This is the year in which the story takes place, a time of great political upheaval around the world. Czarist Russian forces fired into a defenseless group of demonstrators in St. Petersburg, beginning the Russian Revolution of 1905. In the US, Industrial Workers of the World was founded, creating the first major worker’s union, while Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was introduced to the world.

For Tevye, traditions from the past maintain a foundation for his family and his community, but there is a conflict that is coming to the surface. Each of his three daughters is choosing to go against the strong cultural and religious beliefs of their parents and of the community. They want to marry those whom they love, rather than those whom Tevye and Golde have chosen for them. The themes of religious piety, economic survival, and the rise of feminism all come into play.

In 1905, in the Pale of Settlement, pogroms were common. Mass immigration to the US through Ellis Island in 1905 mirrors the current plight of refugees and immigrants trying to look for a better life someplace else. The fact that the United States closed its door on Jewish immigrants during Hitler’s rise to power in the thirties, and is now intent on replaying that policy today, is one of the many parallels that have become evident.

As in 1905, it was a time of tremendous political, social and cultural change around the world. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution heralded the beginnings of the Vietnam War. America was still shaken by the death of JFK, Bob Dylan released major social protest songs, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded.

1964 is only twenty years after the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the audiences of Fiddler on the Roof surely would have had these memories of horror in mind as they watched Anatevka being forcibly emptied of its life-long inhabitants, with many of them ending up in the death camps of Poland.

In June of 1964, three young civil rights workers, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi. The Civil Rights Movement pushed against the barriers of traditional American racial prejudice, and the painful sacrifices were prevalent. And just as Tevye’s daughters strive to make a life for themselves on their own terms, so did women in 1964, who marched in the streets for equal rights.

53 years after the opening of Fiddler on the Roof, all of these themes of human struggle addressed in the musical are sadly still part of our world…perhaps more so today than ever.

Powerful, violent right wing movements are sweeping across the continent of Europe and the United States, targeting the vulnerable and poor. Millions of refugees flee war-torn Syria and the Middle East. The Civil Rights Struggle continues with grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter. Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim rhetoric and action are spreading in all corners of the world. And the rights of the LGBTQ community are being fought for with a new generation of young activists.

Women’s rights are still being fought for in a country where misogyny is on an upswing – the Woman’s March on Washington involved more than 2 million people throughout the country. And the very survival of our planet, threatened by global warming, is in question.