Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem Movie Poster

Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem

Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem

Theodore Bikel, the unstoppable performer whose career spans more than 150 screen roles and countless stage and musical productions, is also the foremost interpreter of Sholom Aleichem's work. Now 90, Bikel has played Tevye the Milkman on stage more than 2,000 times, and he has animated Aleichem's work through his creation of two celebrated musical plays about the great Russian author. A pioneer of modern Jewish literature who championed and luxuriated in the Yiddish language, Sholom Aleichem created dozens of indelible characters. His Tevye the Milkman, Motl the Cantor's Son, and Menachem Mendl--"shtetl Jews" for whom humor and pathos were two sides of the same Yiddish coin--remain invaluable windows into pre-war Eastern European Jewish life, real and imagined.