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In a new opera, Tevye’s forgotten daughter takes the spotlight
For most, the story of Tevye the milkman is tumble-down, work-a-day Anatevka — and it’s a man’s world.
That the Sholem Aleichem stories situated the philosopher dairy deliverer outside of a shtetl, and even that he had two daughters beyond Hodl, Tseytl and Khava, is known to Yiddishists, but may be more obscure to musical theater fans.
Composer Alex Weiser and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann’s new opera, Tevye’s Daughters, which will have a concert performance March 19 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, is inspired by the story of Tevye’s second-youngest daughter Sphrintse, who took her own life after the failure of an arranged marriage.
Weiser, whose operas include a portrait of Theodor Herzl’s marital squabbles and the battle over a Yiddish dictionary, knew he was reckoning with a titan of American Jewish identity when he picked this material. That’s part of why he and Fleischmann were drawn to it.
“Fiddler itself is really in the popular imagination on the one hand,” Weiser said in a Zoom interview. On the other hand, as Tevye would say, the lesser known stories are ripe for exploration. Weiser and Fleischmann hope audiences will walk in with a certain familiarity, but come away recognizing something more nuanced.
Key to Weiser and Fleischman’s approach is a framing device of their own invention. Tseytl, Khava and Beylke recall the story of their sister’s death decades later, as old women in a cabin in the Catskills in 1964. That memory parallels the journey of Rose, Tseytl’s social justice-minded granddaughter, who marched on Washington to protest segregation and is breaking off her engagement after falling in love with a woman. (The actor who plays Rose doubles as Sphrintse; the older women also play their younger selves.)
“In a way, Sholem Aleichem’s story of Sphrintse is a kind of suppressed memory, culturally, for all of us,” said Weiser. “So we kind of dramatize that by having the sisters also kind of suppress this memory.”
What’s novel about Fleischman’s libretto is the way it shifts focus. It’s called Tevye’s Daughters, but Tevye is only a bumbling bit part, whereas in the Sholem Aleichem stories, he was the sole — and certainly unreliable — narrator. The plot, and the score, reflect the underexamined role of women.
On three occasions, his daughters interrupt a potential monologue to say “it’s not your story to tell.”
In writing the libretto, Fleischmann, who has written operas based on surrealists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore and an adaptation of a story by Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, looked to the work of Yiddish poets like Kadia Molodowsky. The opera features songs underscoring women-led rituals like braiding challah and lighting shabbos candles. Centrally, it makes use of tkhines, private Yiddish prayers written for women who may not have known Hebrew.
“The sound of those prayers becomes something that’s really at the heart of the opera,” said Fleischmann, noting how the text was drawn from the archives at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research, where Weiser is the director of public programming. “We had a lot of languages to draw from that were completely our own.”
Instead of a klezmer sound — or the American Songbook stylings of Fiddler composer Jerry Bock — Weiser’s music is more typically operatic (though there are clarinets). A vibraphone is used for the 1964 scenes and there are moments of solo violin that tip their hat to Fiddler, while not being of it.
The sonic quality, which pulses like water on the lake where Sphrintse drowned, hints at a hidden narrative. In the opera, Tevye’s daughter Beylke, who decides to stay single, is understood to be gay. Fleischmann and Weiser found interviews in the archives with women born around the time of Beylke, in shtetlach, explaining growing up queer in a rigid milieu governed by tradition.
For Fleischmann, writing these characters reminded her of her immigrant father, and how his “history of exile and resettling” carried through to the political involvement of the younger generation.
At a time of ICE raids, the opera, while it concerns a different community of immigrants, and a different time of political protest, is rooted in a past that feels familiar.
“We can talk today about how it speaks to a resurgence of activism,” said Fleischmann. “How are we going to move forward in the world if we don’t take up arms or use our voices?”
The opera argues that it is the very voices from history that were traditionally silenced that can speak the loudest to us now.
The post In a new opera, Tevye’s forgotten daughter takes the spotlight appeared first on The Forward.
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London Police Set Up Specialist Jewish Protection Team
A police officer stands at the scene, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
British police are setting up a new team of 100 officers including counter terrorism specialists to help protect Jewish communities across London after a series of antisemitic attacks including the stabbing of two men.
The plan announced on Wednesday for a dedicated protection team comes as officers announced more arrests for antisemitism, including detaining a 35-year-old man on Saturday after rocks were thrown at an ambulance belonging to the Jewish community.
London‘s top police boss Mark Rowley said Jewish communities were facing “sustained threats” from hostile state actors as well as extreme right-wing groups, elements of the extreme left, and Islamist terrorists.
Detectives are examining whether the arson incidents have possible Iranian links, after British security officials warned that Iran was using criminal proxies to carry out hostile activity.
Since late March, there have been a number of high-profile arson attacks with four Jewish ambulances burned and synagogues targeted. Last week, two Jewish men were also stabbed. Both victims survived the attack.
Over the past four weeks, police said they had arrested around 50 people for antisemitic hate crimes and charged eight individuals. On top of that, 28 arrests have been made as part of investigations alongside counter terrorism policing for arson and other serious incidents.
“This new team will be primarily focused on protecting the Jewish community, which faces some of the highest levels of hate crime alongside significant terrorist and hostile state threats,” said a statement from London‘s Metropolitan Police force.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a meeting on Monday with business, health and cultural leaders aimed at trying to tackle antisemitism.
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Iran Reviewing US Proposal to End War, Though Key Demands Remain Unaddressed
People walk on a street near a mural featuring an image of the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, May 6, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran said on Wednesday it was reviewing a US peace proposal that sources said would formally end the war while leaving unresolved the key US demands that Iran suspend its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson cited by Iran‘s ISNA news agency said Tehran would convey its response. US President Donald Trump said he believed Iran wanted an agreement.
“They want to make a deal. We’ve had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it’s very possible that we’ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Trump had sounded more pessimistic about the chances of a deal. In a Truth Social post, he threatened to restart the US bombing campaign in Iran, calling the possibility of Tehran agreeing to the latest US proposal a “big assumption.”
Trump has repeatedly played up the prospect of an agreement that would end the war that started Feb. 28, so far without success. The two sides remain at odds over a variety of difficult issues, such as Iran‘s nuclear ambitions and its control of the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war handled one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply.
A Pakistani source and another source briefed on the mediation said an agreement was close on a one-page memorandum that would formally end the conflict. That would kick off discussions to unblock shipping through the strait, lift US sanctions on Iran, and set curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, the sources said.
It was unclear how the memorandum differs from a 14-point plan proposed by Iran last week, and Iran has yet to respond to the latest US proposal.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the US proposal contained some unacceptable provisions, without specifying which ones.
Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, a spokesperson for parliament’s powerful foreign policy and national security committee, described the text as “more of an American wish-list than a reality.”
“The Americans will not gain anything in a war they are losing that they have not gained in face-to-face negotiations,” he wrote on social media.
OIL PRICES TUMBLE
Reports of a possible agreement caused global oil prices to tumble to two-week lows, with benchmark Brent crude futures falling around 11% to around $98 a barrel at one point before rising back above the $100 mark.
Global share prices also leapt and bond yields fell on optimism about an end to a war that has disrupted energy supplies.
Trump on Tuesday paused a two-day-old naval mission to reopen the blockaded strait, citing progress in peace talks.
The US military has kept up its own blockade on Iranian ships in the region. US Central Command said forces fired at an unladen Iranian-flagged tanker on Wednesday, disabling the vessel as it attempted to sail toward an Iranian port in violation of the blockade.
NO MENTION OF KEY US DEMANDS
The source briefed on the mediation said the US negotiations were being led by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. If both sides agreed on the preliminary deal, that would start the clock on 30 days of detailed negotiations to reach a full agreement.
The full agreement would end the competing US and Iranian blockades on the strait, lift US sanctions, and release frozen Iranian funds. It would also include some curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, with the aim of a pause or moratorium on Iranian enrichment of uranium.
While the sources said the memorandum would not initially require concessions from either side, they did not mention several key demands Washington has made in the past, which Iran has rejected, such as curbs on Iran‘s missile program and an end to its support for proxy militias in the Middle East.
The sources also made no mention of Iran‘s existing stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of near-weapons-grade uranium.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s ally against Iran, said on Wednesday the two leaders agreed that all enriched uranium must be removed from Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb.
Tehran denies wanting to acquire a nuclear weapon.
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Musée d’Orsay Opens Permanent Exhibition Space Dedicated to Nazi-Looted Artwork
Inside the Musée d’Orsay. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The Musée d’Orsay in France opened a new permanent exhibition room on Tuesday dedicated to works of art that were owned by Jews and looted by the Nazis across Europe during World War II before being returned to France after the war.
The new gallery room is titled “To whom do these works belong?” and will feature rotating installations of works of art recovered after World War II also known as Musées Nationaux Récupération (National Museums Recovery) pieces. Provenance investigators and researchers are still working to identify the original owners of these MNR artworks.
“Over time, the room is intended to evolve to present to the public the discoveries resulting from this research, some of which could allow new restitutions,” said the museum. “It thus constitutes a space of memory, transparency and active research, at the heart of contemporary issues related to the history of the collections.”
Now on display in the exhibition is 13 works, including the 1879 painting “Dinner at the Ball” by Edgar Degas, according to The Times. The painting was previously owned by Fernand Ochsé, a Jewish merchant and art collector living in France who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust along with his wife. The painting was among thousands of artworks stolen by the Nazis or forcibly sold to Nazi occupiers in France. Also on display in the exhibit is Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s portrait “Madame Alphonse Daudet” from 1876.
The new gallery room and research done by provenance investigators is being funded with support from the nonprofit organization American Friends of Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie (AFMO). According to the organization, 60,000 artworks looted by the Nazis during World War II around Europe were returned to France by 1950 and 224 of those recovered artworks are housed at the museum and in need of further provenance research to find their original owners. Fifteen MNRs kept at the Musée d’Orsay have already been returned to its rightful owners.
Over the next few years, AFMO will fund a team of art historians and researchers, led by provenance expert Dr. Ines Rotermund-Reynard, and they will focus on finding the owners of the 224 recovered artworks in the Musée d’Orsay’s collections, but also approximately 200 additional pieces acquired by the museum after 1933.