 |
| Ken Stanek Photography |
Tevye, the central character in Fiddler on the Roof, must pull a milk
cart by himself because his horse is lame. In doing so, he slowly, pedantically drags it
through Anatevka, a small village in Czarist Russia in 1905. This struggle, this effort becomes a metaphor
for Tevye, who seems to have the world’s weight on his shoulders, and in his
world, he does.
At the brink of poverty, Tevye,
a religious Jew who frequently refers to the “Good Book” and believes that God,
for some reason, tries to give him a hard time.
He battles to feed, clothe and house his wife and five daughters. His
three oldest girls eschew deeply ingrained Jewish traditions to which he so
desperately tries to cling. Instead, they prefer to pursue lives of their own fueled by changing social mores. He must also match wits with his sharp-tongued wife of 25 years Golde. And on top of that, Tevye and his family as well as the other Jews in Anatevka face constant anti-Semitism and intimidation from Russia’s Czar.
No comments:
Post a Comment