Long long time ago in the country far far away... It could be a beginning of fairy tale because the world that opened before our eyes doesn't exist anymore. This world vanished in the fire of
pogroms at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st. This world vanished in the fire of the revolution and the civil war. This world is famished in 1933. What is left of this world had perished at
Holocaust. This world is world of
shtetl, world of East European Jews.
In the center of this book is Tevye the Milkman, impoverished phylosopher. He is working hard in order to feed his family: his wife and six -- or seven daughters. You are not supposed to count your children -- it is a bad luck. Summer or winter, hot or cold -- he is always walking besides his old horse and the milk cart, delivering milk and cheese to the customers. All the time Tevye is having unstoppable dialog with God. He is asking Him for advise, questioning His deeds, sometimes sound suprised, sometimes angry. Really, he has enough to be angry. Why some people are living in luxury and he, Tevye, doesn't have enough money for food and dowry for his daughters? Why Czar ordered Jews to live only in little towns and villages where they can't find job and have to invent breathtaking affairs just for earning enough money for bread and piece of herring? Why God let
pogroms that claimed many innocent lives to happen?
We can see the history of the East European Jews through the stories of Tevye's daughters. The first one wanted just simple family happines -- marrying young man she loves, not the old one that was chosen for her by her parents. Second daughter wants the happiness for the whole world -- it was the time of the first Russian revolution (1905), third daughter commits something that worse than suiside in the Tevye's eyes -- for love of the Christian man she converts to Christianity in order to marry him. Every daughter in her own way is destroying the firm and unchangable world that was built by Tevye's ancestors and he start questioning -- is it really the best of possible worlds?
The Tevye's world get totaly destroyed at the end of the story. The Jews forbidden to live at the villages according to new law. He has to lose all he gained in his long hard life and -- old man! -- has to move in the new place and start a new life.
This world had vanished long long ago. However thank you to undying talent of Sholem-Aleihem this world had survived at his books and we read this story and learn our lessons.
