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If I Were a Rich Man (song)
Show tune from the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof
If I Were a Rich Man (song)
"If I Were a Rich Man" is a song in the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, written by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. It is sung by the main character, Tevye, and reflects his aspirations. Its title was inspired by a 1902 monologue by Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish, Ven ikh bin Rothschild (Yiddish: װען איך בין ראָטשילד; lit. “If I were a Rothschild”), a reference to the wealth of the Rothschild family, although the content is different, and its words come partly from passages in Aleichem's 1899 short tale The Bubble Bursts. Monologue and tale both appeared in English in a 1949 collection of stories called Tevye's Daughters. In June 2026, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.
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