September 22 1964 – 16 Tishrei 5725
Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway, to rapturous New York audiences. The unexpected success of the stage adaption based on Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem’s series of short stories, Tevye the Dairyman and his equally successful Tevye’s Daughters, showed that authentic portrayals of Jewish life in the eastern European shtetl could strike a chord. The musical based on a book by Joseph Stein with a score by Jerry Bock subtly softened the original story line, allowing Tevye to be reconciled with his daughter Hava and her non-Jewish husband, to accommodate American Jewish sensibilities. The show ran to 3242 performances, and inspired new different versions in a wealth of languages all over the world. The show-stopping “If I were a Rich Man” must be one of the best known songs from any musical.