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How the late actor Topol turned Tevye into a Zionist
(JTA) — If you were born anytime before, say, 1975, you might remember Israel not as a source of angst and tension among American Jews but as a cause for celebration. In the 1960s and ’70s, most Jews embraced as gospel the heroic version of Israel’s founding depicted in Leon Uris’ 1958 novel “Exodus” and the 1960 movie version. The1961 Broadway musical “Milk and Honey,” about American tourists set loose in Israel, ran for over 500 performances. And that was before Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War turned even fence-sitting suburban Jews into passionate Zionists.
That was the mood when the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof” came out in 1971. The musical had already been a smash hit on Broadway, riding a wave of nostalgia by Jewish audiences and an embrace of ethnic particularism by the mainstream. The part of Tevye, the put-upon patriarch of a Jewish family in a “small village in Russia,” was originated on Broadway by Zero Mostel, a Brooklyn-born actor who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home. Ashkenazi American Jews tended to think of “Fiddler” as family history — what Alisa Solomon, author of the 2013 book “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof,” describes as the “Jewish American origin story.”
But Mostel didn’t star in the film, which landed in theaters while the afterglow of Israel’s victory in its second major war of survival had yet to fade. Famously – or notoriously – the part went to Chaim Topol, a young Israeli actor unknown outside of Israel except for his turns in the London productions of “Fiddler.” With an Israeli in the lead, a musical about the perils and dilemmas of Diaspora became a film about Zionism. When Topol played Tevye in London, Solomon writes,“‘Fiddler’ became a site for celebration, drawing Jews as well as gentiles to the theater — some for repeat viewings — to bask in Jewish perseverance and to pay homage to Jewish survival. The show didn’t change, but the atmosphere around it did.”
Topol died this week at 87, still best known as Tevye, and his death reminded me of the ways “Fiddler” is — and isn’t — Zionist. When Tevye and his fellow villagers are forced out of Anatevke by the czarist police, they head for New York, Chicago and Krakow. Only Yente, the matchmaker, declares that she is going to the “Holy Land.” Perchik, the presumably socialist revolutionary who marries one of Tevye’s daughters, wants to transform Russian society and doesn’t say a word about the political Zionists who sought to create a workers’ utopia in Palestine.
“There is nothing explicitly or even to my mind implicitly Zionist about it,” Solomon told me a few years back. And yet, she said, “any story of Jewish persecution becomes from a Zionist perspective a Zionist story.”
When the Israeli Mission to the United Nations hosted a performance of the Broadway revival of “Fiddler” in 2016, that was certainly the perspective of then-Ambassador Dani Danon. Watching the musical, he said, he couldn’t help thinking, “What if they had a place to go [and the Jews of Anatevke could] live as a free people in their own land? The whole play could have been quite different.”
Israelis always had a complicated relationship with “Fiddler,” Solomon told me. The first Hebrew production was brought to Israel in 1965 by impresario Giora Godik. American Jews were enthralled by its resurrection of Yiddishkeit, the Ashkenazi folk culture that their parents and grandparents had left behind and the Holocaust had all but erased. Israelis were less inclined to celebrate the “Old Country.”
“Israelis were — what? — not exactly ashamed or hostile, but the Zionist enterprise was about moving away from that to become ‘muscle Jews,’ and even denouncing the stereotype of the pasty, weakling Eastern European Jews,” said Solomon, warning that she was generalizing.
That notion of the “muscle Jew” is echoed in a review of Topol’s performance by New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who wrote that he is “a rough presence, masculine, with burly, raw strength, but also sensual and warm. He’s a poor man but he’s not a little man, he’s a big man brought low — a man of Old Testament size brought down by the circumstances of oppression.”
From left: Maria Karnilova, Tanya Everett, Zero Mostel, Julia Migenes and Joanna Merlin backstage at opening night of “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Imperial Theater in New York City, Sept. 22, 1964. (AP/Courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films)
Mostel, by contrast, was plump, sweaty and vaudevillian — a very different kind of masculinity. The congrast between the two Tevyes shows up in, of all places, a parody of “Fiddler” in Mad magazine. In that 1976 comic, Mostel’s Tevye is reimagined as a neurotic, nouveau riche suburban American Jew with a comb-over, spoiled hippy children and a “spendthrift” wife; Topol’s Tevye arrives in a dream to blame his descendants for turning their backs on tradition and turning America into a shallow, consumerist wasteland. A kibbutznik couldn’t have said (or sung) it better.
Composer Jerry Bock, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and book writer Joseph Stein set out to write a hit musical, not a political statement. But others have always shaped “Fiddler” to their needs.
In the original script, Yente tells Tevye’s wife Golde, “I’m going to the Holy Land to help our people increase and multiply. It’s my mission.” In a 2004 Broadway revival, staged in the middle of the second intifada, the “increase and multiply” line was excised. In a review of Solomon’s “Wonder of Wonders,” Edward Shapiro conjectured that the producers of the revival didn’t want Yente to be seen as “a soldier in the demographic war between Jews and Arabs.”
Topol himself connected “Fiddler” to Israel as part of one long thread that led from Masada — the Judean fortress where rebellious Jewish forces fell to the Romans in the first century CE — through Russia and eventually to Tel Aviv. “My grandfather was a sort of Tevye, and my father was a son of Tevye,” Topol told The New York Times in 1971. “My grandfather was a Russian Jew and my father was born in Russia, south of Kiev. So I knew of the big disappointment with the [Russian] Revolution, and the Dreyfus trial in France, and the man with the little mustache on his upper lip, the creation of the state of Israel and ‘Masada will never fall again.’ It’s the grandchildren now who say that. It’s all one line — it comes from Masada 2,000 years ago, and this Tevye of mine already carries in him the chromosomes of those grandchildren.”
The recent all-Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof” — a Yiddish translation of an English-language musical based on English translations of Yiddish short stories — readjusted that valence, returning “Fiddler” solidly to the Old Country. It arrived at a time when surveys suggested that Jews 50 and older are much more emotionally attached to Israel than are younger Jews. For decades, “Exodus”-style devotion to Israel and its close corollary — Holocaust remembrance — were the essence of American Jewish identity. Among younger generations with no first-hand memories of its founding or victory in the 1967 war, that automatic connection faded.
Meanwhile, as Israeli politics have shifted well to the right, engaged liberal Jews have rediscovered the allure of pre-Holocaust, pre-1948, decidedly leftist Eastern European Jewish culture. A left-wing magazine like Jewish Currents looks to the socialist politics and anti-Zionism of the Jewish Labor Bund; symposiums on Yiddish-speaking anarchists and Yiddish-language classes draw surprisingly young audiences. A Yiddish “Fiddler” fits this nostalgia for the shtetl (as does the “Fiddler” homage in the brand-new “History of the World, Part II,” which celebrates the real-life radical Fanny Kaplan, a Ukrainian Jew who tried to assassinate Lenin).
Topol’s Tevye was an Israeli Tevye: young, manly, with a Hebrew accent. Mostel’s Tevye was an American Tevye: heimish, New York-y, steeped in Yiddishkeit. It’s a testament to the show’s enduring appeal — and the multitudes contained within Jewish identity — that both performances are beloved.
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Israel Implements Gaza Ceasefire Plan, Triggers 72-Hour Countdown for Hamas to Release Hostages
Israeli soldiers stand next to military vehicles, after Israel’s government ratified a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, on Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, Oct. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
The ceasefire in Gaza officially went into effect at 12:00 pm local time on Friday, with Israel pulling back its forces to agreed-upon deployment lines in the enclave and triggering a 72-hour window for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to release the 48 hostages it is still holding captive.
Marking the third pause in fighting since the war began in October 2023, the US-backed ceasefire plan stands as the strongest effort yet to end the two-year conflict that has upended the Middle East.
Shortly after the Israeli cabinet approved the plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump and the mediators for their efforts in securing an agreement aimed at bringing peace to the region.
“I have faced intense national and international pressure and have firmly stood my ground,” Netanyahu said during his speech. “Anyone who says this agreement was on the table from the beginning is not being truthful.”
Under the first phase of the agreement, Hamas must release all 20 living Israeli hostages and as many of the dead hostages that it can secure by Monday at noon local time. Hamas has said it will not be able to locate all the dead hostages in that time, claiming such efforts would depend on “field conditions.”
“We will work to locate all the deceased hostages as soon as possible,” Netanyahu said in his statement.
Once all hostages are released from captivity, Israel will free around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 terrorists serving life sentences.
According to Israeli officials, none of the terrorists being released participated in the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Israeli government has also approved a last-minute exchange of several Fatah prisoners for Hamas-affiliated detainees as part of the ceasefire agreement.
Following Israel’s partial military withdrawal, its forces remain in control of 53 percent of Gaza, mostly outside of urban areas. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it will remain ready to confront any threats.
“The IDF Southern Command forces are deployed in the area and will continue to act to eliminate any immediate threats,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
US envoy Steve Witkoff posted on social media that the US military had confirmed that the IDF had completed its obligations.
CENTCOM has confirmed that the Israeli Defense Forces completed the first phase withdrawal to the yellow line at 12PM local time. The 72 hour period to release the hostages has begun.
— Special Envoy Steve Witkoff (@SEPeaceMissions) October 10, 2025
Following phase one of the deal, Hamas is supposed to disarm and have no future leadership role in Gaza, according to Trump’s 20-point peace plan. However, disarmament and other unresolved issues will be subject to negotiations once the hostages are released.
“Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza demilitarized. If it can be done the right way, all the better — if not, it will be done by force,” Netanyahu said.
As Israel and Hamas prepare for the hostage and prisoner exchange under the ceasefire deal, Trump is expected to visit the Middle East this weekend, with plans to speak before the Israeli parliament on Monday.
Trump reportedly gave Hamas personal assurances that he would not allow Israel to abandon the agreement and resume fighting unilaterally — a key factor in convincing the terrorist group to accept the deal.
Among Trump’s guarantees was the establishment of a US-led military task force to oversee the ceasefire and respond to any potential violations.
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In Brooklyn, a shared studio empowers Mizrahi women artists
On the second floor of a nondescript commercial building in Gravesend, Brooklyn, is a small artists’ studio. There, four long wooden tables are pushed together to create one massive table covered with oil paints, canvases, watercolors and other tools of the trade. The white walls are adorned with dozens of drawings and paintings; along one wall, a dozen cubbies are filled with even more art supplies.
It could be one of countless shared studio spaces for artists that are hidden in corners throughout the five boroughs. But this particular space is designed expressly for Jewish women artists: It’s closed on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and among the art and design books on the shelves are siddurs, or prayer books.
Welcome to Muse Brooklyn, a coworking space built by and for Jewish women artists. The brainchild of Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, a conceptual artist and observant Jew, the space doubles as an arts event space for its corner of Brooklyn, which is home to a significant Syrian Jewish community. Some 38,200 and 55,000 Syrian Jews live in the surrounding neighborhoods, according to a recent study commissioned by JIMENA, a nonprofit that advocates Middle Eastern and North African Jews — and, so far, all seven members of the shared studio are Mizrahi Jews.
“I initially started it for my own needs,” said Cohen, a 35-year-old married mother of four who has been working as an artist and calligrapher for 15 years.
Cohen was inspired to create Muse after a stint, in 2019, at a women-only art studio in Jerusalem. That shared space — which was designed for religious women often facing communal pressures against their artistic pursuits — opened her eyes to what a neighborhood studio for women like her could look like.
“It was 12 minutes away from my house, and it was a very supportive environment,” Cohen recalled. When she returned to New York she sought something similar in Brooklyn, but didn’t find it. “That’s when I realized that if it doesn’t exist in my own neighborhood, then it’s my job to make it.”
At Muse Brooklyn, the seven current members are all part of the local Syrian Jewish community, and all are at least somewhat traditionally observant. (There’s room for twice as many members, Cohen added, and being Jewish, Mizrahi or religious is not required.) In the shared space, the women — who each pay $206 a month — can draw, paint, or work in any medium they like, as well as brainstorm ideas with each other in a supportive environment of a shared identity. And because the space is women-only, members never need to worry about issues of yichud, the Jewish laws prohibiting men and women who are not married to each other from being secluded together.
The idea for Muse predated the war in Gaza, but Cohen said the tense climate for some Jewish artists within the city’s existing cultural institutions that resulted fueled her drive.
Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, artist and founder of Muse artist studio in Brooklyn, drafts a calligraphy project. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
Previously a member at a shared studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Cohen said that she had felt singled out there as a Jew, recalling that she was once asked if she was comfortable with another artist donating money to a pro-Palestinian children’s charity.
“A, that’s weird that you think I would have a problem with that. B, it’s already somewhat of an issue that they’re creating: ‘Oh, you’re Jewish, but I’m a ‘free Palestine’ person,’” Cohen said.
Cohen began looking for a space to execute her vision in September 2023. Muse Brooklyn officially launched exactly a year later, when she found a space to rent within a larger complex currently used as a music coworking space by another member of the Syrian community.
Aimee Swed, a 32-year-old content and marketing professional and mother of two young boys, joined Muse when it opened last fall. Swed said that, as a Shabbat-observant Jew, she felt “very discouraged from entering the art world.” Many galleries held openings on Friday nights, she explained, and workshops and classes were often on Saturdays.
An artist who works in watercolor, acrylics and multimedia, she said her work has been “transformed” by the shared Jewish space.
“The camaraderie kind of reinitiated my own artistic practice,” said Swed, whose work focuses on the food found on her Syrian Jewish Shabbat table, like her watercolors of kibbeh meatballs with rice and meat. “It’s really something that became very important to me, because it felt so good to create with others, and finally find a space that was very friendly towards what you were creating.”
Much of artist Aimee Swed’s work focuses on the foods of her Syrian-Egyptian Jewish heritage. (Courtesy Aimee Swed)
Now that she works in a studio with other Mizrahi Jewish artists, Swed, whose family is Syrian via Egypt, finds inspiration all around her, including Cohen’s Arabic calligraphy. “One of the first things that I made was [a painting of] some phrases, like, ‘yom asal, yom basal,’ — ‘one day onion, one day honey’ [which] is what my grandma would say,” she said.
Not everyone who comes to Muse is necessarily working on Jewish art. For Shelley Shamah, a 22-year-old illustrator, graphic designer and photographer, Muse is simply a safe space for artists who happen to be Jewish.
Shamah, who also joined last fall, was drawn to Muse because she needed “to be in a space that fuels creativity,” she said.
Part of that, she explained, is simply being around likeminded people. “Jews are a microcosm of the world, but Syrians are a microcosm of Jews,” she said.
Shelley Shamah paints a canvas for her dining room. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
On a recent Tuesday, Shamah, a recent graduate of the Pratt Institute, was working on a canvas for her dining room, which she will soon be sharing with her fiancé, a musician.
Shamah and another young Muse member, Allie Saada, a recent graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, consider themselves part of the “younger bunch” of artists in the group.
Not yet married or mothers, they feel they can take full advantage of the space, coming in at all hours of the day and night, where they often run into each other.
For Swed, whose sons are 4 and 5, the space provides almost the opposite advantage.
“It was really hard, like any working mom, trying to step back into another world once she’s had children,” Swed said. “So as a mom coming into an all-women space, that felt really good, too.”
The studio also functions as a space for the neighborhood to engage in the arts. Several times a month, Muse holds events such as art classes, paint-and-sip nights and museum tours, taught and led by its members, and always with the Jewish holiday schedule in mind. Shelley Shamah even had her 22nd birthday party, a drink-and-draw night, in the space with a dozen of her friends.
Ultimately, Cohen hopes that Muse will grow into a robust network of Jewish women artists. “The more people you have in the space who generate opportunities like this, the better it is for everyone concerned,” Cohen, who’s shown work at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, the Museo Ebraico in Lecce, Ital,y and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, said. “All your best opportunities in your career as an artist, at least for me, come from other artists.”
She added: “Create the conditions to be successful. Show up and watch what happens.”
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Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Oct. 7 Anniversary Post
Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman speaks during a press conference on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Illinois, US, Aug. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, who last week joined the state’s race for governor, on Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel with a statement condemning Israel’s military response in Gaza as a so-called “genocide” and calling for an end to US military support for the Jewish state.
In her statement, Romman described the past two years as “atrocities beyond human comprehension,” accusing Israel and the United States of “perpetuating more death, destruction, and horror in Gaza.” She cited Hamas-produced casualty figures of “at least 67,000 Palestinians” killed in Gaza, despite experts casting doubt on the reliability of such statistics from the enclave, and called for the US to “stop sending bombs in violation of our laws.”
Romman’s remarks came as Israelis marked two years since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists carried out the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, murdering 1,200 people, most of them civilians, while kidnapping 251 hostages and perpetrating widespread sexual violence.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities and political rule in neighboring Gaza.
Romman referenced the “families desperate to be reunited with those taken hostage” and the “more than 1,100 Israelis” killed during the Oct. 7 atrocities in her statement but did not mention Hamas at all, including the terrorist group’s role in starting the war and continued refusal for two years to disarm and release the hostages. She also reaffirmed calls for a “lasting peace agreement.”
The Georgia Democrat also appeared to compare Israeli hostages who were abducted from their homes to Palestinian terrorist operatives who have been detained and imprisoned by Israel, demanding “for the release of Israeli and Palestinian hostages.”
Romman, 32, the first Muslim woman elected to Georgia’s legislature, has been an outspoken anti-Israel activist and critic of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Her comments underscore a widening divide within the Democratic Party over Israel, as progressives push to restrict US aid to the Jewish state while most lawmakers continue to back Washington’s alliance with Jerusalem. Romman criticized then- US Vice President Kamala Harris after her campaign rejected her request to speak at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last year.
Last Monday, Romman announced her 2026 bid to become Georgia’s next governor.
Fellow state Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat and the legislature’s only Jewish member, said Monday that Romman “has no path to victory but is once again sabotaging the Democratic Party with her Mamdani-like, socialist platform,” referring to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The Associated Press reported that Panitch also argued that Romman’s advocacy at the DNC “helped Donald Trump win,” potentially previewing a key attack against Romman by other Democrats.