The Interview: No, the One with Theo Bikel

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The Interview: No, the one with Theo Bikel PPI’s board chair, Theodore Bikel, is profiled in The Forward, Dec. 19 (“When the Legendary Theodore Bikel Turned 90“). Here’s a sample: An Interview with the ‘Fiddler’s’ Most Famous Tevye . Though he no longer treads the boards in his best-known stage role, Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” which he played for over two thousand performances, Bikel still performs on occasion. Most recently, at a 90th birthday celebration at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., he serenaded a crowd that included Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Bikel remains active in other arenas, as well. “Theodore Bikel in the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem,” a documentary that he produced and stars in, premiered this summer at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and he’s recently released an updated edition of “Theo: An Autobiography,” which was first published in 1994. Twenty years on from its original publication, “Theo: An Autobiography” remains a rollicking and fascinating read; it’s hard to think of another book that contains firsthand recollections of both the Anschluss — born in Vienna, Bikel emigrated from Austria to Palestine with his parents in 1938 — and Bob Dylan’s controversial “electric” set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Amusing anecdotes abound regarding such career highlights as the original stage production of “The Sound of Music” and his roles in “The African Queen,” “The Defiant Ones,” and “My Fair Lady,” but the book also contains considerable soul-searching relating to Bikel’s changing relationship with Israel, his own feelings of statelessness, and his sense of guilt over having been able to escape the Holocaust while so many others perished at the hands of the Nazis. In his new postscript to the book, Bikel also admits to having the nagging sense that, for all of his considerable accomplishments, his success was “a little too easy.” . Read more: http://forward.com/articles/211150/when-the-legendary-theodore-bike l-turned-/?p=all#ixzz3MMA1Ij1e.

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