No creative work by or about Jews has won the hearts of Americans as thoroughly as “Fiddler on the Roof.” The original 1964 Broadway production of the musical, based on the stories written by Sholem Aleichem in 1894, ran for a then-unprecedented 3,242 performances and earned nine Tony Awards.
The 19th annual Mandel Jewish Community Center Cleveland Jewish Book Festival, one of the premiere Jewish book festivals in the country, will feature a wide-ranging lineup of 11 nationally acclaimed authors and eight authors with local ties.
The closing event for the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland’s Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 20 will feature Jean Chatzky and Dr. Michael Roizen, co-authors of “Age-Proof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip.”
Children’s books and their authors are not the focus of the Mandel JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs from Nov. 5-20, but the lovable title character from Bernard Waber’s “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” series will be working the room to help kick-start the festivities.
"The Sacred Calling" by Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf
“We have a remarkable variety of topics and personalities at this event, which is always a highlight of the festival,” said book festival coordinator Julie Frayman.
An actor “bred to the bone,” Joel Grey also is a photographer, a movie star, a television luminary, a director and a late-blooming author. It is in that last capacity that he’s making a rare Cleveland appearance, as keynote speaker at the Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Book Festival Nov. 14.
The buzz about this year’s Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Book Festival Nov. 13-21 is largely about Joel Grey, the Cleveland native who made such an indelible cultural impression as the gender-bending MC in the stage and film versions of “Cabaret.”
“The Tumbling Turner Sisters” by Juliette Fay
