This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bean Cooley, Infateri Gross.

One of the most popular shows in Broadway history is back on stage in New York.

If you know the show, this music will sound familiar, but these lyrics won't.

That's music from the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof, which is now playing again off Broadway.

We're going to listen back to Terry's 2019 interview with Steven Skybell, who stars as Tevye, and Joel Gray, who directs the production.

Joel Gray is most famous for starring as the MC in the original Broadway cast of Cabaret and in the Bob Fosse film adaptation.

I'll let Terry take it from here.

Fiddler on the Roof is one of the most popular shows in Broadway history and has been performed around the world.

It's set in 1905 in a Stetl in Eastern Europe.

Stetl is the Yiddish word for small town or village. At the time Fiddler takes place, many Jews in the Russian Empire were confined to living in the Stetl.

Tevye is a dairy man who struggles to support his wife and five daughters. Three of his daughters are old enough to marry, and Tevye and his wife are expecting to follow the tradition of arranged marriages.

But the daughters want to marry for love. The show is about the generational conflict between following religious and cultural traditions and adapting to a world that is rapidly changing.

Some of the change confronting the family is tragic. The pogroms, Russian attacks on the Jews and the Stetl have gotten worse, and the Russian Tsar has been ordering the expulsion of Jews in many villages.

This revival of Fiddler is a production of the National Yiddish Theatre of Folk Spina, which is the longest continuously producing Yiddish theatre company in the world.

Yiddish used to be the primary language spoken by Jews in Central and Eastern Europe.

Fiddler on the roof is based on stories that were written in Yiddish by Shulam Alechem.

Joel Gray, Steven Skybell, welcome to Fresh Air, and congratulations on this production. It is really, really wonderful.

So, Joel, what's the backstory of the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the roof that you're using? Who wrote it? Why did they write it?

Shraga Friedman was an actor and director, and he translated it for himself to play in Israel after it was a big hit on Broadway.

And that Yiddish version did not go very well because Israelis thought they were modern and reinventing the world, and they were.

However, and Hebrew became the language instead of Yiddish. And Hebrew was the language that they adopted.

And then he did it in Hebrew, and it was a success. And as far as I know, he interpolated certain Yiddishisms into Sheldon, Harnock, and Joe Stein's work, the original work.

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