This is the Forward’s coverage of Fiddler on the Roof, the seminal 1964 Broadway musical about a Russian man who attempts to maintain his Jewish way of life circa 1905. It is based on Yiddish stories by Sholem Aleichem,…
Fiddler on the Roof
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Music What 91-Year-Old ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Lyricist Taught Me About Love
As I walked into Mendy’s on 34th Street on a recent Friday night to attend a Shabbat dinner for the Broadway cast of “Fiddler on the Roof,” I felt relieved that I’d successfully avoided a run-in with my ex-boyfriend, who lives in the neighborhood. He ended our three-and-a-half-year relationship this past summer and began seeing…
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Culture Four Decades Later, They’re Still Banking on ‘The Rothschilds’
Book writer Sherman Yellen and lyricist Sheldon Harnick say the timing is spot-on for a new look at their 1970 musical “The Rothschilds,” which has been revised and dubbed “Rothschild & Sons” for its October run with The York Theatre Company, in New York. The Tony-nominated musical, with a score composed by the late Jerry…
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The Schmooze Remembering My Friend, Theo Bikel
Theodore Bikel, actor, activist, Yiddishist, and multi-lingual folksinger — who died on July 21 at 91 — has had a “home” in my piano bench since the 1960s where his well-thumbed “Folksongs and Footnotes” tome rests, as do his vintage recordings on my shelves. I first met Bikel on March 5, 1978 when he was the guest…
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Culture ‘Fiddler on The Roof’ Shtetl To Become Real-Life Refuge For Ukraine’s Jews
(JTA) — The Jewish refugee village of Anatevka, Ukraine, is so new it doesn’t even officially exist yet. Due to open in September, Anatevka Jewish Refugee Community hadn’t received much Jewish-media attention until last week, when its developers began raising funds for the $6 million project — designed for Ukrainian Jews displaced by the war ravaging…
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The Schmooze Theodore Bikel, Guardian of Yiddishkeit, Honored By YIVO
“I have to sing!… It is a need bigger than eating” a young, handsome Theodore Bikel declares in a clip from Murray Lerner’s 1967 film of the Newport Festival which was shown at the YIVO’s 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon at the Center for Jewish History honoring 91 year old Bikel. In the film, Bikel is…
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Culture When the Legendary Theodore Bikel Turned 90
Broadway star, Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning film and TV actor, folk singer, recording artist, radio host, raconteur, advocate for the arts, international human rights activist — Theodore Bikel has been all of these things and more over the course of his long and intensely rich career, and he’s still going relatively strong at the age…
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Culture How ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Shattered My Dreams
When “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in the fall of 1964, I was singing in the chorus in “Ben Franklin In Paris,” another Broadway show, which starred Robert Preston. I also performed in the ballroom scene whenever one of the dancers wasn’t feeling well, because I was the only singer who could also…
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The Schmooze Robin Williams’ Most Jewish Moments
Robin Williams wasn’t Jewish. But he was close. Though raised Episcopalian in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (his mother was a Christian Scientist), the comedian had an affinity for Jews which shaped and even defined many of the roles he took on. He used Yiddish, danced a mean hora and did a killer Barbra Streisand impression. With…
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