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      Writers Guild Faces Backlash for Not Condemning Hamas Attack

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      A union leader told members that the board’s viewpoints were varied and that a consensus could not be reached.Just weeks after the Writers Guild of America displayed solidarity by ending a monthslong strike and voting overwhelmingly in favor of a new contract with the major entertainment companies, the union is being roiled by a fight over its lack of a public statement condemning the Hamas attack on Israel.On Oct. 15, eight days after the attack, a group of screenwriters signed an open letter to the Writers Guild asking why it had not issued a statement condemning the attack. They noted that other major Hollywood unions had issued such statements. The letter now has more than 300 signers, including Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Sherman-Palladino (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) and Gideon Raff (“Homeland”).It questioned why the Writers Guild had previously made public remarks in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and #MeToo reckoning but remained silent “when terrorists invaded Israel to murder, rape and kidnap Jews.”On Friday, 75 members of the guild took part in a Zoom meeting to discuss what to do about the silence. Options included withholding dues until the guild leadership convenes a proper conversation on the issue with its membership, according to a person who attended the discussion and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its delicate nature. Other members are considering resigning from the guild by filing for financial core status, in which they would pay reduced dues and still receive the contractual benefits of the collective bargaining agreement.Later Friday, Meredith Stiehm, the president of the Writers Guild of America West, sent an email to members who had inquired about the lack of a response. “Like the membership itself, the board’s viewpoints are varied, and we found consensus out of reach,” she wrote in the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times. “For these reasons, we have decided not to comment publicly.”Calls to the union on Monday were not returned.Jewish leaders have encouraged Hollywood’s biggest voices to speak out in favor of Israel.“When celebrities speak out, it sends an important message to their tens of millions of followers that this is the right side to be on,” Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Hollywood Reporter.“In light of how distorting social media algorithms can present the world,” he added, “it’s even more important for these voices to cut through.”The writers’ union is not the only Hollywood organization dealing with fallout.On Sunday, Creative Artists Agency announced to its employees that Maha Dakhil, the highest-ranking female agent in the motion picture group, had resigned from the company’s internal board and was stepping away from her leadership role within the motion picture group after posting inflammatory remarks on Instagram that accused Israel of committing genocide.Ms. Dakhil has apologized for her comments. According to an email sent by the agency’s chief executive, Bryan Lourd, which was reviewed by The Times, she will continue to represent her clients, who include Natalie Portman, Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon. More

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      A 12,000-Year-Old Bird Call, Made of Bird Bones

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      In flight, the Eurasian kestrel is mostly silent, a small falcon that seems to defy physics as it faces the wind and hovers in midair, tail spread out like a fan. Flapping its wings vigorously, the bird of prey catches every eddy of the breeze while scanning the ground below for quarry.Perched in its breeding grounds, however, the kestrel emits a series of raspy screams, each note a single-syllabled kik-kik-kik. In June, a team of Israeli and French archaeologists proposed that 12,000 years ago the Natufians, people of a Stone Age culture in the Levant and Western Asia, mimicked the raspy trills of the Eurasian kestrel with tiny notched flutes, or aerophones, carved from waterfowl bones.The flutes, which were discovered decades ago at a site in northern Israel but were inspected only recently, may have been used as hunting aids, for musical and dancing practices or for communicating with birds over short distances, according to the study’s authors, who published their paper in Scientific Reports.“This is the first time a prehistoric sound instrument from the Near East has been identified,” said Laurent Davin, an archaeologist at the French Research Center in Jerusalem who made the discovery.The theory is largely based on fragments of seven wind instruments that were among 1,112 bird bones unearthed at Eynan-Mallaha, a prehistoric swamp village in the Hula Valley, which is still an important passageway for the more than two billion birds that annually migrate along the African-Eurasian flyway. The Natufians inhabited the Levant from 13000 to 9700 B.C., a time when humans were undergoing a massive shift from nomadic hunter-gatherers to more sedentary, semi-settled, open-air communities. The society featured the first durable, stone-based architecture and the first graveyards, with funerary customs that changed through time.Seven bird bone flutes from Eynan-Mallaha, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.The Hebrew University of Jerusalem“The Natufians bear witness to a completely crazy period in human history, abandoning the nomadic lifestyle practiced since the dawn of man to settle down in one place,” said Fanny Bocquentin, the lead archaeologist on the dig since 2022. “It’s a big responsibility, a challenge they successfully met, since in a way they gave rise to our way of life and our food regime.”Dr. Davin noted that the settlers of the valley had to find regular sources of food before they even knew how to cultivate them. “Before that time, they relied on game such as rabbits and foxes and gazelles,” he said. The lake and seasonal swamps that nearly covered the valley provided fish and an abundance of birds, most of them wintering waterfowl.The swamp was drained by Zionist pioneers as part of an infrastructure project in the early 20th century, and first excavated by a French mission in 1955. Since then, careful sifting has yielded bones from a wide range of local animal species. The flutes went unnoticed until last year when Dr. Davin observed marks on seven wing bones of Eurasian coots and Eurasian teals. Only one of the instruments was fully intact, and that was all of two and a half inches long.Closer inspection revealed that the marks were tiny holes bored into the hollow bones, and that one of the ends of the intact flute had been carved into a mouthpiece. Initially, Dr. Davin’s colleagues dismissed the holes as routine weathering. But when he subjected the delicate bones to micro-CT scans, he realized that the holes had been meticulously perforated and were spaced at even intervals. The bones had been scraped and grooved with small stone blades, he said, and they bore traces of red ochre and had microscopic wear patterns suggesting that the aerophones had seen considerable use. “The perforations were finger holes,” Dr. Davin said.To test out his theory, a team of archaeologists and ethnomusicologists fashioned three replicas of the intact bone flute. Unable to obtain carcasses of Eurasian coot or teal, the researchers used the wing bones of two female mallard ducks. Blowing into the replicas produced sounds that they compared with the calls of dozens of bird species plying the Hula Valley. The pitch range was very similar to that of two kinds of raptors known to nest in the area, Eurasian kestrels and sparrow hawks.

      The research team determined that the finger holes had been made with a flint tool so precise that the holes could be sealed with a fingertip, the sine qua non of wind instruments. “For the Natufian to produce those flutes was a piece of cake,” said Anna Belfer-Cohen, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She added that the society produced a wealth of tools and highly sophisticated utensils, beaded jewelry, pendants of stone, bone, teeth and shells, as well as engraved bone and stone plaques.The flowering of music-making in the deep past is hotly debated. The oldest flute attributed to modern humans is a five-holed aerophone found in 2008 at the Hohle Fels cave in southwest Germany. Carved from the wing-bone of a griffon vulture, the flute may be 40,000 years old, making it one of the oldest instruments ever found.But some scholars point to a Neanderthal artifact known as the Divje Babe flute that was unearthed 28 years ago in a cave in northwestern Slovenia. That object, a young cave bear’s left thigh bone pierced by four spaced holes, is thought to date back at least 50,000 years. However, other scientists argue that the Divje Babe flute was simply the product of an Ice Age carnivore, possibly a spotted hyena, scavenging on a dead bear cub.Hamoudi Khalaily of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who collaborated on the bird flute study, has said that if the Natufians used the aerophones to flush birds out of the marshes, the discovery would mark “the earliest evidence of the use of sound in hunting.” In other words, the miniature flutes could have produced Stone Age duck calls.Natalie Munro, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, has an alternative hypothesis. “While we’re speculating, maybe the true purpose of the instruments was to communicate with a different animal altogether,” she said. Eynan-Mallaha was also home to a Natufian woman found buried with her hand resting on a puppy. The burial dates to 12,000 years ago and figures frequently in narratives of early dog domestication. “Maybe these bones and their high-pitched sounds were more akin to dog whistles,” Dr. Munro said. “They could have been used to communicate with early dogs or their wolf cousins.”Considering the flute’s harsh tone, few scientists maintain that it was intended as a melodic tool. Still, as John James Audubon observed of a pair of American kestrels, “Side by side they sail, screaming aloud their love notes, which, if not musical, are doubtless at least delightful to the parties concerned.” More

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      ‘Blue Box’ Review: Grappling With an Ancestor’s Impact

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      In this documentary, Michal Weits tries to process her ideas about her great-grandfather Joseph Weits, who was regarded as the father of Israeli forests.In “Blue Box,” the director Michal Weits challenges a national narrative about Israel that, for her, also happens to be a family narrative. One of her great-grandfathers was Joseph Weits (sometimes spelled “Weitz” or with variants of “Yosef”), who had a reputation as the father of Israel’s forests. That was how Michal thought of him growing up.Joseph Weits oversaw land and forestry initiatives for the Jewish National Fund, but that job description leaves out important context. In the 1930s, before the founding of Israel and in preparation for a possible Jewish state, he was instrumental in purchasing land that Palestinians lived on. During the 1948 war that followed the declaration of Israel as an independent nation, he assembled a committee that sought, among other things, to prevent Arabs from returning. The film makes the case that transforming the landscape, including planting trees, became a way of ensuring that.Joseph left behind voluminous diaries that Michal pores over in the film (Dror Keren reads his words in voice-over) as she tries to reconcile her ideas about her ancestor. In his writings, Joseph expresses conflicted feelings about his actions, which — “Blue Box” emphasizes more than once — occurred against a backdrop of antisemitism throughout Europe and the Holocaust. Michal interviews members of her extended family, who have a range of attitudes about Joseph’s legacy and in some cases are reluctant to engage with it.“I don’t want to be a part of this,” Michal’s father tells her late in the movie, after suggesting that, had she been around in 1948 or 1949, she would have been standing proudly with her great-grandfather’s cause. Part of the power of “Blue Box” is that it can’t say for sure if she would. And the familial and personal tensions give it something extra, elevating it beyond the standard historical documentary.Blue BoxNot rated. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Netanyahu Trial Gets a Hollywood Mention From a Political Rival

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      Yair Lapid, a former colleague and now nemesis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, testified that he had been asked to help a wealthy film producer with a tax break.The leader of Israel’s political opposition, Yair Lapid, testified on Monday in the long-running corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recounting how Mr. Netanyahu had lobbied him nearly a decade ago to back tax breaks favoring an influential Israeli film producer.The claim is a small part of a yearslong prosecution in which Mr. Netanyahu is accused of granting political favors to several businessmen and media moguls in exchange for expensive gifts and positive news coverage, charges that he denies.The appearance of Mr. Lapid — once a colleague of Mr. Netanyahu’s and now his nemesis — enlivened a slow-moving courtroom process that has largely receded into the background of Israeli public life since it began with great fanfare more than three years ago.Mr. Lapid served as prime minister for several months last year, before losing power to Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, in December.Mr. Lapid briefly gave evidence about two short conversations with Mr. Netanyahu in 2013 and 2014, when he served as Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister in a coalition government. Mr. Lapid said that Mr. Netanyahu twice had raised the possibility of extending tax exemptions for Israeli citizens who had returned to the country after living abroad, a mechanism that Mr. Lapid opposed.The extension would have benefited Arnon Milchan, a producer of scores of major Hollywood films including “Fight Club” and “Pretty Woman.” Prosecutors say Mr. Milchan gave Mr. Netanyahu’s family expensive gifts, including cigars and Champagne, in exchange for political favors.According to Mr. Lapid, Mr. Netanyahu twice described the tax exemption as “a good law.” But Mr. Netanyahu did not pursue the matter beyond those two exchanges, Mr. Lapid said. The prime minister gave the impression that he simply wanted to go through the motions of asking about it so that he could tell Mr. Milchan that he had tried, Mr. Lapid added.“The whole issue was marginal in real time,” Mr. Lapid said, according to Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster. “It’s hard to remember all the details.”Mr. Netanyahu has been accused of granting political favors to businessmen and media moguls in exchange for expensive gifts and positive news coverage, charges that he denies.Pool photo by Menahem KahanaThe trial began in 2020 and will most likely not hinge on Mr. Lapid’s evidence: It is expected to last several more years and features several more accusations. Among other claims, prosecutors accuse Mr. Netanyahu of promising to pursue legislation that would create unfavorable business conditions for a newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Netanyahu and President Donald J. Trump, in exchange for positive coverage from one of the newspaper’s competitors.Many Israelis have tuned out of the day-to-day proceedings, with a large proportion having already made up their minds about Mr. Netanyahu. His supporters view the trial as a trumped-up effort to delegitimize an elected prime minister, while his critics say it should disqualify him from office.But regardless of its outcome, the trial has already caused unusual political instability. It has divided Israeli society almost equally between Mr. Netanyahu’s supporters and critics, making it difficult for either Mr. Netanyahu or opponents like Mr. Lapid to win a stable majority in Parliament. That has caused several successive governments to collapse prematurely, leading to five elections in less than four years.The trial is also at the center of an ongoing dispute about the future of the Israeli judiciary.Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition seeks to overhaul the court system, giving the government greater control over the selection of Supreme Court judges and diminishing the court’s power over Parliament. Mr. Netanyahu says the overhaul is necessary to reduce the influence of unelected judges over elected lawmakers, but his critics fear that the plan will ultimately allow him to end his trial. Mr. Netanyahu denies any such intention.Mr. Lapid’s appearance highlighted the nuances beneath the surface of Israeli politics: Though he now seeks Mr. Netanyahu’s political downfall, Mr. Lapid was once his political ally — and socialized with and briefly worked for Mr. Milchan. Under cross-examination, Mr. Lapid recounted how he interviewed Mr. Milchan in the 1990s, during his previous career as a journalist, and even joined Mr. Milchan’s production company for several months.“We remained friends after that,” Mr. Lapid said, according to Kan. “When he would come to Israel, we would meet for dinners. He is a charming man and I liked him.”But that friendship did not extend to helping Mr. Milchan with his tax, Mr. Lapid said.Gabby Sobelman More

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      Ishay Ribo, Religious Pop Star, Is Winning Over Secular Israel

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      The songs of Ishay Ribo, who was raised in a settlement on the West Bank, are a staple of Israeli radio. He is part of a wave of singers from religious backgrounds who are also gaining a wider audience.The singer and his songs were highly religious. His concert venue, on a kibbutz developed by secular leftists, was definitely not. His audience of many hundreds? It was somewhere in between: some secular, some devout, an unusual blending of two sections of a divided Israeli society that rarely otherwise mix.Ishay Ribo, 34, is among a crop of young Israeli pop stars from religious backgrounds, some from Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, whose music is attracting more diverse listeners, and featuring prominently in the soundscape of contemporary Israeli life.This has surprised Mr. Ribo himself.“I never imagined I’d play to this kind of crowd,” he said, backstage after the show earlier this year at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, a town in northern Israel originally founded as a collective farm. A decade ago, he said, “This kind of crowd just didn’t really exist.”In addition to Mr. Ribo, other singers from a religious background — like Nathan Goshen, Hanan Ben-Ari, Akiva Turgeman and Narkis Reuven-Nagar — have also in recent years gained a wider audience. And their popularity reflects a changing Israeli society.Fans of Mr. Ribo at the Jerusalem Theater, where he performed in January. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesThe religious right has expanded its influence on politics and society, escalating a clash between secular and sacred visions of the country that underlies the country’s ongoing judicial standoff. At the same time, religion has taken on a more prominent, and less contentious, role in the mainstream music scene.In less than two decades, religious singers have moved from the cultural fringe to widespread acclaim, “not only among their people, but in all Israel,” said Yoav Kutner, a leading Israeli music critic and radio presenter.“If you don’t listen to the words,” Mr. Kutner added, “they sound like Israeli pop.”Mr. Ribo is perhaps the clearest example of this shift. Forgoing the erotic and the profane, his wholesome songs are often prayers to God — but sung to pop and rock music played by his band of guitarists. “Cause of causes,” he addresses God in one of his biggest hits. “Only you should be thanked for all the days and nights.”In 2021, that track, “Sibat Hasibot,” was the most played song on Israeli radio stations, religious and secular alike.“It’s part of my duty,” Mr. Ribo said in a recent interview. “To be a bridge between these two worlds.”Mr. Ribo’s journey toward that bridging role began in the early 2000s, on the bus to his religious school.His family had immigrated from France a few years before. They led an ultra-Orthodox and ascetic life on a settlement in the occupied West Bank, just outside Jerusalem.The family did not have a television, and Mr. Ribo attended an ultraconservative Jewish seminary. He listened to music on religious radio stations — often liturgical poems sung in synagogues. He typically heard secular music only on the bus to school, playing from the driver’s radio.“I had this musical ignorance,” Mr. Ribo said.At age 11 or so, he began recording simple songs on a portable cassette player. Then as now, his lyrics were infused with piety, Mr. Ribo said. But the tunes were inspired by the mainstream singer-songwriters he’d heard on the school bus.Some four years later, Mr. Ribo bought a guitar and formed a band with another seminary student. He began to practice and dress as a Modern Orthodox Jew, forgoing the dark coats and wide-brimmed hats of the ultra-Orthodox for jeans and sweaters.But his awareness of contemporary music and its customs was still patchy. At his band’s first gig, Mr. Ribo played with his back to the audience, unaware of the need to engage with the crowd.Unlike many Israelis from ultra-Orthodox Jewish backgrounds, he paused his religious studies at age 22 to serve for two years as a conscript in the army. After finishing service in 2013, he tried to build a hybrid musical career — playing religious music to both secular and devout audiences.Mr. Ribo and his father studying the Torah in Jerusalem.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesHe imagined his melodies might sound like Coldplay, the popular British rock band, but his lyrics, he added, “would be about God and faith.”The challenge was that there were few templates then for such a crossover career.Only a few religious artists, like the folk singer Shlomo Carlebach, had built a secular following. The most successful religious artists were often those, like Etti Ankri and Ehud Banai, who had started out secular, became more devout, and then took their original audiences along with them.Mr. Ribo’s problem, initially, was that the music industry “didn’t understand what I had to offer,” he said.When he sent his music to mainstream record labels, they all turned him down.Mr. Ribo forged ahead, self-releasing the first of five albums in 2014. He hired a secular manager, Or Davidson, who marketed him as if he was a secular client — booking him to play at mainstream venues and securing him airtime on nonreligious radio stations. Gradually, his secular fan base expanded.Mr. Ribo’s 2021 hit, “Sibat Hasibot,” was the most played song on Israeli radio stations, religious and secular alike.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesIt was sometimes a fraught balancing act.Religious Jews criticized him for playing at secular concert halls. Secular Jews opposed his performances at religious venues where men and women sat separately. And when he played to both audiences at secular venues, the staff could not provide kosher food for his religious fans. Even his parents were too religiously observant to attend some of the venues.But the two-pronged approach ultimately worked. Four of his five albums were classified as gold or above — selling more than 15,000 copies in the small Israeli market. Secular pop legends, including Shlomo Artzi, began to perform duets with him, and he began to build an audience among diaspora Jews. Later this year, he is scheduled to headline Madison Square Garden, Mr. Davidson said.To an extent, Mr. Ribo’s appeal is rooted simply in the catchiness of his songs, his clean-cut demeanor and sincere performances.“Even though I’m secular, I came to watch him because he’s lovely,” said Adiva Liberman, 71, a retired teacher attending his concert at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel.“Not everyone is paying attention to the lyrics,” she added. “They’re just attracted to the melody.”The scene after Mr. Ribo’s concert at the Jerusalem Theater. His music attracts a diverse crowd of secular and religious Israelis.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMr. Ribo’s rise comes amid not only a political shift rightward in Israel, but demographic changes as well. Religious Israelis, who have more children than secular Israelis, are the fastest-growing part of the population, allowing them to exert greater cultural influence.Daniel Zamir, an Israeli jazz star who turned religious as an adult, said Mr. Ribo’s broad appeal is part of “a bigger process of Israeli society moving toward tradition.”Simultaneously, Mr. Ribo’s rise embodies a converse but complementary trend: greater willingness among some religious musicians to cater to and mix with mainstream audiences, and greater demand among religious audiences for music with a more contemporary sound.It’s “a dual process,” Mr. Zamir said. Mr. Ribo is emblematic of “this new generation that saw that you could be religious and also make great music,” Mr. Zamir added.For some secular consumers, the rise of “pop emuni” — “faith pop” in Hebrew — has been jarring. “I am not interested in hearing prayers on my radio,” wrote Gal Uchovsky, a television presenter, in a 2019 article about the proliferation of Mr. Ribo’s music. “I don’t want them to explain to me, even in songs that brighten my journey, how fun God is.”Mr. Ribo’s latest song, “I Belong to the People,” also caused discomfort among liberal Israelis. Released in early April, it is an attempt to unite Jews at a time of deep political division in Israel. But critics said it unwittingly sounded condescending to people from other faiths, implying they were idolatrous.Mr. Ribo has also caused discomfort within the religious world. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly their religious leaders, feel he has delved too far into secular society.Early in his career, Mr. Ribo personally felt so conflicted about this that he sought his rabbi’s approval for his work. To avoid alienating his religious base, there are still some lines he refuses to cross.“I’d love to write a classic love song — but I won’t,” Mr. Ribo said. “It’s not my job or duty.”Still, some feel he has already compromised too much. In a popular sketch performed by an ultra-Orthodox comedy duo, an ultra-Orthodox man is asked if he knows any secular singers.The man pauses, then replies: “Ishay Ribo!”“I’d love to write a classic love song — but I won’t,” Mr. Ribo said. “It’s not my job or duty.”Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesGabby Sobelman More

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      ‘Honorable Men’ Review: The Trials of a Prime Minister

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      It would take an eight- or 10-hour mini-series to deal with all the issues this documentary raises about the legal travails of Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel.“Honorable Men: The Rise and Fall of Ehud Olmert” is a rare instance of a two-hour documentary that should have been an eight- or 10-hour mini-series, because it would take that long to clarify all the issues it raises, then present persuasive evidence. It concerns the legal travails of Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel. Olmert was under investigation for corruption when he announced his resignation in 2008. He ultimately went to prison in 2016 for bribery and obstruction of justice, but he has consistently denied doing anything criminal.The documentary, directed by Roni Aboulafia, takes a broadly pro-Olmert position. Olmert is painted as the victim of an array of vaguely conspiratorial forces: political opponents relentless in their search for dirt because they feared his positions on settlements and the peace process; witnesses overly eager to please; a particular toxic case of apparent sibling rivalry; and a legal system that had a way of proceeding under its own momentum.And that’s to say nothing of various individuals who worked with Olmert and whose actions are called into question. But was he wronged in all respects? “Honorable Men” never quite says so. Direct access to Olmert — mostly heard speaking over the phone, although he is eventually shown being interviewed in person after his release — hasn’t led to a coherent thesis.The film was first screened in 2020, meaning that recent developments — including Olmert’s November loss in a libel case to Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister again as of December — aren’t included.Honorable MenNot rated. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      in Theater

      Topol, Star of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Onscreen and Onstage, Dies at 87

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      Wide acclaim for his portrayal of Tevye helped make him, according to one newspaper, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol, the Israeli actor who took on the role of the patriarch Tevye, the soulful shtetl milkman at the center of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in his late 20s and reprised the role for decades, died on Thursday at his home in Tel Aviv. He was 87.His son, Omer Topol, confirmed the death. He said in an email that his father had Alzheimer’s disease, which had caused his health to deteriorate over the last year.Topol — born Chaim Topol, he used only his surname throughout much of his professional life — came to international renown heading the cast of the 1971 film version of “Fiddler.” Its director, Norman Jewison, had chosen Topol, then a little-known stage actor, over Zero Mostel, who had created the part on Broadway.The film, for which Topol earned an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award, made him a star. For much of the late 20th century he would be, in the words of The Jerusalem Post in 2012, “Israel’s most famous export since the Jaffa orange.”Topol reprised Tevye in stage productions worldwide for decades, including a 1990 Broadway revival for which he received a Tony nomination. By 2009, he had, by his own estimate, played the character more than 3,500 times.His other films include “Galileo,” the director Joseph Losey’s 1975 adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s stage play, in which he played the title role; “Flash Gordon” (1980), in which he portrayed the scientist Hans Zarkov; and the James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only” (1981), starring Roger Moore, in which he played the Greek smuggler Milos Columbo.On television, Topol played the Polish Jew Berel Jastrow in the 1983 mini-series “The Winds of War” and reprised the role for its sequel, “War and Remembrance,” broadcast in 1988 and 1989.Topol as Tevye in the movie version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The character is a weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives warily amid the pogroms of Czarist Russia. United Archives/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesBut it was indisputably for Tevye — the weary, tradition-bound Everyman who argues with God, bemoans his lot as the penurious father of five daughters and lives increasingly warily amid the pogroms of early-20th-century Czarist Russia — that Topol remained best known.“Like Yul Brynner in ‘The King and I’ and Rex Harrison in ‘My Fair Lady,’ Topol has become almost synonymous with his character,” United Press International said in 1989. Over the years, Topol was asked repeatedly whether he ever tired of playing the role.“Let’s face it, it’s one of the best parts ever written for a male actor in the musical theater,” he told The Boston Globe in 1989, when he had played Tevye a mere 700 times or so. “It takes you to a wide range of emotions, happiness to sadness, anger to love.”Throughout his many Tevyes, some critics taxed Topol’s acting as larger than life to the point of self-parody. But most praised his soulful mien and his resonant bass baritone, heard in enduring numbers like “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Tradition” and “Sunrise, Sunset.”By the time Mr. Jewison began work on the “Fiddler” film, Tevye was one of the most coveted roles in Hollywood. The Broadway show, based on stories by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem — with book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and music by Jerry Bock — had been a smash hit since it opened in 1964. It won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, best direction of a musical (for Jerome Robbins) and, for Mr. Mostel, best actor in a musical.“The casting of it was the most agonizing thing I ever went through,” Mr. Jewison told NPR in 2001.Besides Mr. Mostel, aspirants to the screen role included Rod Steiger, Danny Kaye and — in a scenario that can be contemplated only with difficulty — Frank Sinatra.Mr. Jewison’s casting choice was all the more striking in that Topol had not wanted the part in the first place.Topol as the title character in the 1975 film version of Bertolt Brecht’s biographical play “Galileo.” Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesChaim Topol was born in Tel Aviv on Sept. 9, 1935. His parents, Jacob Topol, a plasterer, and Rel Goldman Topol, a seamstress, had fled shtetlach in Eastern Europe to settle in Palestine in the early 1930s. There, Jacob Topol became a member of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization.As a youth, Chaim studied commercial art and trained for a career as a printer. But in 1953, while he was serving in the Israeli Army, an officer overheard him regaling fellow recruits with jokes. He was placed in an army entertainment unit and found his calling there.He spent the next few years touring Israel with the group, entertaining soldiers with songs like “Sprinkler Hora,” a hit in that fledgling state, where making the desert bloom was a national imperative.Discharged in 1956, Topol settled with members of his unit on a kibbutz, where they formed a satirical theater group, Batzal Yarok (the name means “Green Onion”). Its members worked on the land two days a week and onstage for four.“It was great training because we had a very difficult, tired audience,” Topol told U.P.I. “Most of them had been out running tractors and such before performances.”He was later a founder of the Haifa Municipal Theater, where his roles included Petruchio in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Azdak in Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and Jean in Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” a role that was originated on Broadway by Mr. Mostel. Topol’s first significant international exposure came in the title role of the 1964 Israeli film “Sallah” (also known as “Sallah Shabati”). One of the first film comedies to come out of Israel, it told the tale of a family of Mizrahi Jews — Jews historically from the Middle East and North Africa — uneasily resettled in Israel.“Sallah” won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film; Topol, then in his late 20s, won the Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer for his portrayal of Sallah Shabati, the family patriarch, a man in his 60s.On the strength of that performance, he was asked to play Tevye in a Hebrew-language production of “Fiddler” in Tel Aviv. Unfamiliar with the show, he went to New York to see Mr. Mostel on Broadway.That, Topol, later said, was where his troubles with “Fiddler” began.“Zero was going wild” — even ad-libbing to the audience — he recalled in a 2008 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph. “He said things like, ‘Mrs. Finkelstein, are you yawning because I’m boring you or was it because your husband kept you awake all night?’ I didn’t know what to do with myself. I telegrammed back saying there was no way I wanted to be connected to that show.”But on returning to Israel, Topol saw the Tel Aviv production and had a change of heart. He eventually replaced the actor portraying Tevye and played the role for about a year.Topol in a benefit performance in London in 2013. He was recognized for his charitable work, notably helping to found a holiday camp in Israel for ailing children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. David M. Benett/Getty ImagesAround that time, the first London production of “Fiddler” was being cast. Someone suggested that the old Jewish actor who had played Sallah Shabati might be a worthy Tevye, and they summoned him to England. When Topol, barely 30, walked into the theater, producers thought they had invited the wrong man. But since he had made the long trip, they relented and let him audition anyway.Topol, who at the time knew “about 50 words of English” by his own account, had learned the songs phonetically from the Broadway cast album. He further impressed the producers with his ability to age 25 years simply through the rigorous control of his carriage.“At 29, I knew I had to restrain some muscles to make sure I didn’t suddenly jump in a way that destroyed the image of an elderly man,” he told The Boston Globe in 2009, in the midst of a multicity U.S. tour of the show. “I walked slower, made sure I wasn’t too erect when I danced. It was quite a job. Now, as I pass the age of 55 by 20 years, I feel totally free to jump and dance as much as I feel like.”Topol opened in London in February 1967, to glowing notices. By then he had jettisoned his first name: The English, he discovered, were flummoxed by the guttural consonant of “Chaim” and pronounced his name “Shame” as often as not.In June, with Israel fighting the Six-Day War, he left the production to return home, where he entertained the troops. (He would make a similar decision in 1991, with the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war, leaving the Broadway revival to be with his family in Tel Aviv.)After seeing the London “Fiddler,” Mr. Jewison made the unexpected decision to cast Topol, still a relative unknown in the United States, in the motion picture.“I wanted a third-generation European actor for the role, a third-generation man who understood the background,” Mr. Jewison told The Globe in 1971. “I did not want a Second Avenue version of Tevye” — a barely veiled swipe at Mr. Mostel and his unstoppable shtick.Topol, who underwent two hours of age makeup every day of the shoot — Mr. Jewison did his bit, contributing white hairs from his beard to be glued over his star’s dark eyebrows — made, in the view of many critics, a most persuasive Tevye.Reviewing the film in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote of him: “He’s a rough presence, masculine, with burly, raw strength, but also sensual and warm. He’s a poor man but he’s not a little man, he’s a big man brought low — a man of Old Testament size brought down by the circumstances of oppression.”Topol married Galia Finkelstein, an actress in his army entertainment unit, in 1956. In addition to their son, they had two daughters, Adi Margalith and Anat Barzilai. All four survive him, along with two sisters, Shosh and Tova, and nine grandchildren.Topol was the author of two books, the memoir “Topol by Topol” (1981) and “Topol’s Treasury of Jewish Humor, Wit, and Wisdom” (1994).His laurels included the Israel Prize, the country’s highest cultural honor, which he received in 2015. The recognition came both for his acting and for his charitable work, notably helping to found Jordan River Village, a holiday camp in Israel for seriously ill children from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Modeled on Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, it opened in 2011.Year in and year out, Topol found the role he knew best to be a source of continuing illumination.“I did ‘Fiddler’ a long time thinking that this was a story about the Jewish people,” he said in a 2009 interview. “But now I’ve been performing all over the world. And the fantastic thing is wherever I’ve been — India, Japan, England, Greece, Egypt — people come up to me after the show and say, ‘This is our story as well.’”Alex Traub More

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      ‘Cinema Sabaya’ Review: Conversations and Compassion in a Small Town in Israel

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      Israel’s Oscar entry is a documentary-style chamber piece about a video workshop for Arab and Jewish women whose conclusions feel, well, tired.“Cinema Sabaya,” Israel’s international feature entry for this year’s Oscars (though not nominated), looks and feels like a behind-the-scenes documentary. It’s not — the actors aren’t playing themselves and the drama is scripted. But the film resides in the porous boundary between fiction and reality, mounting a chamber piece of sorts not unlike “Women Talking,” but enriched by naturalistic flair that eschews didacticism.Dana Ivgy plays Rona, a filmmaker from Tel Aviv who is running a video workshop for Arab and Jewish women in a small town in northern Israel. The film’s director, Orit Fouks Rotem, was inspired by her mother’s participation in a similar course; she went on to organize sessions for other women, which — along with testimonies from the actors — inform her fictional rendition. In “Cinema Sabaya,” each member is given a hand-held device to complete assignments that involve capturing moments from their lives beyond the classroom. But using themselves as the grist of the mill for their training means revealing themselves as well — their struggles with tradition, sexuality, domesticity — while their homework is often blown up on a big screen and shared with the others.Discussions that double as group therapy sessions are captured with observational distance, while hand-held home-video footage punctuates these subdued symposiums, adding to the film’s documentary-style designs.Tensions arise by dint of the group’s diversity. The punchy Nahed (Aseel Farhat) is a student and nonpracticing Muslim, while Awatef (Marlene Bajali) is a septuagenarian traditionalist. The hesitant Souad (Joanna Said) is trapped in an unhappy marriage, which triggers conjugal horror stories from a divorced woman, Yelena (Yulia Tagil), and the remarried Gila (Ruth Landau).The elephant in the room is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its attendant biases, which emerge during a heated session in which the bubbly Eti (Orit Samuel), a middle-aged Jewish woman, confesses to her fear of Islamic terrorists. The workshop is ultimately a unity exercise premised on the trite axiom that conversation breeds compassion. It’s not an unwelcome reminder, and Rotem’s organic approach steers clear of icky idealism, but its conclusions nevertheless feel worn out. Talking helps, sure, but getting people in the same room is too often the stuff of fiction.Cinema SabayaNot rated. In Hebrew, Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More