Professor JEREMY DAUBER (Yiddish Department, Columbia University): We have “Fiddler on the Roof” in Hindi, and we have “Fiddler on the Roof” in Japanese, so clearly the stories that Sholem Aleichem told, even translated, have this universal appeal, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way his stories talk about the appeal of tradition and the struggle of maintaining tradition in a rapidly changing world.
[BETTY] ROLLIN: Theodore Bikel, who has played Tevye more than 2,000 times, is now touring a one-man show called “Sholem Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears.”
THEODORE BIKEL (Actor and Singer): Sholem Aleichem doesn’t only appeal to Jews. I get non-Jewish audiences who find parallels in what he wrote and how he wrote. I ask them, “What does this play mean to you?” Pogroms, Jews, Russians, turn-of-the-century shtetls ””“What does that mean to you?” And they said, “Tradition.” We know what that is. We know what it is when children don’t want to follow the tradition of their parents.
One of my favorite movies. The books, however, are more difficult to read. I have the books “Tevya the Dairyman” and “The Railroad Stories” in a one volume edition.
Maybe it’s time to give them another try. 😉
I actually played Tevye a year and a half ago in an otherwise almost all-Filipino cast of “Fiddler” in Manila! The issues of “Tradition!” and the family facing changing times played well to local audiences, despite the rather small Jewish community there. I read the novels to prepare and they are indeed different than the stage play and film but much more evocative of actual conditions in the shtetls of Russia/Ukraine: a world that is no more. Let’s hear it for preserving endangered languages, by the way!