Actor, singer and activist Theodore Bikel grew up in a second-floor apartment in Vienna where the family book collection included a 20-volume complete works of Yiddish storyteller Sholem Aleichem.
In 1938, the family fled the Nazis, leaving almost everything behind. But the words and spirit of Aleichem, whose works were the basis of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” followed Bikel the rest of his life.
“I find as time goes on,” Bikel said in a 2014 documentary, “that I am walking in his shoes, as a man, as an artist, as a Jew.”
Bikel, whose prolific, wide-ranging career included playing the lead character Tevye in “Fiddler” more than 2,000 times onstage, died Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center.