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Fiddler on the Roof Is a GREAT Movie
But so are some others from the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
The other day I was talking with Mom about movies we’d liked and I mentioned Fiddler on the Roof. She had never seen it. Which I couldn’t believe.
I mean, we’d watched a whole pantheon of classic films — The Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments… I include Planet of the Apes in this category as well. I read the book before I saw the movie but consider both to be classics.
At any rate, today Mom and I watched Fiddler together.
We thoroughly enjoyed it.
During the intermission, we took an extra long break to have some dessert and to discuss.
Mom hadn’t realized that the movie was based on historic events. I explained to her that I’d had friends whose grandparents or parents had immigrated to America or South America from Russia during the persecution of Jews during the 1900s.
Historically, there were Jews in parts of Russia (as in other parts of Europe) in the early medieval period. Records of them living in Ukraine in the 11th century for example.
Everything was fine until the pograms began — they started in the 1880s and accelerated into the…