Beshert |“A Fiddler on the Roof. Sounds Crazy, No?”

Twenty years ago, I fell in love with The Fiddler. You know who I mean, right? That ubiquitous guy on the roof? The memory of our first encounter is so vivid that I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I recognized him.  It happened on a Saturday morning in Nice, France. My husband, Richard, and I were on a long-delayed vacation. We had spent most of Friday at the Marc Chagall Biblical Message Museum. I went in expecting to see flowers and birds and flying lovers, paintings that would be easy on the eyes and even easier on the brain. But what I actually found inside were soul-stirring images of Abraham welcoming three strangers, Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and Moses parting the Red Sea. On my way out,...

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Remembering Sholom Aleichem

by Kara A. Kaufman It’s not every day that you see your own photograph in a newspaper, much less a Russian publication printed halfway around the globe. But one afternoon when I was a young girl (age “six and two-thirds,” as I told the reporter), I found myself gazing into the grayscale eyes of my own face. The newspaper article centered around the Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem, perhaps best known for his “Tevye the Dairyman” stories which are the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. The reporter had snapped my photograph because Sholom Aleichem is my great-great-grandfather. My family has hosted an annual yahrzeit in honor of his memory for 95 years; this Sunday will mark our 96th. My family holds these yahrzeits out of our collective desire to remember my great-great-grandfather, and also to...

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