Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof, the movie, just happens to be on the box this evening. Timely since the story is very evocative of the political background that Harry Friend, the developer of Friendly Acres, left behind when he left Prussia-Poland with his wife in 1901.The movie, a musical, is based on the stories of Tevye the Milkman, by Sholem Alecheim, and set in Russia in 1905. Topol stars as the main character. The original stories were published in 1894, so its quite possible that Harry Friend had read them or heard of them. But its more likely that Art and Life converged.
The pogroms and unrelenting Tsarist persecutions of the Jews, and brewing Bolshevik revolution, sent many fleeing to England and America at the end of the 19th century.
