The legacy of Chaim Topol

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.

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.