Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof

by Alisa Solomon

  Sholem-Aleichem … read his new play … Adler … “fidgeted and nodded his head” Israel Cohen, “On the Horizon: Sholem Aleichem in Exile,” Commentary 8 (1949): 584.

  “nothing can dispel the despondency and the gnawing in the heart” Sholem-Aleichem ship diary/letter to family, October 19, 1906, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 81; quoted and trans. in Waife-Goldberg, My Father, 184.

  “The occasion could not be more exultant” … “it seems a new era is dawning on our horizon, full of success, luck, and happiness” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Tissi, October 21, 1906, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 82.

  “make up for [Sholem-Aleichem’s] lack of ability as a dramatist” “The Season of Yiddish Drama: Plays and Players,” Menorah, September 1905, 153.

  fans packed all three tiers “Aleichem Welcomed,” New York Times, November 1, 1906.

  “The Jewish quarter might have shown some unity” Chronicler, November 2, 1906, quoted in YIVO, “Sholem Aleichem in America,” 11.

  Educational Alliance … charter quoted in Sachar, A History, 157.

  “I am the American Sholem-Aleichem” an oft-quoted and likely apocryphal remark, recounted, among other places, in Waife-Goldberg, My Father, 187.

  “great literary personality” cited in Waife-Goldberg, My Father, 187.

  humiliated and angry … request the money Berkowitz, Undzere v2, 164.

  “with only a hard chill” ibid., 169.

  two years’ wages Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, issue 71 (Government Printing Office, 1908), 35: Pressers averaged $0.21/hour, working a fifty-four-hour week, amounting to about $590 a year if the presser does not take a single day off.

  “When girls objected” Abe Cahan, “Introduction,” in Thomashefsky, Mayn lebens geshikhte, ii.

  “like poor patches on a rich garment” Berkowitz, Undzere v2, 187.

  “The audiences seemed happy to me” Sholem-Aleichem letter to his family, February 9, 1907, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 84.

  ideological fault lines Nina Warnke offers the full political analysis of Sholem-Aleichem’s reception in America in “Of Plays and Politics.”

  “new page in Yiddish theater” Sholem-Aleichem’s speech described in Berkowitz, Undzere v2, 188–89, and essentially reiterated in the Tageblat’s anonymous review of February 11, 1907, quoted in Schulman, “Sholem-aleykhems stzenisher debyut.”

  “new winds blowing” Sholem-Aleichem speech quoted in Schulman, “Sholem-aleykhems stzenisher debyut.”

  didn’t hesitate to crank out some potboilers See Joel Berkowitz, “Jacob Gordin, Man and Myth,” Forward, May 30, 2008.

  “a new epoch” Morgn zhurnal; “no true Yiddish theater,” Tageblat, February 11, 1907; “This is simply scandalous,” “whenever a flash,” Varhayt; Entin in Yidisher kempfer—all quoted in Schulman, “Sholem-aleykhems stzenisher debyut.”

  “brought to an end Sholem-Aleichem’s career as a playwright” B. Goren, Di geshikhte fun yidishn teatr, 181.

  “the figures” Abe Cahan, Forverts, February 19, 1907, quoted in Schulman, “Sholem-aleykhems stzenisher debyut.”

  “Once Sholem-Aleichem played a great role” ibid.

  “Do you think she complained? Do you think she cried even once?” Sholem-Aleichem, Tevye the Milkman, 96.

  the entire 1906–07 season bombed at the People’s and Kalish theaters B. Goren, “Der sakh hakol fun fergangenem yidishn teatr sezon,” “Der bankrut fun yidishn teatr,” Der amerikaner, May 24 and 31, 1907. See also Thissen, “Reconsidering.”

  “genuinely Jewish comedy” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Jacob Adler, quoted in Berkowitz, Undzere v3, 91.

  “Watch the impression” ibid., 90.

  “My good friend and great artist Adler!” ibid.

  Adler complained that the play piled up ibid., 96.

  the preferred amusement On the decline of the theaters, see Thissen, “Reconsidering.”

  mawkish musical melodramas For discussion of the “harts, neshome, pintele” plays, see B. Goren, Geshikhte v2, 203–31; Thissen, “Reconsidering.”

  they were pressing to have “Hebrew” removed See Goldstein, Price of Whiteness, 102–3.

  “great new continent that could melt up all race differences” Zangwill, Melting Pot, 179.

  unleashed a national debate For discussion of the success and impact of The Melting Pot, see Edna Nahshon’s “Introduction” to her Ghetto to Melting Pot.

  sold his lease for the Grand Theater Thissen, “Reconsidering,” 192.

  “What’s the point of the whole circus” Sholem-Aleichem, Tevye the Milkman, 99.

  “where all the old Jews like you go to die” ibid., 110.

  “To tell you the truth, when I think the matter over” ibid., 100.

  a spate of Beilis plays See Joel Berkowitz, “The ‘Mendel Beilis Epidemic’ on the Yiddish Stage,” Jewish Social Studies 8:1 (Fall 2001): 199–225.

  Sholem-Aleichem followed the Beilis case Roskies makes this point in Jewish Search for a Usable Past, 11.

  “a hysterical shaking” Berkowitz, Undzere v5, 93.

  In the last scene—the most touching Sholem-Aleichem letter to Olga Rabinowitz, February 25, 1914, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 117.

  “We ought to be counting our blessings” Sholem-Aleichem, Tevye the Milkman, 126.

  “the crown of my creation” Sholem-Aleichem letter to David Pinski, February 16, 1914, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 250.

  “the audience loves him all the more” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Pinski, February 16, 1914, ibid., 251.

  “Although a hard man to do business with” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Pinski, February 16, 1914, ibid., 250.

  “great artist and master of the Yiddish stage” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Jacob Adler, January 20, 1914, ibid., 249.

  the author never even sent the letter So claims Berkowitz in the Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 249; and Zylbercweig in Leksikon v4, 3404 (dating it to 1913); Rosenfeld, Bright Star, claims otherwise: 321–22.

  directors there no longer believed in the potential Berkowitz, Undzere v5, 98.

  Sholem-Aleichem burst out with a bitter laugh ibid., 170.

  Sholem-Aleichem felt more alienated than ever ibid., 174.

  “I hope to have it produced in the fall by Adler or Thomashefsky” Sholem-Aleichem letter to Emma and Misha, July 7, 1915, Berkowitz, Sholem-aleykhem bukh, 125.

  Kessler nodded off Berkowitz, Undzere v5, 197.

  in Europe things were even worse Sholem-Aleichem letter to family, quoted in Berkowitz, Undzere v5, 210.

  His funeral—including a stately procession For discussion of the spectacle and politics of Sholem-Aleichem’s funeral that makes the case for the way it unified Jewish factions, see Kellman, “Sholem-Aleichem’s Funeral”; also A. Goren, “Sacred and Secular: The Place of Public Funerals in the Immigrant Life of American Jews,” Jewish History 8:1–2 (1994): 269–305.

  “a microcosm of the Jewish people” Yehoash, eulogy for Sholem-Aleichem delivered at the Educational Alliance on May 15, 1916, and excerpted in Groyser kundes, May 19, 1916; quoted in YIVO, “Sholem-Aleichem in America,” 21.

  “not a ‘folk writer,’ not even ‘the folk writer’” Yosef Haim Brenner, “On Sholem Aleichem (The Writer and the Folk),” trans. David Roskies, Prooftexts 6:1 (January 1996): 17.

  Berkowitz added the village priest Berkowitz, Undzere v5, 99; Weitzner, Sholem-Aleichem in the Theater, 80.

  “What more can the stage say” M. Grim quoted in Zylbercweig, Yiddish Art Theater in America, 148.

  Others mocked Schwartz’s penchant Tevye der milkhiker reviews by Vladek, Goren, Frumkin, others quoted in Zylbercweig, Yiddish Art Theater in America, 134–46.

  Schwartz’s “wholehearted” and “realistic” performance Cahan quoted in Zylbercweig, Yiddish Art Theater in America, 140ff.

  “an unstrained style” … “to downright slapstick” Jacob Copper, “Yiddish Art Players in Debut Here,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1929, A9.

  “It was hard
to tell if Schwartz created Tevye or Tevye created Schwartz” Gersten quoted in Zylbercweig, Leksikon v4, 3411–12.

  “the whole Jewish people is in danger” Vladek quoted in Zylbercweig, Yiddish Art Theater in America, 136–37.

  GOSET belonged to See Veidlinger, Moscow State Yiddish Theater.

  Chagall “hated real objects” Avrom Efros quoted in Harshav, Moscow Yiddish Theater, 69.

  “fossilized patriarchal … dead dogma” Shloyme Mikhoels, “Sholem-Aleichem’s Hero,” Jewish Currents (January 1998): 22–24, translated from the Yiddish by Lyber Katz.

  Schwartz said it looked just like the Ukrainian countryside “Studio and Screen: Ambassador’s Film—A Jewish Humorist,” Manchester Guardian, August 11, 1939; and Martha Drieblatt, “Poland in Jersey, Ukraine on Long Island,” New York Herald Tribune, February 25, 1940, E3.

  While filming, the company heard recounted in Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 307–9.

  “There sits upon Tevya’s shoulders” Mae Tinee, “Praises Acting in Yiddish Film of Famed Play,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1940, 22.

  “a triumphant rebuke” Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 309.

  “does not at all agree with the spirit and essence” N. Buchwald, Morgn frayhayt, quoted in Zylbercweig, Leksikon v4, 3419, and in Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 309.

  “Merely a shadow” L. Fogelman, “Tevye the Milkman in a Movie,” Forverts, December 25, 1939, quoted in Zylbercweig, Leksikon v4, 3318, and in Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 309.

  CHAPTER 2: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS OF SHOLEM-ALEICHEM

  “the leading spokesman of Jewish rejuvenation” Emanuel Goldsmith, “Maurice Samuel,” in Kessner, Other New York, 228.

  “dogma” and “intellectual bullying” Samuel, Little Did I Know (henceforth, LDIK), 42.

  “gateway into Jewish life” ibid., 136.

  “as if the pogroms had been two-sided” ibid., 244.

  “defined themselves Jewishly” Kessner, Other New York, 3.

  “to help Jews acquire an interest in Jewish knowledge” Samuel, LDIK, 286.

  “The man who does not see in the prophets” Samuel, Gentleman, 168.

  “the mirror of Russian Jewry” Samuel, World, 6.

  “the first American newspaper reports” Hecht, Child of the Century, 539–40.

  “It was a principle of Russian law” Samuel, World, 5.

  “transmitted rather than translated” Samuel, LDIK, 271–72.

  The resulting work For discussion of Samuel’s approach to Sholem-Aleichem, see, especially, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Imagining Europe,” and Shandler, “Reading Sholem-Aleichem from Left to Right,” both of whom influenced my reading.

  “the common people in utterance” Samuel, World, 6.

  “an exercise in necromancy” ibid., 3.

  “We could write a Middletown” ibid., 6–7.

  “best known and best loved … big dark jungle of history” ibid., 14.

  “very real hatred” of women Samuel letter to Eugenia Shafran, likely 1924, quoted in Kessner, Marie Syrkin, 169.

  “without equal at handing out a dinner of curses and a supper of slaps” Samuel, World, 10. (Life is with People also supported the stereotype of the oversolicitous and husband-nagging Jewish mother; see Antler, You Never Call, 73–82.)

  “the greatest single invention” Roskies, Jewish Search for a Usable Past, 41.

  “a remarkable civilization” Samuel, World, 5.

  “prosperity was spiritual rather than material” ibid.

  “forever frozen in utter piety and utter poverty” Davidowicz, Golden Tradition, 6.

  as the antisuburb Shapiro, Time for Healing, 151.

  “one great portrait of a life abjectly poor” Heschel, “Preface” to Vishniac, Polish Jews, 5.

  Vishniac’s project On the history of Vishniac’s project and the changing cultural function and valuation of images over time, see Shandler, “The Time of Vishniac”; on the discovery and meaning of Vishniac’s more extensive archive, see Alana Newhouse, “A Closer Reading of Vishniac,” New York Times Magazine, April 4, 2010, 36–43. On the exhibit and the response to Heschel’s speech, see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Imagining Europe” and also “Introduction” to Life is with People. The discussion here is indebted to their research and insights.

  “salvage ethnography” The phrase is Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s in “Imagining”—an influential source for this discussion. See also Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry.

  “a composite portrait” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore, Ethnology, and Anthropology,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Folklore_Ethnography_and_Anthropology.

  “more than a book” Ben Hecht, “Tales of Capering, Rueful Laughter,” New York Times, July 7, 1946.

  “fine, juicy humor” display ad, Chicago Daily Tribune, June 23, 1946.

  “scattered” among pieces from other Sholem-Aleichem series Frances Butwin, “Preface” to Sholem-Aleichem, Tevye’s Daughters, x.

  Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein In the New York Times, show business columnist Sam Zolotow followed their interest: November 18, 1949 (noting their acquisition of the option), January 18, 1950 (reporting that Menashe Skulnik was gunning for the role of Tevye), July 10, 1950 (casting doubt that the Tevye play would happen in the coming season), and August 28, 1950 (reporting that R&H had let their option lapse and that Michael Todd had bought it). More detailed, inside discussion of R&H’s initial and then waning interest, and then Todd’s involvement, can be found in Hammerstein’s correspondence with Edmund Pauker, agent to Irving Elman, EPP-B, EPP-PA.

  they felt the Tevye script needed a huge amount of work Hammerstein letter to Edmond Pauker, July 24, 1950, EPP-PA15:11.

  “folk play with music” Pauker letter to Judah Bleich, November 28, 1955, EPP-B22:470.

  “you need to take out all the animals” producer Michael Ellis to Pauker, February 20, 1953, EPP-B22:477.

  “feels so unwieldy as to be almost unmanageable” ibid.

  “sprawling, undramatic” José Ferrer—who suggested the play to R&H—to Pauker, August 15, 1949, EPP-PA15:11.

  “too Jewish and too folkish” Eddie Blatt to Pauker, September 8, 1949, EPP-PA15:11.

  not “commercial enough” Jed Harris’s view as reported by Pauker to Elman, October 6, 1949, EPP-PA15:11.

  the tercentenary celebration … Kallen complained See A. Goren, Politics and Public Culture, ch. 9, “The ‘Golden Decade’ 1945–1955,” 186–204.

  Elman’s play In the early 1960s, Elman tried to mount the play again, this time under the title As Long as You’re Healthy and later as Sweet and Sour, but by then Bock, Harnick, and Stein had secured the rights to the material and Elman’s effort to claim fair use of the Yiddish originals did not fly. See: “2 Musicals Due” and “Coe Planning Musicals” in Sam Zolotow’s columns, New York Times, September 26, 1962, and August 6, 1963.

  “not in a postwar effort” Butwin, “Tevye on King Street,” 132.

  “remarkable acts of memory and invention” ibid., 134.

  shaped American culture well into the Cold War See Denning, The Cultural Front.

  “great friend, mentor, and comrade” … “country” books Butwin, “Tevye on King Street,” 155.

  “lacking food, clothing, money” Robert Cromier, Chicago Daily Tribune, June 30, 1946.

  Sophie Maslow … The Village I Knew videotape, NYPL for the Performing Arts; see also Naomi Jackson “Choreographer Draws on Her Jewish Heritage for Inspiration,” interview with Maslow by Laura Bleiberg, Orange County Register, Santa Ana, CA, April 19, 1992, F26.

  mainstream Jewish organizations were purging leftists See Shapiro, A Time for Healing, 37ff.

  Butwins saw [Da Silva] … in … Oklahoma! author correspondence with Joseph Butwin, January 29, 2012.

  Taylor … “he always seems to have” Navasky, Naming Names, 79.

  Da Silva was sworn in transcript, “Communist Infiltration of Hollywood Motion Pict
ure Industry—Part 1,” March 21, 1951. On Da Silva’s actions at the hearing—shouting, testiness, etc.—see “Larry Parks Says He Was Red; Gives Other Hollywood Names; Two Other Film Figures Won’t Talk at House Hearing,” UP, March 21, 1951, and Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1951; “Parks Admits He Was a Red But 2 Other Actors Balk at House Prober’s Queries,” Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1951; Murrey Marder, “Screen Star Admits He Was a Red,” Washington Post, March 22, 1951, 1.

  Arnold Perl was never called before HUAC Perl FBI file, generously shared by Rebecca Perl.

  “I have gotten radio detectives” Perl quoted in Joseph Liss, ed., Radio’s Best Plays. New York: Greenberg, 1947: 122.

  specifically when he entered Dachau Perl quoted in interview with Dr. N. Sverdlin in Der tog, September 5, 1957, APPmicro3.

  “mutual impulse” Perl letter to Mary Ann Jensen, November 4, 1969, APP2:5.

  share this culture Da Silva letter to Oscar Lewenstein, January 3, 1954, APP2:8.

  if they didn’t know Yiddish Perl interviewed by Sverdlin, Der tog, September 5, 1957, APPmicro3.

  “Sholom-Aleichem’s gentle but firm plea” Theater Arts feature, July 1953: Aimee Scheff, “Art on a Shoestring,” n.p., clipping, APP3:7.

  paid barely over minimum wage Perl letter to Mary Ann Jensen, November 4, 1969, APP2:5.

  “reminding people of where they come from” Perl letter to B. Z. Goldberg, May 25, 1953, APP2:5.

  The press agent, Merle Debuskey, had to insist Debuskey interview.

  about 500 fixed seats and a small proscenium Debuskey interview.

  some of them too fearful of guilt by association to go backstage to greet the company Debuskey, Dee interviews.

  “fine theater and splendid humanity” Brooks Atkinson, “At the Theatre,” New York Times, September 12, 1953.

  “Human warmth, generosity” Walter Kerr, “Sholom Aleichem’ Full of Sympathy and Good Theater,” Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1953, D2.

  “shows how theater-wise imagination” Vernon Rice, New York Post, n.d., APPmicro3.

  Eleanor Roosevelt Chicago Sun-Times, January 29, 1954, APPmicro4.

  composer who went uncredited Robert de Cormier interview.