Selling the idea of a musical about the pogroms in Russia at the turn of the last century must not have been easy. Imagine the first time the creators of sat down across the table from a potential investor and tried to sell the idea. “So there’s this Jewish milkman, poor as dirt, and he has these five daughters. The three of marrying age make choices that move each away in progressively greater ways from the milkman’s faith and traditions. And then the whole family gets kicked out of the town in which they’d been living for generations because of religious persecution. Do they all live happily ever after? Who knows? Want to write me a check?”
Obviously they did a good job convincing investors that “Fiddler On The Roof” would be for the early-mid 1960’s what “Hamilton” is for us today. Though its received its fair share of criticism – and a bit of light-hearted confusion from a few in the Hasidic (Orthodox) Jewish community – it has been a touchpoint in my life since the original Broadway soundtrack made its way onto the hi-fi in my family’s den in the mid-1960’s. Why, you ask? [Read more]
