“Hamilton” may be the hottest ticket in town, with its fusion of hip-hop patriotism and a colorful cast of homeboys for Founding Fathers, but not far behind in ticket sales and sentimental attachments to equally revolutionary times is the revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Amid all the madness of the present world — machine-gun massacres, beheadings of journalists, torching of homosexuals, the enslavement of women and random stabbings, not to mention recurring genocides — it is becoming easier to forget a time, not too long ago, when the savagery of human behavior was even worse.