Introduction 2: Tevye!

Welcome to the Museum of the Yiddish Theatre's tribute to the character "Tevye," the main character in one of the most popular musicals to ever appear on Broadway.

September 22, 2024 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Broadway opening of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's "Fiddler on the Roof." 

When "Fiddler on the Roof" first opened, it starred the wonderful, zany and unpredictable actor Zero Mostel as Tevye the Dairyman. The production ran through July of 1972, for an amazing 3,242 performances in three Broadway theatres.

This exhibition is about just some of the actors who played this fascinating character, Tevye, not only on Broadway, but also on the Yiddish stage and in film.

Others played Tevye in the American theatre and througout the world. In New York City, for instance, due to a contract dispute, Luther Adler, a son of Yiddish theatre great, Jacob P Adler, assumed the role of Tevye in 1965, replacing Zero Mostel, for a short period of time.

In the mid-1960s, the actor and singer Theodore Bikel began to play the role of Tevye, which he played more than two-thousand times, as he headed a national touring company of "Fiddler on the Roof."

Beginning in 1981, the magnificent Herschel Bernardi assumed the role of Tevye in New York City's New York State Theatre.

The actor Chaim Topol played Tevye in the English-language film version of "Fiddler on the Roof," as well as thousands of times on the stage, in New York City, on tour, in London, and starred in Tel Aviv, Israel in a Hebrew-language version of the musical.

As part of this exhibition, you will find portraits drawn of four of the actors who played Tevye. Each portrait has been drawn by the Museum's founder, director and curator, Steven Lasky, who hopes that you will enjoy reminiscing a bit about this historical and wonderful musical.

Now let us learn now about just some of the fine actors who portrayed "Tevye," on Broadway, on tour, and in film, both in Yiddish and in English.

We will first learn about Maurice Schwartz, the first to stage a production, "Tevye, the Dairyman," adapted from the stories written by the famed Yiddish author, Sholem Aleichem.