the life and culture of Anatevka, we saw an historically accurate account of Jewish life in eastern Europe and characters that we could identify with. 

In the providence of God they left Anatevka for New York, where Tevya had a brother. It was a safer place than had they landed in Germany or France or other parts of Europe where even worse times were to come. I couldn’t talk much to my grandparents about how it was that they left eastern Europe as teenagers, alone, and crossed the Atlantic landing in America. They didn’t like to talk about it because so many of the rest of the family died in the Holocaust — brothers, sisters, cousins.  That was my family’s story and now it is mine thanks to the authentic portrayal of Tevye the milkman by Chaim Topol. 

Even though I have limited knowledge about the trek to America because we have so few records and everyone who would have known anything is gone now, at least Fiddler on the Roof gave me a sense of what their lives were like. The difficulties, the joys, how they lived, their identities as Jews in the diaspora. 

Fiddler gave so many of us Ashkenazi Jews a sense of our roots from eastern European Jewry and as I think about that story today, as a believer in Messiah, I can’t help but see the reality of my people who saw only the first act of the two act play. As they are leaving Anatevka, once again wandering, I know God’s promise is to bring them back home again: 

“For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.” - Ezekiel 36:24

Our goal at The Jewish Road is to introduce as many as we can to their Messiah in Act II.