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Mormons are hardly the only non-Jews who love “Fiddler.” It was, after all, on Broadway from 1964 to 1972, and the movie version, which turned 50 last fall, earned international plaudits. Peter Morgan’s Tevye (Photo/Forward-Beau Pearson Photography) My challenge was to figure out why - and whether they could pull it off. “The community for the Church of Jesus Christ, they love this show,” said Tanner Garner, 23, a member of the ensemble from Bluffdale, Utah. Several cast members told me they grew up with the musical some said their parents played “Sunrise, Sunset” at their weddings. Yet “Fiddler” was familiar to many of them. “You’re all drunk!” music director Korianne Orton Johnson shouted at the cast as they staggered exaggeratedly around the rehearsal room it would be hard to find a group of college students with less of an idea of what intoxication feels like. Alcohol is forbidden to Latter-day Saints, so the cast struggled with “To Life,” which is performed in a tavern after Tevye promises to wed his oldest daughter to the butcher Lazar Wolf. Judaism wasn’t the only thing that was foreign to the cast. Questions kept coming: Should the actors kiss their hand, then touch the mezuzah, or touch the mezuzah, then kiss their hand? (The latter.) Should there be a bottle of wine on the table for the “Sabbath Prayer” scene? (Definitely.) Should they blow out the Shabbat candles? (Definitely not.) I hadn’t been able to restrain myself from whispering corrections to the student dialect coach, and he took the opportunity to have me demonstrate not only the correct pronunciation of “Tzeitl,” but also “Chava” and “L’chaim.” The BYU production was, in many ways, my dream story: In graduate school, I’d written a paper on the evolution of “Fiddler.” And what is Mormonism, founded right here in the United States, if not the most American form of Christianity?īut as the only Jew in the room at BYU, it was difficult to remain a neutral researcher by the end of that first rehearsal, I had become the de facto fact-checker for pronunciations, ritual elements and other Jewish trivia. I’ve studied my own Judaism, of course, but also the major cultural force that is American Christianity. I’ve been fascinated by religion my whole life, and have two degrees in religious studies. I had arrived in Provo, Utah, earlier that week to explore why the flagship university for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - commonly called Mormons, though they no longer use that term for themselves - would stage this quintessentially Jewish musical. “Tzeitl,” Morgan says again, and the director, a wiry man with a poof of white hair, glances at me for approval. Everyone seems able to say “tsar” just fine, but Tzeitl poses a challenge. Off to the side, several cast members waiting for their entrance follow suit, muttering the name of Tevye’s second daughter under their breaths, with mixed success. “Zeitl,” Morgan says, then corrects himself: “Tzei-tl.” During the acrobatic dance numbers, the students’ twirls and somersaults bring them dangerously close to my spot at the front of the room, and I have to lean back to avoid their arms and legs.
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The cast doesn’t have access to the stage yet, so tape on the floor of a barren rehearsal room marks out imaginary sets. Everyone is frazzled, sweaty and panting after a run-through of “To Life,” one of the show’s biggest numbers. Morgan, like much of the undergraduate cast, hasn’t slept much. He’s wearing a scraggly beard and a black shirt reading “My favorite chord is Gsus” as he struggles with Yiddish dialect for his lead role of Tevye in Brigham Young University’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
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It’s a Saturday morning in mid-November and Peter Morgan is pacing the scuffed wooden floors of the rehearsal room.