“A fiddler on the roof,” he says. “Sounds crazy, no? But here in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking our necks … And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: Tradition!”

With that, Tevye breaks into a rousing chorus: “Because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is.” He puts into words what we all know deep down — ritual and tradition are key elements of human life. They connect us by giving us shared actions and a sense of belonging to a family or place. In A Celebration of American Family Folklore (Yellow Moon Press), Steven J. Zeitlin notes that families revolve around the common ground of traditions. Storytelling, he says, represents “a heightened form of communication which holds the family together and acts, in one person's words, as a kind of glue.”