Over fifty years after its Broadway opening, Fiddler on the Roof returned to Broadway in 2015 with a fresh approach and a cast worthy of its long tradition of bringing smiles and tears to its audience.

Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick’s triumphant musical is based on Tevye the Dairyman, a book by Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Set in 1905 in Czarist Russia, Tevye struggles with the untraditional courtships of the three oldest of his five daughters while facing social and political changes that threaten his beliefs, community, and tradition. 

In 2015, Fiddler took on a new face as Tony-award winning director Bartlett Sher brought his own vision from the opening scene: A lone man in a red parka walks onto the stage, reading the iconic first lines from an unnamed book. “A fiddler on the roof? Sounds crazy, no?” He then sheds his 21st century garment. As the first violin notes sound, he transforms into Tevye the Dairyman. Through “Tradition,” the opening number, he introduced the audience to life in his tiny village of Anatevka.

The show offered stunning new movement and dance reimagined through Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Although Jerome Robbins’ stamp remained on the key numbers, including the famous bottle dance, the Israeli’s roots and background result in earthlier, rawer dance numbers which garnered him with a 2016 Tony. 

The show closed on Broadway in December 2016 but took on new life when a national tour was launched in the fall of 2018. In 2023, Fiddler played in Proctor’s, Schenectady, New York’s theater before the tour’s closing on May 17 of that year. As a writer for the Capital Region of New York’s Jewish World, I interviewed by phone the actors playing the irrepressible Bible-quoting Tevye and his loving but nagging wife Golde. Jonathan Hashmonay and Maite Uzal shared insight into the production as well as the impact the roles had on them.

Jonathan Hashmonay may have been one of the youngest actors to professionally play the role of Tevye, but he made up for his age with life experience and talent. The descendent of Polish Holocaust survivors, Jonathan grew up in Israel. Throughout his youth, he performed in many high school ensembles and bands as well as Yom HaZikaron (Day of Remembrance) and Yom Haatzmaut (Independence Day) ceremonies. Although his family moved to New Jersey when he was thirteen, he returned to his native country to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), where he was the lead singer in the IDF’s Ground Forces Band. The group performed for a wide range of audiences, from a small group of soldiers in the Negev to on a stage in front of the prime minister and world dignitaries. 

 Jonathan originally planned on following in the footsteps of his father, a doctor. Interest piqued by seeing musical productions, including The Book of Mormon, however, lead him to Penn State University, where he majored in musical theater. 

In 2021, Jonathan joined the Fiddler tour in the role of Avram the bookseller. He also was an understudy for Tevye, which gave him the opportunity to play the role five times. When the opportunity arose for him to step into the lead in 2022, he gladly accepted the offer.

Jonathan brought his own perspective to the iconic role. “I try my best to be very truthful Tevye,” he said. “I want to portray a sweet, loving family man whose life becomes increasingly difficult.” Jonathan felt it was important that the dairyman’s gait reflected the increasing weight of family responsibilities and of the tragedies that befall the Jewish Russian family.

As many of the Tevyes before him, Jonathan enjoyed performing the show-stopping “If I Were a Rich Man.” On the other hand, he found poignancy and pathos in a second-act scene where Chava, his third daughter, first reveals her love for Fyedke, a non-Jew. The two strong-willed people engage in a fierce battle of wits. Tevye tries desperately to warn her of the consequences: “A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?” Chava just as passionately defends her choice. “The world is changing, Papa!”

When Tevye and Golde learn that their daughter and the Russian were married by a priest, it is one step too far for the besieged father. It is the biggest affront to the tradition that keeps Tevye, like the fiddler on the roof, balanced in a world that is crashing around him. “We have other children at home,” he tells his wife. “Chava is dead to us.” Jonathan said “Chavalah,” the song and ballet number in which Tevye relives the special moments in his now-lost child’s life that follows that touches the actor the most. 

Maite Uzal, a native of Madrid, Spain, continued in her role as Golde, which she had performed since the beginning of the 2018 tour. In order to understand her character, Maite diligently researched early twentieth century Eastern European Jewish life in which Fiddler is set. Maite grew to respect as well as pity the exhausting and sometimes back-breaking responsibilities of the women’s role keeping a “proper home, a quiet home, a kosher home.” 

Maite’s realization that Golde, like most Jewish women at the time, was illiterate, “hit me like a hammer in the head,” she said. “The way you process the world when you don’t read is so different,” Maite commented. “All her information came from her religion, her superstitions, and what she heard from others.”

As Maite herself has no children, being the “mother” of five daughters was also a learning experience, bringing her to the realization that parenthood is relentless, unconditional, and all-encompassing. “I am an even better daughter to my mother,” she said with a laugh.

Personally, Maite compared her life’s experiences to Hodel, the second daughter. Maite completed law school and served as a litigator in Spain. Twelve years ago, however, her passion for theater led her to leave law, abandon her home in Spain, and live, like Hodel,“far from the home I love.” “I defied my family, especially my father and left the people, and traditions I know to follow my heart,” she said. 

But her decision came at a steep price. “My father was initially very angry that I chose to leave my profession as a lawyer and my country,” Maite said. “In his eyes, I was not Golde, who followed tradition. I was Chava.” As Tevye comes around in the last moments of Fiddler, Maite and her father later reconciled. 

Maite applied to the highly competitive Musical Theatre Conservatory Program at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. “I knew if I was accepted there, I would have the background to succeed.” She found that success upon her graduation, landing roles in Les Miz, In the Heights, and Lion King.

Both Jonathan and Maite spoke of the timeless universal themes of Fiddler. “Every culture wants to define themselves by their traditions,” said Maite, “and every culture’s children wants to defy them.” They also see the plight of modern day refugees—Syrians and most recently Ukrainian—reflected in Harnock and Bock’s classic. 

Jonathan praised Fiddler’s themes of love, family, resilience, and change created from the tides of outside forces. “Our world—just like Tevye’s—is changing drastically,” noted Jonathan. “Traditions that are so important are being pushed aside. How do we decide which of those changes to accept or not?” 

At the end of Act II, Tevye again dons the red coat, and he, Golde, and the cast address the audience in a heartfelt speech citing the struggle of the Ukrainians and the spike of antisemitism in the world today. 

“As much as The Diary of Anne Frank is not just a Jewish story, neither is Fiddler on the Roof,” wrote Barbara Isenberg in Tradition!, her chronicle of the making of the popular musical. “Fiddler’s strong themes of family, tradition, repression, prejudice, and diaspora continue to evoke common ground for its audiences wherever they are.”

L’Chaim!

Originally published April 13, 2023. Updated May 25, 2025.

Photo of Jonathan Hashamonay and Maite Uzel used with permission from Joan Marcus via Bond Theatrical Group (www.bondtheatrical.com)

A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish World, a bi-w eekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York, in the April 13, 2023 issue.