Arranged Marriages and Matchmakers

Historically

Matchmaking as a Jewish tradition originates from the story of the match of Abraham's son Isaac to Rebecca by the original shadchan Eliezer.

Matchmakers, or Shadchan, could be anyone within the local Jewish community. This usually meant friends of the family, mothers and sisters of single individuals would try their hand at pairing them with another in the community. After several tries, a family would then enlist a professional matchmaker who had a history of good matches. This process is vital to the continuation of Orthodox Jewish communities, especially in 1905 Russia, due to strict tradition to keep women and men seperate. Although the community's professional matchmaker is not the only one able to match couples, they are a prominent person in the community because of their ability to successfully make matches to continue bringing more children into the world and into their community.

Because of matchmaking, marriage was never left to a chance meeting or passion from love. This resulted in more political marriages for the wealthy, a rise in religious scholarship among the Jewish community and a drop in interfaith marriage. This allowed the Jewish community to successfully survive and maintain their culture even while being scattered and isolated from other Jewish communities.

In Fiddler on the Roof

Yente is the town's professional matchmaker. Although we do not see any previous attempts to match Tevye's three daughters, it is likely at least partially due to the family's poor status and Tzeitel's love for Motel. 

Golde and Tevye's marriage also was the result of a matchmaker and many of the attributes they list for one another in "Do you love me?" are the criteria that the matchmaker would have looked for in one another, leaving no room for the question of love.

Matchmaking was a tradition designed to create couples that would work well with one another and as this tradition is flipped in the exact ways it was originally designed to prevent. For Tzeitel, whose original match would have been political to raise her and her family's status by marrying the butcher it means marrying for love instead. Hodel falls in love with an academic who questions many of the traditions rather than studying them and Chava marries outside the Jewish community for love.

Tevye, ultimately is not only upset about his daughters shirking the traditions he has strictly followed, but for going against the tradition that protects the future of his community in Anatevka which ultimately is uprooted anyway.