“The Stories Are Interesting, but the Character Is a Hundred Times More Interesting”: Discovering Tevye the Dairyman https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/arts-culture/2019/07/the-stories-are-interesting-but-the-character-is-a-hundred-times-more-interesting-discovering-tevye-the-dairyman/

July 31, 2019 | Ruth R. Wisse
About the author: Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literatures at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at Tikvah. Her memoir Free as a Jew: a Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, chapters of which appeared in Mosaic in somewhat different form, is out from Wicked Son Press.

Undoubtedly the best-known figure in all of Yiddish literature—if not in all of Jewish fiction—is Tevye the Dairyman. A creation of Sholem Aleichem, Tevye is a simple Jew whose personal travails serve as a commentary on the Russian Jewish experience. Even before he was reborn as the protagonist of Fiddler on Roof, Tevye was beloved by thousands of readers.

The celebrated teacher and scholar Ruth R. Wisse’s online course on Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories is now available. The trailer can be viewed here, and free registration for the class itself can be found at the link below. (Video, two minutes.)

Read more on Tevye Online: https://tevye.tikvahfund.org/