We Are All Fiddlers on the Roof

But what distinguishes Tevye’s devotion to tradition above all is that it is not primarily a blind devotion to a rigid list of rules, but a life ongoingly addressed to God. Rewatching the 1971 film, I was startled to remember that the whole movie is narrated as a prayer, addressed by Tevye to God. In the moments where he struggles to know what is right to do, the camera zooms out of a frozen scene, and he speaks to God. The fiddler plays his questioning tune, as Tevye tries to listen to God, to be guided by tradition, to not lose balance. The implication seems to be that this itself – the tension of how the world has been and how we find it in all its current complications, lived before God and in conversation with community – this is tradition. Gustav Mahler famously wrote that “tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” But perhaps for Tevye it is more appropriately said that tradition is not a list of rules to follow, but the preservation of a divine conversation lived in community. Read Full Article »