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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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The post How the late actor Topol turned Tevye into a Zionist appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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I love ‘Seinfeld’ — why doesn’t the rest of my generation?
Seinfeld had a mythic presence in my childhood. The show went off the air three years before I was born, but that didn’t stop it from permeating my psyche.
When I was little, growing up in Bethesda, Md., my parents would regale me with summaries of their favorite family-friendly episodes. There’s the one where George quits his job in a huff, then shows up the next day and simply pretends he never quit. Or when Elaine runs out of toilet paper, only to have the woman in the next stall refuse to “spare a square” — a scene that prompted my mom to start carrying tissue paper in her purse.
Around middle school, I finally became old enough to watch Seinfeld myself. I recorded the reruns that aired on TBS on our DVR and set out to watch every episode, eager to see the stories that had become a part of my family lore.
Suddenly, all the times my dad warned me against the perils of “double dipping” made more sense. (See: Season 4, Episode 19, “The Implant,” when George gets into a fight at a funeral reception for putting a half-eaten chip back into the communal dip).
I had never felt quite so represented by a piece of media: the dry humor, the cynical outlook, the blunt banter, the overbearing parents. It all felt like home.
The Jewishness of Seinfeld was undoubtedly part of the appeal. It wasn’t just that Jerry was Jewish; it was the sensibility — the neuroses, the kvetching, finding the comedy in life’s everyday absurdities. The characters felt like caricatured versions of my craziest relatives.
My affection for the show was strong enough that I skipped a classmate’s bar mitzvah party to see Jerry Seinfeld perform stand-up live at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I don’t remember any specific jokes he told that night, just how wowed I was that Seinfeld was just as funny in person as on TV.
But explaining my newfound obsession to my peers, I was often met with blank stares. Few of my friends had watched Seinfeld at all. Those who tried an episode on my advice reported back that they found the show dated. Yet the lack of interest could not be explained by a lack of nostalgia for ’90s TV; those same friends came to love Friends and Sex and the City.
This Gen Z disinterest in Seinfeld seems to extend beyond my inner circle: A 2022 YouGov survey of 1,000 adults found a generational divide in the Seinfeld fandom: 14% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they loved the show, versus 22% of those 30 to 44, 27% of those 45 to 64 and 32% of those 65 and older.
To be sure, Seinfeld still has its young fans, as evidenced by the show’s continued life in memes and modern riffs on the plots. But that enthusiasm seems to stop short of the broad, mainstream appeal the show once commanded. Today, shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation seem like the cultural touchstones that Seinfeld once was.
So why hasn’t Seinfeld caught on more with my generation? I have a few theories.
For one, much of the humor in Seinfeld revolves around awkward situations: a date gone wrong, an annoying friend you can’t get rid of, a social obligation you can’t escape. Whether trapped in conversation with a “close talker” or endlessly waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, the characters are constantly stuck in situations they’d rather avoid.
But modern technology has made it increasingly possible to live a frictionless existence. Awkwardness has become less relatable and more readily labeled “cringe.” Instead of asking someone on a date in person, just use the apps. Instead of breaking up, ghost. Want to avoid the Soup Nazi’s wrath? Just order Uber Eats.
Indeed, Kramer’s entire character is more difficult to imagine today. He’s constantly barging into Jerry’s apartment unannounced, eating out of his fridge and answering his landline phone. But Americans have grown less connected to their neighbors over time; only a quarter of young adults regularly interact with those who live around them — a sharp drop from 51% of young adults in 2012.
Another reason may have to do with how my generation watches television. Today, the entire series is on Netflix, alongside thousands of other shows competing for our attention. Contrast that with my parents, who watched Seinfeld one episode at a time as it aired, every Thursday night over Chinese takeout.
Famously dubbed the “show about nothing,” Seinfeld isn’t especially suited to binge-watching. There’s no need to watch the episodes in order. There are no major cliffhangers, and any romance is fodder for jokes rather than character development.
Some of the disconnect may also be cultural. When Seinfeld first aired, NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff — a New York Jew himself — famously worried that the show was “too New York, too Jewish” to connect with a wider American audience.
“Who will want to see Jews wandering around New York acting neurotic?” he asked.
Evidently, many people did. But amid rising antisemitism, I wonder whether Jewishness has lost some of its cultural cachet.
These days, it seems increasingly difficult to enjoy a Jewish artist’s work without being asked to account for that artist’s views on Israel. Seinfeld’s outspoken support for Israel after Oct. 7, along with his inflammatory comments comparing the pro-Palestinian movement to the Ku Klux Klan, have prompted calls to boycott his acts. Ironically, the exception to this rule seems to be the invincible Larry David, who has managed to escape cancellation perhaps because his comedic persona is built around being the butt of every joke.
Of course, it’s also possible that Seinfeld is just old. The laugh track is annoying. The production quality looks unmistakably ’90s. Its references are dated.
But I’d hate for a new generation to write off Seinfeld. So if you’re under 30 and not already a fan, watch a few episodes. You can start with my favorite: “The Marine Biologist.” Once you get to the punchline, maybe you’ll see some of what I see in the show.
Or, maybe, I’m just an old soul. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
The post I love ‘Seinfeld’ — why doesn’t the rest of my generation? appeared first on The Forward.
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An Israeli poet was scheduled to do a reading in New York. Then her publisher called.
It was supposed to be a party to celebrate the revival of a nonprofit poetry press and to welcome a beloved Israeli poet back to an America quite different from the one she visited decades ago.
But politics in that new America intervened, canceling the party.
Hamutal Bar-Yosef, a contemporary icon of Israeli poetry, had planned to be in New York City this week to read from the new English translation of her collection The Miraculous Mistake.
Bar-Yosef’s book is one of three volumes coming out this fall by Sheep Meadow Press, an American nonprofit that had been dormant since its founder, renowned Jewish poet Stanley Moss, died in 2024.
The scheduled reading was also part of a new chapter for Poets House, a national poetry library and meeting place in Manhattan, which, after a four-year hiatus sparked by the pandemic, reopened in 2024 and began offering rental space.
But as conversations about the upcoming event unfolded, Greg Miller, the new head of Sheep Meadow, grew concerned. Bar-Yosef, who is 86, had just received one of Israel’s most prestigious literary awards, the Bialik Prize for a lifetime of achievement in poetry. But not everyone at Poets House seemed enthusiastic about welcoming her, he told the Forward.
Given her elevated profile and the anti-Israeli climate now pervading the literary world, Miller called off the event. He said select staff from the Poets House offered to help him find a new venue in the spring.
“As a result of this conversation and others it was important for someone who is representative of Israel right now to have security,” Miller said. “And so I made the decision we were going to postpone and find a more appropriate venue, the right spot for her that will give her the audience she deserves.”
Poets House did not respond to the Forward’s inquiries. Bar-Yosef declined to be interviewed for this story.
Sheep Meadow and Poets House have a long history, going back 40 years since Sheep Meadow founder Moss also helped found Poets House as a place that “exists to create a welcoming home for poets, poetry readers and for those who are exploring poetry.”
Moss, whose Almost Complete Poems won the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2016, founded Sheep Meadow Press in 1977 as a nonprofit press with a particular focus on international poets in translation.
Thursday’s event was going to feature a reading of poems from Soon, Moss’s final collection of poems completed in his 99th year. Miller also planned to share the stage with Bar-Yosef to read from his own new collection Green Runs Through It.
Moss and Bar-Yosef appeared together for a reading at the 92nd Street Y when Sheep Meadow published an English translation of Night, Morning, one of her nine poetry collections.
But much has changed for Israeli and Jewish authors since then and especially since the Israel-Hamas War began on Oct. 7, 2023. According to a PEN America report published in July, editors have increasingly ignored submissions, rejected them outright or asked agents not to submit Israeli authors in the future.
Miller said it comes down to what the word Zionism means for audience members. Bar-Yosef believes in a homeland for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, Miller said. For years, she has helped transport Palestinian children from the West Bank to hospitals inside Israel. She has Palestinian family members. A prolific prose writer, literary scholar and translator, at least three of her poetry books have been translated into Arabic. She also has published in journals that include Arabic and Hebrew writers.
But because others have imposed their own meaning on the Z-word, finding a safe and welcoming space in the U.S. for an Israeli to read poetry free of indictment has become a challenge.
“I don’t want to be the shillelagh of the left or the right,” Miller said. “I don’t want Hamutal to be that either.”
Bar-Yosef’s latest collection of verse, originally published in Hebrew in 2020, explores grief through the various losses in her life including the death of her older brother in the War of Independence, the suicide of one of her sons, the murder of family members in the Shoah and choices that have become clear long after the fact and too late to right the wrongs.
“It is poetry that addresses harsh realities directly, eschewing pathos and sentimentality, and refusing to hide behind musicality or fluidity—qualities that can otherwise veil the blemishes and scars of reality,” one reviewer wrote in Haaretz when the original Hebrew edition was released in 2020.
A description of the collection by its distributor, Wesleyan University Press, describes it as “a glimpse of holy solidarity, of a time, perhaps some 500 years in the future, where there will be no need for steel doors and bomb shelters” – a reference to the poem Five Hundred Years, which opens with: “It’s hard to believe, but five hundred years ago people like us had slaves.”
It ends with: “That is how they will talk about wars and terrorist attacks as a way of settling disputes or salvaging pride after five hundred more years, perhaps even less.”
The post An Israeli poet was scheduled to do a reading in New York. Then her publisher called. appeared first on The Forward.
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The power of Sukkot to unite the Jewish people
אין דער גמרא שטייט אַז יעדער ייִד קען — טעאָרעטיש — נוצן די זעלבע סוכּה. דאָס שטרײַכט אונטער דעם פֿאַקט, אַז מיר זענען אַלע גלײַך, און אַלעמען באַגריסט מען גלײַך אין דער סוכּה.
אין דער אמתן, ווען מען וואָלט געבויט אַ גענוג לאַנגע און ברייטע סוכּה, וואָלט דאָס גאַנצע ייִדישע פֿאָלק — אָן אויסנאַם — געקענט אַרײַנגיין אין איר און עסן אין דער זעלבער צײַט.
דער דאָזיקער באַגריף פֿון אַחדות דריקט זיך אויך אויס אין אַ באַזונדערער מצווה פֿון סוכּות: די אַרבעה מינים. די תּורה באַפֿעלט אונדז, אַז דעם ערשטן טאָג סוכּות זאָלן מיר נעמען אַן אתרוג, אַ לולבֿ (אַ צווײַג פֿון אַ טייטל־פּאַלמע), דרײַ הדסים (מירטן־צווײַגן), און צוויי ערבֿות (הושענות), כּדי זיך צו פֿרייען פֿאַרן אויבערשטן.
וואָס שטעלן מיט זיך פֿאָר די אַרבעה מינים? דער אתרוג האָט סײַ אַ גוטן גערוך סײַ אַ גוטן טעם; דער לולבֿ האָט אַ טעם — טייטלען — אָבער קיין גערוך נישט; דער הדס האָט אַ גוטן גערוך אָבער קיין טעם נישט; און די ערבֿה (הושענא) האָט ניט קיין טעם און ניט קיין גערוך.
דער גערוך שטעלט פֿאָר מעשׂים טובֿים, גוטע מעשׂים, וואָס — אַזוי ווי אַ גערוך — האָבן אַן השפּעה אויפֿן אַרום; בשעת דער טעם שטעלט פֿאָר לימוד התּורה, וואָס דערנערט די נשמה אַזוי ווי פֿיזישע שפּײַז דערנערט דעם גוף.
יעדער איינער פֿון די אַרבעה מינים שטעלט פֿאָר אַן אַנדער סאָרט ייִד: עס זענען דאָ ייִדן וואָס צייכענען זיך אויס מיט זייער חכמת התּורה, אַנדערע מיט זייערע גוטע מעשׂים, אַנדערע מיט ביידע, און אַנדערע מיט קיינעם פֿון די צוויי. דער געדאַנק איז, אַז מיר זענען אַלע אָפּהענגיק איינער פֿונעם צווייטן, און יעדער איינער דערגאַנצט דעם אַנדערן. נאָר ווען מען האָט אַלע פֿיר צוזאַמען קען מען מאַכן די ברכה און מקיים זײַן די מצווה.
בכלל ווערט פֿאַרשטאַנען, אַז די לערנונג פֿון דער דאָזיקער מצווה איז, אַז דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער העכערער רוחניותדיקער מדרגה פֿונעם „אתרוג“, אויסגעצייכנט סײַ מיט חכמה סײַ מיט גוטע מעשׂים, דאַרף זיך — אַלטרויִסטיש — אָפּגעבן מיט דעם וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער קאַטעגאָריע פֿון „ערבֿה“, אָן קיין באַזונדערער רוחניותדיקער מעלה.
לויטן זעקסטן ליובאַוויטשער רבין, רבי יוסף יצחק שניאורסאהן זצ״ל, איז פֿאַראַן אָבער נאָך אַן אַנדער דינאַמיק: דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער מדרגה פֿון „אתרוג“ קען און דאַרף אויך לערנען עפּעס ווערטפֿולס פֿון דעם וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער קאַטעגאָריע פֿון „ערבֿה“.
דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אינעם מצבֿ פֿון „ערבֿה“, אָן קיין באַזונדערער רוחניותדיקער מעלה, און פֿונדעסטוועגן פֿילט ער זיך „זייער ייִדישלעך“, דריקט אויס אַ טיפֿן, אומברעכלעכן ייִדישן צושטאַנד, ניט געקוקט אויף דעם וואָס עס פֿעלט אים אין ייִדישן בילדונג און וויסן. דער וואָס האָט אַ סך געלערנט קען דורך זײַן פּערזענלעכער אַנטוויקלונג אַ סך פֿאַרשטיין און אַ סך פֿילן; פונדעסטוועגן איז אים אָפֿט שווער צו דערגרייכן און אויסדריקן דעם עסענץ פֿון זײַן נשמה. צו דער דאָזיקער בחינה פֿון זײַן אייגענעם מהות קען ער צוקומען דווקא דורך לערנען פֿונעם ייִד פֿון דעם „ערבֿה“־טיפּ, וואָס פֿילט זיך ייִדיש נישט צוליב זײַן ייִדישער בילדונג, נאָר טראָץ דעם וואָס עס פֿעלט אים. זײַן ייִדיש געפֿיל שטאַמט פֿון זײַן עצם הנשמה, דעם „פּינטעלע ייִד“ וואָס איז אינגאַנצן אומאָפּהענגיק פֿון קיין שום סיבה.
דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי זי״ע ווײַזט אָן, אַז די אַרבעה מינים שטעלן פֿאָר די אַחדות פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק, ניט נאָר ווײַל זיי רעפּרעזענטירן דעם צוזאַמען־פֿאַרבונד פֿון פֿיר פֿאַרשידענע קאַטעגאָריעס, נאָר אויך ווײַל יעדער מין פֿאַר זיך שטעלט פֿאָר אַחדות אין זײַן אייגענער קאַטעגאָריע.
דער אתרוג וואַקסט און ווערט דערנערט במשך פֿון אַלע פֿיר סעזאָנען פֿונעם יאָר. די בלעטער פֿונעם הדס וואַקסן אַזוי, אַז לענגאויס דעם שטאַם קומען אַרויס גרופּעס פֿון דרײַ בלעטער פֿון דער זעלבער הייך. בײַם לולבֿ דאַרפֿן די בלעטער ווערן פֿאַרמאַכט און צונויפֿגענומען און ניט צעשפּרייט איינער פֿונעם צווייטן — אַחוץ דעם וואָס יעדער בלעטל איז צונויפֿגעלייגט פֿון צוויי העלפֿטן — און די ערבֿות וואַקסן צוזאַמען אין אַ סאָרט אַחדות.
דאָס שטעלט פֿאָר נאָך אַן אַספּעקט פֿון אַחדות, ווײַל אַ מאָל איז גרינגער זיך צו פֿאַראייניקן מיט איינעם וואָס איז אַנדערש פֿון מיר, ווי מיט איינעם וואָס איז ענלעך צו מיר און קען אויסזען ווי אַ קאָנקורענט.
אַזוי אַז אויף סוכּות דריקן מיר אויס דרײַ מדרגות פֿון אַחדות אינעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק: איין מדרגה וואָס שטאַמט פֿון דעם געמיינזאמען עסענץ, וואָס איז העכער פֿון פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייטן;איין מדרגה וואָס דריקט זיך אויס דווקא דורך די פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייטן; און נאָך אַ מדרגה — די אַחדות צווישן די וואָס זענען ענלעך איינער צום צווייטן.
אין דער אמתן, קומט איינס אַרויס פֿון צווייטן. אויב אַ מענטשנס אַמביציע איז עגאָצענטריש, איז זייער שווער זיך צו פֿאַראייניקן מיט אַנדערע. אויב אָבער זײַן אַמביציע איז אויסצופֿירן דעם ג־טלעכן ציל, וועט ער אָפּשאַצן און שעצן די הצלחה פֿון יעדן וואָס שטעלט זיך צו אויסצופֿירן דעם בשותּפֿותדיקן שליחות.
עס איז די אַחדות וואָס דריקט זיך אויס אין די מצוות פון סוכּות וואָס דערמעגלעכט די אמתע שׂימחה פון „ושמחת בחגך“.
די שוואַכע, צאַרטע סטרוקטור פֿון דער סוכּה האָט איבערגעלעבט טויזנטער יאָרן פֿון געשיכטע און רדיפֿות — אין די גולאָגן און אין די קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגערן. הײַנט־צו־טאָג קען מען אין אַ סך קהילות איבער דער וועלט זען ווי ליובאַוויטשער ישיבֿה־בחורים פֿאָרן איבער די גאַסן פֿון שטאָט מיט אַ מאָבילער סוכּה, כּדי צו פֿאַרבעטן ייִדישע דורכגייער מקיים צו זײַן די מצוות פֿון עסן אין דער סוכּה און צו מאַכן די ברכה אויף די אַרבעה מינים.
אז איר וועט זיך אָנטרעפֿן אין איינעם פֿון זיי, ביטע גיט זיי איבער א גרוס!
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