Oy! The Cossacks are coming! In the essential viewing Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish at Stage 42, as we know, the Jews in the fictional town of Anatekva are threatened by pogroms. Eventually the lives of Tevye and Golde, their five daughters, and all town-folk are disrupted; they are forced to take refuge elsewhere. Could the creators of this marvelous 1964 play, Joseph Stein’s book, Jerry Bock’s music, Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics, have realized the extraordinary resonance of this story? Director Joel Grey’s genius, rendering it in the dying language of Yiddish, — (even the actors don’t know it)– is to make audiences consider this a blueprint of exile: perhaps, a “heimish” combination of old world sound in sepia tones against a threatening, violent outside world, one’s own family history. And no matter where you were born, it is.

What a vision of life: a wedding, the baking of challah, candle lighting for Shabbat, the arrival of a sewing machine, a baby too, nightmare visions of angry ex-wives, young love and rebellion. As to the viability of marriage arranged by the services of a yente: Tevye (Steven Skybell) asks Golde (, “Do You Love Me?” a heart-melting query to a spouse of 25 years. And she answers as if to say, what’s love got to do with it? But you know they do.

Yet now, after another attack on a synagogue in California, decades later, consider the warped actions of white supremacists a variation on a theme of hate. Racist oppression and terrorism are world problems; exile is not a choice but an imperative. At the end of Fiddler, everyone leaves Anatekva, and where the characters land is an individual off stage sequel, my story and yours.

Still, life goes on! At the performance we attended, Joel Grey took the stage with his players, to auction off a song or two to fight AIDS. For a thousand dollars a pop he sang a song his father wrote about naming him, and his signature song from Cabaret. In life’s great repetitions, Grey’s is a story of becoming American, and as Holocaust Remembrance approaches, “Life is a Cabaret,” is a dark reminder of the Weimar’s extravagances. Attention must be paid.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura