Tevye


Tevye the Dairyman is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and various adaptations of them, the most famous being the 1964 stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and its 1971 film adaptation. Tevye is a pious Jewish milkman living in Tsarist Russia, the patriarch of a family including several troublesome daughters. The village of Boyberik, where the stories are set, is based on the town of Boyarka, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. The stories were written in Yiddish and first published in 1894; they have been published as Tevye and His Daughters, Tevye's Daughters, Tevye the Milkman, and Tevye the Dairyman.
As Tevye "tells" Aleichem the tales of his family life, six of his seven daughters are named, and of these five play leading roles in Tevye's stories. The stories tell of his business dealings, the romantic dealings and marriages of several of his daughters, and the expulsion of the Jews from their village by the Russian government.
The Tevye stories have been adapted for stage and film several times. Sholem Aleichem's own Yiddish stage adaptation was not produced during his lifetime; its first production, by Maurice Schwartz, was in 1919. The Broadway musical was based on a play written by Arnold Perl called Tevye and His Daughters. Tevye the Dairyman'' had four film adaptations: in Yiddish, Hebrew, English and Russian.

Name

Tevye's name in Hebrew is טוביה החולב, Tuvya ha-cholev,, Tevye being the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Tobias.

English translations

Tevye the Dairyman comprises eight stories, with Tevye each time supposedly meeting Sholom Aleichem by chance and relating the latest tale of his trials and tribulations. They have been published in translation under the following titles:
  1. Tevye Strikes It Rich
  2. Tevye Blows A Small Fortune
  3. Today's Children
  4. Hodel
  5. Chava
  6. Shprintze
  7. Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel
  8. Lekh-Lekho
The original stories included events not depicted in Fiddler on the Roof. For instance, by the time of the events of Lekh-Lekho, Tevye's wife Golde and Tzeitl's husband Motl have both died. Also, in Lekh-Lekho, upon learning of the Jews' expulsion, Chava leaves her Russian Orthodox husband, wanting to return to her family and share their exile. Aleichem leaves it to the reader to decide whether or not Tevye forgives her and takes her back, saying:
and ending the story with "The old God of Israel still lives!"
A 2009 translation includes a final short story titled Vachalaklokos that takes place after Lekh-Lekho.
Other translations include:
The story "Tevye Strikes It Rich" was adapted for children by Gabriel Lisowski in 1976 and published under the title ''How Tevye Became a Milkman".

Audio adaptations

The Tevye stories have been recorded and commercially released twice:
An audio production of Arnold Perl's play Tevya and His Daughters was released by Columbia Masterworks in 1957 ; the cast included Mike Kellin as Tevya, Anna Vita Berger as Golde/The Rich Woman, Joan Harvey as Tzeitl, Carroll Conroy as Hodl, and Howard Da Silva as Lazar Wolf/The Rich Merchant/The Rabbi.
The NPR/Yiddish Book Center 13-part mid-1990s radio series Great Jewish Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, broadcast a reading of the story "Chava" performed by Walter Matthau.

Portrayals

and Chaim Topol are the two actors most associated with the role of Tevye, although Theodore Bikel performed it many times on stage. For the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, the part ultimately went to Topol, as producer-director Norman Jewison felt that Mostel's portrayal was too unnecessarily comic. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the film version of Fiddler. He also portrayed the character nearly 3,500 times on stage, retiring the role in 2009.
Other noteworthy musical Tevyes have included Luther Adler, Herschel Bernardi, Paul Lipson, Leonard Nimoy, Shmuel Rodensky, Alfred Molina and Harvey Fierstein, Henry Goodman, Danny Burstein, Yehezkel Lazarov and Steven Skybell. Paul Michael Glaser, who played Perchik in the 1971 film version, played Tevye in a 2013–14 touring production in the United Kingdom.
Tevya is the name of a 1939 film adaptation of the story, performed entirely in Yiddish. In this adaptation, Tevye, played by Maurice Schwartz, is portrayed as gruff with flashes of wit and humor.
Prior to the 1964 Broadway debut of Fiddler on the Roof, adaptations of the Tevye stories appeared on stage and screen, in America and beyond. The earliest screen version was an American silent film called Broken Barriers, based on Aleichem's own theatrical treatment and released in 1919. In 1962 Gerhard Klingenberg directed the television film Tuvia Vesheva Benotav, released in English as Tevye and His Seven Daughters. After Fiddler on the Roof became a Broadway sensation, an Israeli film called Tuvia Vesheva Benotav starring Shmuel Rodensky was released in 1968, as well as two Russian versions: Teve-molochnik in 1985 and Myr vashomu domu! in 2017.
In 2018, Jerusalem Ballet published a ballet adaptation based on both Tevye the Dairyman and Fiddler on the Roof, by Russian ballet dancer-choreographer Igor Menshikov. Tevye has been portrayed by Israeli ballet dancer Meitar Basson.

Films