Tevye

Tevye
Actor John Stefano portraying Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
First appearance	'Tevye the Dairyman' 1894
Created by	Sholem Aleichem
Portrayed by	Evgeniy Knyazev Chaim Topol Zero Mostel Theodore Bikel Shmuel Rodensky Maurice Schwartz Luther Adler Herschel Bernardi Paul Lipson Alfred Molina Harvey Fierstein Henry Goodman Danny Burstein Yehezkel Lazarov Anthony Warlow
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Milkman
Spouse	Golde
Children	7 daughters, including Tzeitel, Chava, Hodel, Shprintze, Taybele and Bielke
Religion	Judaism
Nationality	Citizen of the Russian Empire

Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman (Yiddish: טבֿיה דער מילכיקער, Tevye der milkhiker^[1][2] [ˈtɛvjə ˌdɛr ˈmilxikər]) is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and their various adaptations, the most famous being the 1964 stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and its 1971 film adaptation. Tevye is a pious Jewish dairyman living in the Russian Empire, the patriarch of a family including several troublesome daughters.^[a] The village of Boyberik, where the stories are set (renamed Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof), is based on the town of Boyarka, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Boyberik is a suburb of Yehupetz (based on Kyiv), where most of Tevye's customers live.

The stories were written in Yiddish and first published in 1894; they have been published as Tevye and His Daughters, Tevye's Daughters, Tevye the Milkman, and Tevye the Dairyman.

As Tevye "tells" Aleichem the tales of his family life, six of his seven daughters (Tzeitel, Chava, Hodel, Shprintze, Taybele, and Bielke) are named, and of these five play leading roles in Tevye's stories. The stories tell of his business dealings, the romantic dealings and marriages of several of his daughters, and the expulsion of the Jews from their village by the Russian government.

The Tevye stories have been adapted for stage and film several times. Sholem Aleichem's own Yiddish stage adaptation was not produced during his lifetime; its first production, by Maurice Schwartz, was in 1919. (Schwartz did a film based on the play twenty years later.) The Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof was based on a play written by Arnold Perl called Tevye and His Daughters. Tevye the Dairyman has had four film adaptations: in Yiddish (1939), Hebrew (1968), English (1971) and Russian (2017).

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