At a recent lecture for the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation’s Chinese-Jewish Exchange, the renowned Chinese Judaic Studies scholar Xu Xin made a striking observation. Many Chinese people, he said, experience Jews as “soulmates.”

At first glance, the idea seems improbable. What could connect a tiny Middle Eastern people shaped by Torah, exile, and covenant with a vast East Asian civilization shaped by Confucian ethics, Taoist balance, and dynastic continuity?

And yet, the resonance is real.

One clue may lie in an unexpected place: Fiddler on the Roof.

A colleague involved in our Chinese-Jewish Exchange project recently told me that this musical deeply resonated with many in China and has been staged in Hong Kong in Cantonese. He explained that many recognized something profoundly familiar in the story. In fact, he said that seeing Fiddler on the Roof marked the beginning of his own Jewish journey.

But why should a musical about Jews in a Russian shtetl feel emotionally legible to Chinese audiences? The answer may reveal something important about both civilizations.

The emotional engine of Fiddler is not merely Jewish ritual or Eastern European history. It is the universal drama of what happens when an ancient civilization collides with modernity. Tevye struggles to........

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