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Very good video, well done

I’ve loved this movie since I was a child. It speaks to many migrant experiences. ❤

I'm not jewish, I'm a catholic christian, and I've dived deep into the history of the Bible, both New Testament and the Old Testament (also known as the Tanakh). and like how the story of Ruth was a story focusing on the topic of marrying a gentile, and the story of Esther was the story of how the deliverance of the Jewish people could also come from imperfect people like Esther and Mordecai, I believe the story of the Fiddler of the Fiddler on the Roof has a place of importance in the history of the Jewish people.

I actually have an ancestor who snuck onto the ship to get to the US by hiding in a pickle barrel

I never thought the fiddler on the roof was a joyful musical. I am a AA and the first time I saw this musical in my choir class Zi understood this was a traumatic historical events in Jewish Family’s life. Anyone who thought this was a joyfully musical is delusional.

I'm on Team Tevye -- always! :-)

18:20 - Bad editing there. 19:35 - Same. Also, today I heard that kids are just toys to parents; The real kids are the grandchildren.

11:30 - Tearing your clothes doesn't actually symbolize agony. In the bible, it meant a great excitement over an eureka moment.

This is a story of a Jewish racist's community and one racist Jewish man who facing the backlash of their racist actions realize he need to stop being racist. SO it starts really grim but end up on happy note. :)

Watched this movie again this past weekend and I've been thinking about this over the last year and how tradition should be maintained vs modernity. Thanks for making this presentation. Been watching this movie since I was a child and only now in my forties figuring it out.

Thhhhaaannnnnkkkkkk You ! Imagine growing up with the "Jazz Singer" songbook, singing Kol Nidre from "Jazz Singer", home alone with "jesus" as a CLUELESS PATRILINEAL CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED WORLDS and your Bittersweet Jewish Grandpa from Russian Jewry hates HaShem, Judaism, Rabbis. Sorry, not sorry, but, may his memory be for a blessing, my Jewish Grandpa was a ball of furious non-stop YELLING. He had high blood pressure and I gave him his pills and was the cause of his high blood pressure. Bitterness IS Mental Illness. I WAS THIS MOVIE, like literally. The Father is NOT a STEREOTYPE. IT was real, INTERMARRIAGE is the "soft" Final *olution. Do "Yentl" ppllleeeeaaasssseeeee "A Piece Of Sky'

Great! 😃👍

I love it. the one person most important behind making the movie is the only one not a jew and his name starts with Jew... thats poetic irony.

Another example of how Hollywood never let the facts get in the way of a financially successful movie.

25:40 Tevye is asking what I asked on November 6. Why does the One Upstairs let people like this go unpunished?

OMG David this vid is sooo SLAY!!!!! Love💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻✨✨✨🎀🎀🎀😁😁😁

I'm a first generation American. My parents would take my sister and I back to the farm in the old country every summer break. They never forgot their roots. I'm a born again Christian, I love the Jewish people, and this film, and everything about it, hits me right between the eyes.

Thanks been waiting...❤

Amazing video as always! It’s about time we got a modern update for this film 😁

I remember seeing the movie when it just come out , it was for me a unforgettable experience ! The scene when we hear Kol Nidre it was so touching ( It most be my European roots with conservative beliefs ) Thank you David for bringing it back to me 💌

It is obviously a tragedy! It was antisemitism and loss

Keeping The Faith (2000)

Great video, as always! For something on the lighter side, I'd love to hear your take on Jewish themes in Mel Brooks' comedies.

School Ties. This is one you will like. As the only Jew in an exclusive prep school he davens by himself in the school's church.

WHO thought this was anything but a tragedy

I disagree with your characterization of Tevye’s relationship with God. Tevya has a loving relationship with God. Maybe a tough love relationship, but still a loving relationship with God. Just compare his relationship with God to that of his wife. He loves his wife, and she loves him, but their expression of love is different from today’s expression of love. Their love is rooted in their faithfulness to each other, to their children, and to their community. In many ways, this expression of love is very much the love that God and Tevye have for each other.

I disagree with your characterization of Tevye’s relationship with God. Tevya has a loving relationship with God. Maybe a tough love relationship, but still a loving relationship with God. Just compare his relationship with God to that of his wife. He loves his wife, and she loves him, but their expression of love is different from today’s expression of love. Their love is rooted in their faithfulness to each other, to their children, and to their community. In many ways, this expression of love is very much the love that God and Tevye have for each other.

There’s also a great irony that those who are expelled from their village, from their country, actually stood a better chance of survival than if they had remain in place in WWII.

It's definitely an American "As-A-Jew" movie.

I was reading a fairly new novel called Birobidschan by Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, a jewish author living in Berlin, and the experience of watching Fiddler on the Roof came back to me. I think Fiddler as a story gives more, the deeper you look into it. Each daughter represents the different path open to the Jews of the community and the ways it can end. But in the original story, Tevje has more than just these three daughters. He has 7 in total. So while the three threads of these daughters‘ stories end in tragedy, there is hope that the others will be happier.

It’s not that it is “misunderstood” but rather that NO ONE cares! It’s a MUSICAL, it’s entertainment, not a historic document!

This reminds me of the line from the movie Fail Safe "How long would the Nazis have kept it up if every Jew they came after had met them with a gun in their hand" My relatives came from Russia ( Kiev today ) and Anatevka could have been their home. How would history be different if the Jewish people had simply said "enough"

This movie is just as relevant in 2024 as it was in the 1960s

Two pieces of wisdom: What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? One cannot stop the birds from flying overhead but it doesn’t mean you have to let them build a nest in your hair.

Yentl, I think, also…

You should do analysis on Gustav Mahler and his compositions. He has a lot of motifs to Jewish traditional music.

Do "Jazz Singer" and "Yentl" Pllleeeeaaaasssseeee💕

I loved this movie. I have a few songs on my Spotify list.

So the issue for me is historical context being ofJewish heritage it goes a lot to explain my parents behavior and why they and their friends acted as they did I'm very thankful for your efforts

Last year, around the beginning of the war, I saw a photo of an Israeli soldier playing a violin on a roof of a tank and I remember thinking how weird it is that we as a people thought we left the days of persecution behind and yet the fiddler is still on the roof, carefully avoiding reality.

The story of Fiddler on the Roof is the story of my family or my mother’s side of the family. They were Orthodox Jews from Russia who came to America during the turn of century, the victims of a pogrom. They moved to New York City when my grandfather was five. He meets my grandmother who was an Orthodox Jew from Austria. My grandmother kept a kosher house and raised the my mother and aunt . When my mother was eight she lost her mother to cancer. My aunt was much older and already married. Grandpa stopped going to Temple and there was no one to keep a kosher house. My grandfather was the weak link in the tradition. He worked long house at the Brooklyn Navy yard as a plumber and my mother came home to an empty house. At age 21 she meets my father who isn’t Jewish. Just like Chavah in the movie. My mother would have her way. Had my grandmother lived she would have yes to the marriage but we my mother’s children would have been brought up in the faith. Instead we were raised as Protestant but also understanding the Jewish faith. My grandfather was never kind or loving because of my mother decision. My father didn’t care one way or the other. My grandfather’s relationship with us was out of obligation but not love. My cousins were raised in the faith and he loved them fully and without question.

A beautiful essay. I would argue that the Fiddler himself is not tradition. Tradition, as Tevye states in his opening monologue, is what keeps the Fiddler stable. Every Jewish person is like a fiddler on the roof and what prevents them from falling is tradition. It's a subtle but important difference. He says "we stay (up there) because Anatevka is our home." But by the end he himself is forced to leave that home and he still retains his Jewish identity when the Fiddler follows him at the end. Judaism survives regardless of location or changing traditions. And it's true that Tevye values money, but only because he himself has none. Both he and Golde want their children to have more than what they had. You can see their poverty compared to Lazar Wolf; would Lazar Wolf share the same value? And even Tevye relents. He says of Tzeitel, "she and Motel are so happy they don't know how miserable they are"

I had the same understanding of what that final scene meant. Their world was ending, but also beginning. The ending is best represented by the Samuel Beckett quote: "I can't go on. I'll go on."

One thing the movie got wrong was the role of the parents in matchmaking. Under Jewish law (with actual historical evidence), the parents use a matchmaker to make a shiduch (a catch basically). The parents of the boy and the girl make them meet, but it is their final decision if they are to be married, not the parents. If a parent were to insist in the arrangement, Jewish law penalices it with monetary compensation. You can find these in ram bam's books or even christian historians such as Johnson or De Vaux.

Thank you ever so much for your brillant analysis that I hit upon by accident. Has been an outstanding pleasure!

Ehrm... I hear this the first time. Fiddler on the roof was always a sad movie. You can see the injustice all the time.

Who is known it was a sad story but with happy lives

You should realize that the Cohens are atheist Jews. The movie is about one man’s existential journey to come to terms with the fact that there is no God looking out for him. Hence, no God showing up UNLIKE the book of Job. The Paradox metaphor foreshadows his realization that his existence is a paradox. I.E. accept the mystery NOT accept God. If there is a God, there is no mystery. This is not that hard to figure out and is blatantly obvious when watching the movie. Also, Arthur: “Hashem hasn’t given me shit.” How is this Jobian? Job had a lot, and it was taken away. Arthur always had nothing. ALSO, Cohens make dark comedies. The leading rabbi at the end points out the absurdity of Judaism. He quotes Jefferson Airplane about there being no truth, yet be a good boy - why even be a good boy if there is no truth to be found. This is ALSO a PARADOX. Moral of the Story: Don’t take life seriously so you can make peace with it and leave these bullshit fables behind because they too, like life, make no sense. This is a similar moral to the Big Lebowski, Burn after Reading so on and so on….

THANK YOU FOR NOT SHOWING BOG BODIES ITS SUCH A JUMPSCARE

I'm tired of Strawman Arguments. Perhaps you meant well-loved/recieved. Not interpreted as positive/feel-good. No one/very few people actually think it's a fun story.