Talking to Theo

A Conversation with Deborah Tannen

While Theodore Bikel may be best known for his defining portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof—a role he has played over 2,000 times—the list of his accomplishments is remarkably long. Born in Vienna in 1924 and forced to flee the Nazis, he studied theater at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his West End debut in the premiere of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. He broke into film in the 1951 classic The African Queen, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the beleagured Southern sheriff in Stanley Kramer’s 1958 The Defiant Ones.

The man with the trademark booming bass, however, is more than an actor who speaks five languages fluently and has perfected accents in 23. After moving to New York in 1954, Bikel became a prominent folk singer and co-founded the renowned Newport Folk Festival. In 1963, he traveled with Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to register black voters in the South. Later, he would go on to protest apartheid and more recently, the genocide in Darfur. At 84—he will celebrate his 85th birthday at Carnegie Hall in June—he continues to tirelessly campaign for a negotiated land-for-peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians as chairman of Meretz USA.

Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of the New York Times bestseller, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, sat down with Bikel on a day off from his most recent endeavor, the one-man show, Sholem Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears.

Deborah Tannen: I have always admired your activism, from the civil rights movement to labor unions. How did you become an activist?
Thedore Bikel: I was a 13-year-old boy when the Nazis marched into Austria. Within days, I saw people that I knew dragged into the street and subjected to great indignities. And even if I didn’t know them, I knew they were Jewish. The “J” was written in red paint on storefronts. There were warnings not to buy from Jews. Jews were forbidden to go into a park and sit on the bench. Jewish men were forced to clean the sidewalk with their toothbrushes; Jewish women were forced to mop it up with their fur coats. Later on, I saw people being put in a truck and shipped off.

When I saw injustices, I always felt the grief of it hitting my people and puzzlement that people who I thought were decent were doing nothing to prevent it. It became clear to me later that non-action is an act and that silence speaks, sometimes louder than words. I was determined I would not allow myself to engage in that kind of non-action. When I see victims of acts of savagery, barbarism and discrimination—no matter who they are—there’s a little switch that gets thrown in my head and they become Jews.

You lived in Vienna until you were 14, when you escaped with your family to Palestine. How were you able to get out?
The British gave out a very low number of visas—they called them “certificates of entry”—into Palestine. Those were turned over to the Jewish community in Vienna and they in turn distributed the visas to Palestine to people who had been active Zionists according to seniority. My father was high on the list of the Labor Zionist movement, so our being Zionists saved our lives.

How did this early experience influence you?
I keep asking myself, is it just an accident that I was spared? For what purpose was I spared? I think I’m around for various purposes: I’m here to look out for my fellow worker, for my fellow human beings. I’m around to preserve the Yiddish language and the Jewish song.

Your play Laughter Through Tears is very much about Sholem Aleichem’s love of Yiddish and his fears that it would not survive as a language. You revived Yiddish folk songs in the United States. Who will keep the Yiddish language alive for future generations?
Hasidim still speak it, but if Yiddish were to survive only thanks to Hasidim, we would be poorer. To them Yiddish is the language in which they do the mundane things of the world. So while the spoken language might survive with Hasidim, Yiddish literature won’t. That is left to less religious and secular Yiddishists who love the literature, love the poetry and love the songs.

Do you believe Yiddish has a future?
Yiddish has a future because many young people are attracted to it. Why did klezmer music become so popular, especially among young Jews? Because it was mainly instrumental music, and they could love it without having to learn a language. It was only later that they started singing the songs, and then Yiddish was essential. That so many young Jews love klezmer means there’s an emotional need. In a sense, they accuse their parents of having abandoned a legacy that was rightfully theirs because they ran away from their funny looking, funnily dressed grandparents with horrible accents who came over on the ship.

You have had astonishing careers in both theater and music, each of which would be a singular achievement on its own. Am I right that you set out to be an actor, not a singer?
I never meant to be a professional singer. I was an actor in Israel, in Palestine, and I went to England to study acting. The fact that I sang on the side was purely for my own and my friends’ enjoyment. It wasn’t until I got to America that it turned out to be another career, because in America they won’t tolerate you doing anything well without forcing you to accept money for it.

You were one of the leading figures in the folk revival of the ’60s. How did that happen?
Jac Holzman, who at the time had a small record company called Elektra Records in a fifth-floor walkup in Greenwich Village, heard me sing at a couple of parties. He said, “I saw you, and I heard you, and it’s very impressive, but I don’t know how much of what you do is visual.” So he said, “If you would make a recording for me and let me play it for people who haven’t seen you...” He came back and said that he wanted to make a record.

Do your singing and acting reside in different spheres or do they affect each other?
They complement each other. The singer gives the actor a sense of timing and rhythm, and the actor allows the singer, indeed in my case, forces the singer to sing as if he were telling a story. To me, a song is a mini-drama, a mini-comedy.

You sing in 23 languages, but Yiddish songs have a special place in your repertoire. When I was growing up, my family, and every family I knew, had your recordings of Yiddish songs in their homes.
I don’t pick Jewish songs because I think they’re better than my neighbor’s songs. I sing them because they’re mine. I sing my neighbor’s songs as well because I’m curious.

What does Judaism mean to you?
My Judaism is very important in the sense that it defines me as a cultural human being, not as a religious human being. I’m not a religious Jew, although I am well-versed in the religion. I can read the Bible as literature and as poetry.

What part does Jewish observance play in your life?
I say prayers not necessarily to address them to a deity but as an exercise of solidarity with millions of other Jews who say them at the same time. I like to be able to argue with Jews. Now there are plenty of forums where you can argue these days, but in the old days, in the shtetl, for example, there was always an atheist or two, but they went to shul because they needed a forum to argue atheism. If they didn’t go to shul, they’d have nobody to argue with. I joke sometimes that in most countries you see a sign in the bus that says it is forbidden to talk to the driver while the bus is in motion. In Israel, it says it’s forbidden to answer the driver. So we have this wondrous thing called community. Sometimes I have whole segments of my community that I disagree with and who disagree with me, but they’re my people.

What is your vision for Israel?
Many people in and outside Israel profess to be Zionists and believe that the Jews are “the chosen people.” There’s even a Hebrew phrase am zegulah—people of distinction. But when Israel commits acts that any nation would to defend itself—things that it feels it must do—but acts that are not noble, then those very same people say, what do you want from us, we are no better than any other people. Now you can’t say that we are nobler than other people, and in the same breath say we’re no better. We run into the danger of becoming not only like other people but something like our enemies. I hope for a time when we get back to the vision of a people of distinction.

But you’re not a pacifist...
I’m not naive. I’m not a pure pacifist who says violence must never be used. If there were Nazis today I would fight because I would need to. There are certain evils that must be fought by violent means, but a gun in one’s hands is a terrible weapon. Golda Meir once said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

I’m proud of the peace movement, and I’ve worked for it all my life. It’s not easy to be a person of peace in these days of turmoil and upheaval. I don’t engage in group libel because I was the victim of group libel myself. People tell me that it’s us against Muslims, and it isn’t; it’s us against jihadists, it’s us against terrorists.

Do you have any hopes for peace?
Hopes, yes. Patience, less. Because my hope has to be shared by millions of people and, unfortunately, it’s only shared by thousands.