On Tradition and Love

I wonder if tradition and love are antithetical to, or at least in tension with, one another. In Fiddler on the Roof, we see that love is a revolutionary force that forces tradition to bend (and almost break). Love pushes against the tradition of matchmaking and questions the tie of marriage to the community (by asserting that that tie is beneficial, but not necessary). Perhaps love supplements tradition by bringing the universal to bear on tradition--by maintaining that even the stranger is a person worth loving (worth loving not as a stranger or as an other, but worth loving as a neighbor or as one's own people).

Fiddler on the Roof also raises the question of what is the nature of tradition and what is central to it. For instance, as the Tevya and his family leave Anatevka, their farm, their people, etc., there is still a sense that they will carry their tradition with them. Is it in their scrolls and religious imagery, which they pack up and carry with them? Is it in the way that they leave that they adhere to their tradition? Do they know their tradition more deeply in the very act of leaving itself (for, as one of the character notes, the Jews have often been forced from their place)? Does tradition make sense apart from their land? I think that the message of the film, at least, yes.