Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (68 page)

Jewison himself admitted that he had tamped down
Jewison quoted in Joyce Haber, “The Genesis of Jewison’s
Fiddler on the Roof
,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 9, 1972, VII.

“resembles a kind of hippie commune”
Leonard Frey quoted in Bernard Weinraub, “Tevye’s Suffering Enacted for Movie,”
New York Times
, January 4, 1971.

“Ellis Island whiteness”
Jacobson,
Roots
, 7ff.

“about the rich traditions of their forefathers”
Roman Pucinski (D-Ill.) opening speech of the hearing on H.R. 14910: U.S. Congress. House Committee on Education and Labor. Ethnic Heritage Studies Centers: Hearings before the General Subcommittee on Education. 91st Cong., 2nd Sess., February 19, 1970, 1.

In the meantime
Introduction to the 1996 Transaction edition of
The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics
. See more at:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2006/08/novak-the-rise-of-unmeltable-e#sthash.iuh44aj8.dpuf
.

“People uncertain of their own identity”
Novak,
Unmeltable
, 271.

“historical memory, real or imaginary”
ibid., 47–48.

particulary masculinist terms
Feminists reached back to recover the histories and creations of the forgotten women, often within their ethnic groups, but early on, the dominant mode of the new ethnicity played as score-settling for dissed manhood. Even as the tribal demagoguery settled down and claims for “heritage” found more genteel forms of expression, it long sustained a male cast. Irving Howe’s 1976 blockbusting book about Yiddish life on the Lower East Side was told, indeed, as a
World of Our Fathers
.

“Jewish boys should not be that nice”
Jewish Defense League display ad,
New York Times
, June 24, 1969, 31. For a discussion of JDL, see Michael Staub,
Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002; Robert I. Friedman,
The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane from FBI Informant to Knesset Member
, New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990. Janet Dolgin,
The JDL and Jewish Identity
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Meir Kahane,
The Story of the Jewish Defense League
(Radnor, PA: Chilton, 1975).

council member Anthony “Tough Tony” Imperiale
photographed for and interviewed in “In Politics, It’s the New Populism,”
Newsweek
, October 6, 1969.

“nice Jewish bad boys”
J. Hoberman, “Flaunting It: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s ‘Nice’ Jewish (Bad) Boys,” in Hoberman and Shandler,
Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting
, Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, and New York: Jewish Museum, 2005, 220–43.

“one of the few filmmakers left”
“Fiddler on the Screen,”
Jerusalem Post Magazine
, February 12, 1971, no byline, BSA-TA clippings.

“symbolic ethnicity,” “symbolic religiosity”
Herbert Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation,”
Ethnic and Racial Studies
17:4 (1994): 577–92.

“about the problems of people who have”
Drucker and Jacobs, “Antennae on the Roof,”
Mad Magazine
1:156, January 1972, 4.

“But though God’s made imbeciles”
Drucker and Jacobs, “Antennae,” 10.

“God made a modern Camelot”
ibid.

enacting their Jewishness
Jeffrey Shandler,
Jews, God, and Videotape
, esp. 185–229.

In 2006, Bet Shira Congregation
This discussion was first developed for my two-part essay in
The Forward:
“How
Fiddler
Became Folklore,” September 1, 2006, and “Tevye, Today and Beyond,” September 8, 2006.

CHAPTER 9:
SKRZYPEK NA DACHU
: POLAND

The director, Magdalena Miklasz, wanted the spectators
All quotes and ideas attributed to Miklasz from interviews.

the designer, Ewa Woźniak, had decided
All quotes and ideas attributed to Woźniak from interviews.

“If people know where Dynów is”
Mayor Zygmunt Frańczak interview.

As early as 1966
letter from Walter Felsenstein to Jerry Robbins, May 4, 1966, JRP5:17.

Robbins was to have directed
Donal Henahan, “Sing Along with Felsenstein?”
New York Times
, May 30, 1971, D13.

with just a few adjustments
letter from Johannes Felsenstein to Hal Prince, January 2, 1971, HPP111:5.

audiences booed the Russians
“
Sholem-aleykhems ‘fidlr afn dakh’ regt on di tshekhn tzum vidershtand kegn der okupatziye
,”
Haynt
, July 24, 1969;
Fiddler
clippings, BSA-TA.

interest in presenting
Fiddler
at the State Yiddish Theater
letter from Meir Melman to Ed Khouri, representing Stein at William Morris, March 1, 1966, JSP-NY “Fiddler-foreign-misc.”

Theater artists simply understood
Gruza, Weiss interviews.

it had been commercially screened
United Artists financial statement, November 25, 1978, JRP16:37.

“staging the play was entirely unthinkable”
“Droga Skrzypka do Polski” (“The Fiddler’s Road to Poland”)—Antoni Marianowicz, program note for Gruza’s production, program, Gdynia, 1984; trans. Agnieszka Sablinska. ZRT programs.

Jerzy Gruza made a trip to New York
Gruza interview.

Robert Darnton
“Poland Rewrites History,”
New York Review of Books
, July 16, 1981.

“they reminded us”
Krajewski interview.

“As you probably know”
letter from Antoni Marianowicz to Joe Stein, April 1, 1981, JRP7:13.

Robbins would have preferred
Robbins note on memo about Marianowicz’s request: “yes—but not for cemeteries but for
living
people,” April 15, 1981, JRP7:13.

“If our show can have”
Stein letter to Marianowicz, April 15, 1981, JRP7:13.

“the people who once lived in our land”
Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

“modern mass Jewish culture”
Michael Steinlauf, “Yiddish Theater,”
YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
.

had come to love the music
Rajmund Ambroziak (director of the Musical Theater of Łódź) interview for
Dziennik Lodzski
, April 21, 1983, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska, ZRT clippings.

and … “made it his point of honor”
Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

“The social task of musical theater”
Gruza interviewed by Andrzej Ibis-Wróblewski,
Radar
17:484 (1984), trans. Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, ZRT clippings.

“The production raised”
Gruza interview.

“the final scenes”
Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

Reviews raved
clippings, ZRT; trans. Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Agnieszka Sablinska.

striking twenty-foot by thirty-foot poster
Kitlowski interview and images kindly supplied by e-mail.

He detested its “falsification”
Szymon Szurmiej interview.

screened at private parties
Kitliński, Leszkowicz, Haponiuk interviews.

Lublin’s theater
Marian Josicz (actor who played Tevye) interview; and program booklet, Teatr Muzycyny, Lublin, 1994, ZRT programs, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska.

elaborate program booklet
from Lublin: ZRT programs, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska.

“medicine”
Marek Weiss, interview.

deft, straightforward direction
production viewed in Warsaw on June 29, 2008.

Three-quarters of its voters
National Electoral Commission, Republic of Poland, Presidential Election Voting Results, October 23, 2005,
http://www.prezydent2005.pkw.gov.pl/PZT/EN/WYN/W/181600.htm
.

felt a little shudder
Pinczer interview.

The group piled into cars
descriptions of seeing the film and subsequent descriptions of rehearsals and performances from interviews with cast members.

Woźniak walked from house to house
Woźniak interviews and interviews with neighbors in Dynów.

Nazi invasion
See Krasnopolski and Szajnik,
Dynów
; Moritz, “
Khurban
”; Wenig,
From Nazi Inferno
; Virtual Shtetl,
http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/
; and Szajnik interview.

The “narrator” … walked out
production description based on video of performance kindly supplied by Miklasz, and interviews with Miklasz, Woźniak, and a dozen cast members.

a slander still granted great credence
Tokarska-Bakir, “Sandomierz Blood-Libel Myths,” manuscript generously shared by its author.

EPILOGUE: FIDDLING WITH TRADITION

a man bursts into the hall
description of the performance from Pasternak interview; see also promotional video of their performances at
bottledancers.com
.

Amazing Bottle Dancers
This section was excerpted for my article “Balancing Act,”
TDR
55:3 (T211) (Fall 2011): 21–30.

“a way of adding a touch of tradition”
Pasternak interview.

“age-old magnificent dance”
Amazing Bottle Dancers promotional video.

Chabad telethon
April 6, 2008,
http://youtube/AwOzf8dvFNU
.

“a mode of cultural production”
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
Destination Culture
, 7.

“If a Jewish work…”
Ruth Wisse,
Modern Jewish Canon
, 65.

“poignant musical tribute”
YIVO News
, no. 190 (Summer 2000): 3.

royalties on his Hebrew translation of
Fiddler
Almagor interview; Isabel Kershner, “Palestinians Serenade Survivors in Israel,”
New York Times
, March 26, 2009, A10.

“the very people who are telling”
“Theodor Bikel: It Hurts that the Descendants of Anatevka Expel Israeli Bedouin,” posted May 31, 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLeWQ470G6
.

“working for generations”
David Magazine
, Las Vegas, NV, n.d., clipping shared by Jack Solomon (deceased).

“Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest”
http://jewschool.com/2006/02/14/10045/israelis-launch-own-antisemitic-cartoon-contest/
.

“If I Were a Rich Man Tour”
a project of Bent Arc, A Jewish Partnership for Justice, in fall 2012; see
http://bendthearc.us/campaigns/if-i-were-rich-man-tour/news_items
.

Abramoff … decided to become religiously observant
Abramoff quoted in Michael Crowley, “A Lobbyist in Full,”
New York Times Magazine
, June 24, 2010.

Stephen Colbert’s joking that
The Colbert Report
, Comedy Central, broadcast September 22, 2009.

Alicia Svigals
Interview.

“new Jewish culture”
See, for example, Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman,
The Continuity of Discontinuity: How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing Their Own Jewish Lives
(New York: Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, 21/64, 2007),
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=327
; Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman,
Uncoupled: How Our Singles Are Reshaping Jewish Engagement
, Jewish Identity Project of Reboot, 2008,
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=332
; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “The New Jews.”

high rates of academic achievement
This figure and others cited come from the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–2001. While the survey’s methodology generated controversy and its findings are now more than a decade old, it remains the most comprehensive picture we have.

In the Heights
Miranda interviewed on “Chasing Broadway Dreams,” PBS, May 27, 2009; see also Miranda’s wedding surprise for his bride, posted on YouTube: A rendition of “L’Chaim” led by him and his new father-in-law,
http://youtube/KgZ4ZTTfKO8
.

Rajiv Menon has been dreaming
e-mail correspondence with Menon, September 12, 2008.

“in many respects, an adaptation of genius”
Wisse,
Modern Jewish Canon
, 63.

the roof tilted into
Cameri production viewed in Tel Aviv, January 5, 2009; interviews with Datner, Kepten, Smorgonski, Toren.

“fresh, exciting approach”
Bock letter to Theodore Bikel, February 1, 2001, JBP20:8.

They rejected
Harnick-3 interview.

“renewal, not revival”
Bock speaking on
Fresh Air
, June 21, 2004.

Leveaux figured there was still room
Leveaux interview.

Bock relished the chance
Bock speaking on
Fresh Air
, June 21, 2004.

Harnick focused on
Harnick-3 interview.

“Topsy Turvy” … didn’t work as well
Harnick-3 interview.

authors didn’t like the ring of those lines
Harnick-3 interview.

“take that musical and strip it of the schtick”
Leveaux interviewed by Mark Shenton,
What’s on Stage,
June 16, 2003.

damping him down in rehearsals
Harnick e-mail.