Podcast: Ruth Wisse on Tevye the Dairyman

This Week’s Guest: Ruth Wisse

Probably no character in Jewish fiction is better known than Tevye the Dairyman. And Fiddler on the Roof, Broadway’s adaptation of the Tevye stories by the towering Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, is itself one of the best known and most widely performed musicals of all time; in turn, the Hollywood film made from Fiddler is American cinema’s quintessential portrayal of life in an East European shtetl.

But long before he sang his way into the hearts of theatergoers and film audiences around the globe, Tevye, at turns comedic, tragic, and wise, was the character into whom Sholem Aleichem poured the most of himself; and it was also Tevye through whom the great author commented on the core issues facing the Jews of his own day—and ours.