(Courtesy: Jan Lisa Huttner)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Marc Chagall retrospective currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art includes some of the artist\u2019s most arresting pieces, from the flying lovers in \u201cAbove the Town\u201d to the \u201cWhite Crucifixion\u201d (Jesus is wearing a tallis<\/em>!) to Moses leading his people in \u201cThe Crossing of the Red Sea.\u201d And yet the most commanding image is still the one we know the best: the fiddler on the roof originally created for the Moscow State Yiddish Theater in 1920 and called, simply, \u201cMusic.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Most Broadway lovers know that this image, by far Chagall\u2019s most popular and well-known creation, was the source of the title for the 1964 stage musical \u201cFiddler on the Roof,\u201d based on the Tevye stories of Sholom Aleichem. But, oddly, that connection has been lost since the release of the 1971 film version (with its more realistic and less colorful depiction of the town of Anatevka). In fact, some current Chagall experts, including Howard Greenfeld, explicitly deny any relation between the musical and Chagall\u2019s painting, while certain Sholom Aleichem experts, such as Hillel Halkin, remain adamant that the writer never mentioned any fiddlers on any roofs. Chagall\u2019s imagery, they assert, had nothing to do with Sholom Aleichem\u2019s words.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n They are wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With a century of scholarship to ground us, \u201cFiddler\u2019s\u201d upcoming 40th anniversary (in September 2004) encourages us to look at the musical\u2019s two major sources with fresh eyes. Having studied the subject myself for several years, I think there was a clear point of convergence, a person who became an archetype. His name was Stempenyu. According to Yale Strom, author of \u201cThe Book of Klezmer: The History, The Music, The Folklore,\u201d Stempenyu was born with klezmer in his blood, the descendant of 10 generations of klezmorim. \u201cBy 18, he had his own kapelye<\/em> [klezmer band] in Odessa and was known for his virtuosity as well as his composing skills,\u201d wrote Strom. \u201cEventually he settled down in Barditshev and continued to polish his reputation.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Stempenyu died in 1879 at the age of 57. Nine years later, Sholom Aleichem wrote \u201cStempenyu: a Jewish Romance.\u201d Although an obscure story today, in its time it was extremely popular; in fact, it was the first Sholom Aleichem story translated into other languages, first German in 1889, and then English in 1913. In her research on the novel, University of Michigan professor Anita Norich quotes a letter from Sholom Aleichem in which he explicitly says that \u201cStempenyu\u201d was based on \u201ca real figure, a violinist, from Berdichev.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1907, according to author Jacob (Kobi) Weitzner\u2019s book, \u201cSholem Aleichem in the Theater,\u201d Sholom Aleichem wrote a theatrical adaptation for Boris Thomashefsky\u2019s People\u2019s Theater in New York, but the play was a disaster. Still, Sholom Aleichem was undeterred and, according to J. Hoberman in \u201cBridge of Light,\u201d Sholom Aleichem completed a screen adaptation, and Maurice Schwartz optioned the film rights from his widow after he died in 1916.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though he never did make a movie version of \u201cStempenyu,\u201d Schwartz\u2019s 1929 stage version for the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York was a great success. And it is in this production that we find the critical link connecting Sholom Aleichem and Chagall with \u201cFiddler\u201d: a set designer named Boris Aronson. Aronson, who designed the set for Schwartz\u2019s production, had worked at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater at the same time that Chagall worked there. He is the same Boris Aronson who published a monograph in 1923 called \u201cMarc Chagall,\u201d the same Boris Aronson who designed the sets for \u201cFiddler\u201d in 1964. When Sidney Alexander interviewed Aronson for his 1978 book \u201cMarc Chagall: A Biography,\u201d Aronson told him: \u201cAs a designer [Chagall] is doing \u2018Fiddler on the Roof\u2019 all his life.\u201d In Frank Rich\u2019s \u201cTheatre Art of Boris Aronson,\u201d Aronson is quoted as saying: \u201c[Chagall] takes Anatevka with him wherever he goes. I only got to do it once.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Although there is no proof \u2014 yet \u2014 that Chagall knew of Stempenyu the man or had read \u201cStempenyu\u201d the story, we know from his autobiography, \u201cMy Life,\u201d that Chagall studied violin as a child, and we know from his wife Bella\u2019s autobiography, \u201cBurning Lights,\u201d that she was a fervent reader. \u201cMy heart says that not only did Bella read the initial text by Sholom Aleichem, but Chagall did too,\u201d says Bella Meyer, Chagall\u2019s granddaughter. Strom and Weitzner also told the Forward that the connection is a likely one.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Each of these three great artists \u2014 Stempenyu, Sholom Aleichem and Chagall \u2014 was trying to capture the same phenomenon. As Sholom Aleichem wrote in the prologue to \u201cStempenyu\u201d:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jews love music and have an ear for song\u2026 Any heart, especially a Jewish heart, is a fiddle: You squeeze the strings and you draw forth all kinds of songs\u2026 Oh, what a master Stempenyu was! He would grab the violin and\u2026 it spoke, pleaded, crooned tearfully, in a Jewish mode, with a force, a scream from the depths of the heart, the soul.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Courtesy: Jan Lisa Huttner) The Marc Chagall retrospective currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art includes some of the artist\u2019s most arresting pieces, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}