Tradition! Few songs in the history of American musical theater are as sublime as the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof (currently playing at the Broadway Theatre). The papa, the mama, the sons and daughters all understand their roles, and glory in them. “Who, day and night, must scramble for a living/ Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers?” is how the papas define themselves. “Who must raise the family and run the home/ So Papa’s free to read the holy book?” is the mamas’ motto. In “Tradition” the old ways reign benevolently.

So it seems in the opening minutes; the work of the rest of the show is to upend what we learn at the outset. Like everyone else in the Russian village of Anatevka, the milkman Tevye (Danny Burstein) of “Tradition” believes that parents, not children, decide whom the latter will marry. But if the children decide, they at least must seek permission from the parents first. But if they don’t seek permission, they must at least marry within the Jewish faith. By the end, Tevye has retreated from the first two rules and is evidently softening on the third. To a Burkean musical lover it’s troubling to watch Tevye’s beloved ways get discarded, stomped upon, and finally left behind in a forgotten outpost of a Russia that is about to recast itself in Lenin’s image.

And yet most viewers who