Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the buoyant, ingenious, compassionate, resilient, irrepressible, anxious, philosophical, God-loving, God-fearing, Bible-quoting dairyman whose life embodies the existence of a Jew in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

This program presents six of the eight Tevye stories, which span the period from 1894 to 1914. It includes Today's Children, Hodl, Chava and Lekh Lekho--the four tales that provided the genesis for the enchanting, enduring musical Fiddler on the Roof--in addition to Tevye Strikes It Rich and Tevye Blows a Small Fortune.

Sholem Aleichem brought to his writing an amazing mixture of giddy energy, a recklessness of language and emotion, and a dizzying sweep of wildly funny and wrenchingly painful scenes. The tales of Tevye's adventures, pleasures and sorrows, as told in this brilliant reading by Theodore Bikel--who to millions around the world is Tevye--to vibrant life the simple and joyous, yet precarious and sometimes outright dangerous, history of Russian Jewry during a time of sweeping historical, familial and religious change.