Arbuzz J-Fest | Robert Harris: Fiddler on the Roof: Fact or Fiction?

Among the most well-known tales of nineteenth-century Russian-Jewish life are those of Sholem Aleichem and among these, perhaps the most famous are those surrounding Tevye the Milkman published from about 1894–1914.

Along with the 1964 theatre adaption, Fiddler on the Roof, which broke the record for longest-running Broadway musical, and the subsequent Academy Award-winning film (1971), these stories have helped create and popularise a grand narrative of Russian Jewish life that has influenced the way Jews and non-Jews, Russians and non-Russians alike conceive of the fabled nineteenth-century shtetl (еврейское местечко).

Examining both the original text and the later dramatic versions, we will consider to what extent these seminal stories reflect actual reality, and to what extent they propagate a romantic, if somewhat skewed myth of Russian-Jewish existence under the tsars.

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