Fiddler on the Roof

True to its vertiginous title, “Fiddler on the Roof” has become the most elevated and exalted of all Jewish musicals. Now comes a touring production of “Fiddler” that seeks to bring the musical down to earth with a focus on the show’s simpler, purer aspects rather than its larger-than-life qualities.

The Fiddler on the Roof in the Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens Library wasn’t only in the library’s CD and DVD racks one recent Friday afternoon — the fiddler was on the roof, too.

When the historian Rebecca Kobrin began researching her book “Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora,” which came out this spring, she was struck by the strange way Eastern European Jewish immigrants used words like “exile” and “diaspora.” Between 1880 and 1914, when most of America’s Jews came over from Europe, they did not speak about exile in terms of Israel, as we often do now. They used those words instead in relation to the places they actually left: Bialystok, Vilna, Warsaw, Lodz.

Playwright Joseph Stein, who died at age 98 on Oct. 24 in Manhattan, was an original member of Minyan of the Stars. The organization encouraged show business personalities to celebrate Jewish holidays and traditions.

One of the first gatherings took place at Stein’s home on Park Avenue. It was Chanukah 1990. Lou Jacobi looked around and exclaimed, “We have show people here, even a scout from MGM. MGM—My Gantze Mishpocha [my whole family]!”

(JTA) -- Joseph Stein, who won a Tony Award for writing "Fiddler on the Roof," has died.

Stein died Sunday in Manhattan after fracturing his skull in a fall. He was 98.

Stein was the author of more than a dozen Broadway musicals, but is most well known for Fiddler, which won nine Tony Awards in 1965, including Stein's Best Author of a Musical.