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In 1527, King Henry VIII was desperate to divorce his first wife, Catharine of Aragon. So when his Catholic advisors denied him annulment, Henry sent messengers to the Jewish community in Italy, instead, hoping that a little money might win them over to his side. (He would have asked England’s Jews if his predecessor King Edward […]

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In the 20th century, the Andrews Sisters made the Yiddish-ish song “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” a hit (it was even successful in Germany before the Nazis realized the song was Yiddish, and not a southern German dialect). In the 21st century it was an Azerbaijani non-Jewish singer named Ilhama Gasimova who brought it to the top of the charts, […]

Was there ever a real-life shtetl as joyful, as funny, as musical and, ultimately, as heartbreaking as Anatevka? Probably not. But after five decades, “our little village” in Fiddler on the Roof still embodies what many American Jews imagine Jewish life was like in the Old Country. Fiddler managed to create an almost-perfect formula for a Broadway hit: A […]

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