“This season marks 150 years since the birth of Sholem Aleichem, whose appeal to ‘something more cheerful’ made him the most popular Yiddish writer at a time when more Jews spoke Yiddish than any other language. Known to modern audiences mostly through ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ — the Americanized musical adaptation of his stories of Tevye the Dairyman — Sholem Aleichem cast the Jews as a people who would live through laughter — or die trying.”