
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Editor’s note: This page has been removed from our website because it did not meet our editorial standards. Published on Sept. 22, 2023, the 50th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Fiddler on the Roof, it was a graphic-novel style piece combining drawings of many of the people involved in that production with facts, descriptions and quotations from them that were unattributed.
We discovered after publication that virtually all of the written material had previously appeared in other places. The main sources appear to have been this article in the Los Angeles Times, which Barbara Isenberg adapted from her 2013 book, Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, The World’s Most Beloved Musical; Alisa Solomon’s book Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, also from 2014; and the 2020 PBS documentary Miracle of Miracles.
Following journalistic best practices, the Forward has a policy not to remove pages from our website. But we made an exception in this case because the nature of the piece and the volume of the uncredited material made it impossible to properly correct the record with integrity. We regret having published it.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
