Wealthy, powerful sweatshop owner falls in love with employee's teenage daughter, who feels obligated to marry him after he shares his wealth with her parents, though she actually loves a young Marxist unionizer.

Tevye is a dairyman in the Russian Ukraine early in the 20th century. He lives in a cabin outside Boyberik with his wife Goldie, his widowed daughter Tseytl, her two children, and his younger daughter, the unmarried Khave. Khave is being courted by Fedya, a Christian, the son of a local government official. Tevye warns Khave against romance and marriage outside her faith, but Fedya is persuasive too. What will Khave decide, how will Tevye react, and when the Tsar initiates a pogrom, will Tevye's friends come to his defense? Can the stubborn Tevye reconcile his heart and tradition?

David Gottlieb, a longtime accountant at a New York firm run by Abe Zablinsky and his partner, is concerned about the future of his three daughters and worries that he might lose his job if he makes a mistake.

Thinking he has killed his friend Paul in a jealous rage, David Bergman flees his native Russia; becomes a successful lawyer in New York; and loses touch with his penniless family, who have followed him to the US.