In 1969, for my seventh birthday, I was taken – dragged, probably – ‘up west’ to the theatre to see a musical. As I recall, it didn’t fill me with joy to be going, but it turned out to be fantastic. The songs, the acting, the dancing: it was great fun. Then we went for pasta in Soho, which was also a special event in those days.
More importantly, though, I think it was the first time I became truly aware of a vital part of my identity: that I was here because decades earlier my great-grandfather had arrived on these shores, driven out of his native Russia by a pogrom, the ethnic cleansing of Jews across that vast country.
The play was Fiddler on the Roof, and though the version I saw starred Alfie Bass in the lead role, I was reminded of its significance with the news yesterday of the death at 87 of Israeli actor Chaim Topol who – sorry Alfie – made the role his own on stage and screen.
What makes the film so very important is that, by being fun to watch, it opened the eyes and minds of so many to the devastating effect of the pogroms
There are plenty of what could be called Jewish-ish films – from Diner to Manhattan to The Producers to Funny Girl – that tick the requisite boxes of stereotypical humour, self-deprecation and neurotic behaviour.
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