The Green Violinist 1923-24 by Marc Chagall the inspiration for the title of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof

“A fiddler on the roof. It sounds crazy, no?” asks the poor Jewish milkman. “In our little village of Anatevka you might say every one of us is a fiddler on a roof. Trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask why do we stay up here if it is so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance. That I can tell you in one word. Tradition!”

The fiddler is a metaphor for survival in a life of change and uncertainty through the upholding of tradition and joy.  Chagall used the fiddler in many of his paintings to illustrate happy celebrations in Jewish lives. Chagall painted "The Green Violinist" in 1923-1924, thirty years after Aleichem’s novel, Tevye's Daughters (or Tevye the Milkman), and forty years before the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof.