Daniel Bradley Explores

Category: History

  • Our Tevye, Chaim Topol

    Our Tevye, Chaim Topol

    What a man, right? Israeli actor Chaim Topol once estimated that he played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more than 3,500 times. As the face of Tevye in the movie, many of us claim Topol as our Tevye, the one that got us to fall in love with the story, the face of the simple milkman that people of all cultures can relate to as a parent and person of faith.

    Topol’s recent passing has me thinking a lot about the meaning of the story. Currently, I’m in a local production of Fiddler on the Roof. I’m a semi-professional actor. That basically means that I work a day job but my evenings are all spent on paid and unpaid stages. I’m especially drawn to classic musicals that celebrate times and cultures gone by. Fiddler has been especially meaningful.

    I grew up in a culture of faith, not as strict and orthodox as the faith of Tevye, but similar in how central our traditions are to our identity as children of progenitors who sacrificed more than everything. We talk to God in prayer and perform our sacraments in ways that make us unique as a people.

    So, I really like Tevye. I like the way he talks and laughs with God, how he complains and then reconciles. I laugh at how he flirts with the idea of vanity, that if being rich is a curse, “then may God smite me with it! That I may never recover!” On the other hand (see what I did there) I tear up when he laments for his daughter Chava, “If I bend that far I will break.” He’s a wonderful character.

    Topol’s baritone voice is the quintessential Tevye, the one that sticks to my head whenever I quote “Tradition!” on the regular. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes him so iconic, but in the light of his death I got to thinking about where Topol comes from. His father was from Russia, born a generation after the Pogroms. Topol was born not long after the Holocaust. Surely he must have carried the generational pride and trauma with him as he played out the scenes, carrying the cart and mourning his lame horse. I don’t think I can even begin to pick up all the symbolism in his performance.  

    We’re lucky to have Topol’s performance as Tevye frozen in time in the movie. He’s our Tevye, and though he may be gone, I’m sure the character he helped bring to life for millions of us will live on forever.

  • World Population Growth in the Past Century Will Astound You

    World Population Growth in the Past Century Will Astound You

    While it’s no secret to sociologists, many of us don’t realize just how much the world population has grown in the past century. I was back in college in 2018 and taking an online general class when I found out that the world population had reached over 7.6 billion people. When I was a kid in the early 2000’s, the number I always heard in school was 6 billion. That seemed like a lot. According to the United Nations, we’ve reached 8 billion in 2022. Earth now has more than twice the population it had when my parents were children in the 1960’s.

    Back in the sixties, science fiction was on the rise in mainstream popularity thanks to Arthur C. Clark’s and Stanley Kubrick’s story 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the novel, Clark’s character Dr. Heywood Floyd reminisces about how Earth had reached over 6 billion people and how it brought on challenges such as food shortages:

    “Though birth control was cheap, reliable, and endorsed by all the main religions, it had come too late; the population of the world was now six billion…As a result, food was short in every country; even the United States had meatless days, and a widespread famine was predicted within fifteen years, despite heroic efforts to farm the sea and to develop synthetic foods.”

    2001: A Space Odyssey Chapter 7: Page 44

    First of all, major props to Arthur C. Clark for accurately predicting the world population growth by the new millennium. I often forget while reading this novel that it was written so long ago, and in the campy time of science fiction that brought us classics like Star Trek. Science fiction back during the Cold War often focused on the issue of overpopulation. People were afraid that the human race was having too many babies, and that too many babies were growing to live full lives and have even more babies. In Clark’s time, just over 3 billion people lived on the Earth, and that was 3 times more than the year 1800. Before that, the world had never seen more than a billion at a time. Naturally, this freaked scientists out, and provided wonderful story fuel for speculative authors.

    I lived through the year 2001, and while it was a rocky year in terms of world events, we didn’t starve, and 22 years later I have yet to have any “meatless days” that weren’t an individual choice (Hey, I really like animals).

    Now, before you start thinking that world population is going to soar into the double digit billions, you should know that the growth rate is actually plateauing. The United Nations predicts that it will take until 2037 to reach 9 billion and we will reach 10 billion during the late 2050’s. Population growth is on the decline. We’re still growing, but not at the rate of our grandparents’ generations.

    10 billion people is a lot, and it’s crazy to think that I might witness the world get that dense during my lifetime. Climate change is on the rise, and we do feel that in my hometown where draughts have made the lakes I’ve swam in my whole life recede past recognition, and may even soon make the air poisonous. I wonder if part of the reason we can’t sustain our water supply is because so many more people are using the water. The world’s population is more than twice as big as it was when my parents were born. That’s nuts. In retrospect, perhaps world problems aren’t as dramatic as Clark predicted, but there are measurable effects.

    If you want to educate yourself more on the history of population growth, visit the United Nations website on global issues, the website I used to write as a reference for this article. I believe it’s important to familiarize ourselves history like this so we can better understand where we are headed as the resident caretakers of our planet. My life goal is to enjoy and care for this world as much as I can during my short time on it. If you like this article and want to explore the outdoors and learn about life with me, consider reading more articles from my homepage where I talk about everything from hiking to dog training.