Omer 2025 Day 47

Day 46 | Day 48

Day 47: Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem
Hod in Malchut, Glory/Humility in Leadership

If you love Fiddler on the Roof, you'll love the source material. The stories of Tzeitel, Hodl, and Chava are well-known from the play/film. Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, rejects the financial comfort of an arranged marriage in order to marry for love. Hodl also marries for love and does so within the Jewish community, though her chosen husband applies Jewish teaching broadly in support of workers' rights, and she leaves her family to support his work. Chava finds love outside the Jewish faith and follows her heart, despite being cut off from her family and the Jewish community as a result. Their story, taken together, shows a progression of boundary-pushing, testing the limits of what Tevye (and the community) will accept.

What I love about the book is that it continues telling the story of the fourth and fifth daughters. The clean narrative of the first three becomes a little messy and starts to turn back on itself, revealing a cyclical nature to the story. The fourth and fifth daughters, Shprintze and Beilke, also find themselves contemplating love, comfort, and social order as they prepare for their own marriages. Their stories are each heartbreaking in their own ways. Beilke, in particular, highlights the ways that our responsibilities to our family and our community change over time.

What strikes me most about Tevye in these later stories is the way he embodies glory and humility in leadership. At first, he is certain that he knows what will be best for his daughters. At first, he is a poor dairyman who dreams of becoming rich. By the end, though, he is much more willing to trust his daughters, even when their decisions confound him. He learns to accept uncertainty. He takes pride in his place in life and values the hard work that has made him a pillar of his community, even if it has not made him a rich man.

We live in a world of leaders who are increasingly polarized idealogues. We harden our positions, believing that strength comes from unwavering conviction. But Tevye's daughters teach us to question the status quo and advocate for ourselves, and Tevye teaches us to let our traditions help us grow and change, rather than hold us back.

Bonus reading: For a "behind the scenes" look at Tevye and the writings of Sholem Aleichem, check out The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem by Jeremy Dauber.