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.

[2] The Oxford Companion to the American Musical wrote that the song includes passages of "cantor-like chanting", and is "the most revealing of the many character numbers".

[4] History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe explains that the song is based on a monologue from the stories of Sholem Aleichem entitled "If I were Rothschild", in reference to the wealthy Jewish banking family.

[5] The Grammar Devotional likens the phrase "if I were a rich man" to the Cowardly Lion's "if I were king of the forest" in The Wizard of Oz; both songs involve a tongue-in-cheek comparison between the character's actual condition and the one they imagine.

However, in an interview with Terry Gross, Sheldon Harnick said he basically made up syllables that he thought would give the effect of Chassidic chanting.