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More About the Bible

The Bible and Pop Culture

Which hit musical chronicles the lives of an Orthodox Jewish man and his family?

Fiddler on the Roof. First a Broadway musical (1964), then a movie (1971), this story describes how Tevye, a dairyman, tries to instill traditional Jewish values into the hearts and minds of his daughters. Tevye finds opposition in the form of suitors who do not meet his idea of appropriate spouses for his daughters, and in the form of a tsar who orders Tevye’s village vacated because its inhabitants are Jewish. Traditions rooted in Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), such as Shabbat, flesh out the story.