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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News Real-Life Anatevka Offers Refuge for Jews in Strife-Torn Ukraine
(JTA) — At the age of 53, Sergey and Elena Yarelchenko fled their native city of Lugansk with three suitcases and moved into a wooden room in a muddy refugee camp outside Kiev. Like hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine’s war-torn east, life for this Jewish couple in 2014 went from a normal bourgeois…
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The Schmooze Interview With ‘Fiddler on the Roof’s’ Motel the Tailor Reveals a Gutsy Entrepreneur Role Model
Relishing the newest production of “Fiddler on the Roof” by Joseph Stein (book) Jerry Bock (music) and lyricist Sheldon Harnick I experienced an Aha! moment that altered my perception of the character “Motel the tailor” as portrayed by Adam Kantor. Watching Kantor’s interpretation in what was my seventh “Fiddler,” it occurred to me that it…
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The Schmooze Hasidic Guys Watch ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ for the First Time — and Kinda Like It
Watching “Fiddler on the Roof” is tradition. (TRAAAADITION!) But not everyone has seen the 1971 classic retelling of Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye the Dairyman.” In honor of the film’s 45th anniversary, Allison Josephs, the woman behind Orthodox website , screened the movie to Hasidim that have yet to experience Tevye’s joys and sorrows, and recorded their…
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Culture My Long Journey From Anatevka to ‘Fiddler’ on Broadway
Editor’s Note: To prepare for his role as Motel the tailor in the critically acclaimed Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” actor Adam Kantor traveled to Eastern Europe in search of the world of Sholem Aleichem. What follows is an account of his travels and how they’ve changed his perception of the musical and…
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The Schmooze Sheldon Harnick Raises the Curtain on ‘Fiddler’ Memories
‘Fiddler’ lyricist Sheldon Harnick, R, weighed in in on the latest production. With him in this photo is composer Jerry Bock, L, and The Forward’s Masha Leon. With “Fiddler On The Roof” back on Broadway with Danny Burstein as Tevye the Milkman, I asked the musical’s 91-year-young lyricist Sheldon Harnick for his review of this…
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Culture Don’t Mess (Too Much) With Tradition: Updated ‘Fiddler’ a Triumph
The thing about traditions is that in order to thrive they sometimes need to change — just enough, and in the right ways. Even Tevye the milkman, musical theater’s great advocate for tradition, knows this. Oh, sure, he’ll raise a fuss when his traditional ways are questioned, but, on the other hand, he’ll come around…
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Culture Why Fiddler on the Roof Is the Opposite of a Jewish Musical
In “Changing Places,” a terrific academic novel by David Lodge, a professor and his colleagues play a literary parlor game called “Humiliation.” In the game, the players attempt to one-up each other in admissions of ignorance by confessing the most inexcusable examples of books they haven’t read. When Professor Howard Ringbaum admits he never read…
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The Schmooze ‘Tradition!’ Behind the Curtain of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
With “Fiddler On the Roof** about-to-open in a new production at The Broadway Theatre, I met with behind-the-scenes writer Barbara Isenberg whose must-read book “Tradition” is at times akin to Page Six exposes of “Fiddler” history. With conversations starting in New York and ending in California, her positioning of “’Fiddler” is of coming of age…
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