The newest incarnation of Fiddler on the Roof, despite being the fifth Broadway revival to date, manages to do something fresh with its classic material, writes Terry Teachout. Yet, although something is gained in this new version, something is also lost:

[In the opening scene], as everyone starts speaking in accents indistinguishable from those you might hear on a present-day New York street corner, you get [what the director is trying to accomplish]: this is an Our Town-like Fiddler on the Roof. It’s also the most American-sounding Fiddler I’ve ever seen, and that’s the point: it is as if we are watching the Americanized descendants of the Jews of Anatevka retell the tales their great-grandparents told about shtetl life in 19th-century Russia.

This directorial twist goes a long way toward neutralizing the underlying flaw of Fiddler, which is that it takes a sentimentally optimistic view of the tragic dilemma of assimilation, [a view] that is antithetical to the biting honesty of the short stories by Sholem Aleichem on which Fiddler is based. . . .

But as the evening progressed, I realized, very much to my surprise, that I wasn’t feeling the intense emotions that by all rights ought to be stirred up by Fiddler. It is, after all, a musical about deadly serious matters, starting with the bloody pogrom that breaks up the wedding of Tevye’s daughter and ending with the forced emigration of every Jew in Anatevka. Such things ought to make us weep—and in this production, they don’t.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.