Topol (Chaim Topol) — actor (fiddler) with roots in the Russian Empire
Chaim Topol, known on stage and screen simply as Topol, was born in Tel Aviv, then in Mandatory Palestine, on 9 September 1935. His father, Jacob Topol, was born in Russia, according to a 1971 profile cited by Wikipedia; the year and town are not recorded. He came to Palestine in the early 1930s, worked as a plasterer and served in the Haganah. His mother, Imrela, known as Rel, née Goldman, was a seamstress. Both parents had been members of the Betar Zionist youth movement in Warsaw, and the Guardian's obituary describes them as having left Poland in the 1930s; the father's family had Hasidic roots in the Ger and Aleksander courts.
Topol began performing during his army service, in a military entertainment troupe, then toured with kibbutz and satirical companies, including the Batzal Yarok troupe from 1960 to 1964. In 1960 he co-founded the Haifa Municipal Theatre with the director Yosef Milo, acting in Shakespeare, Ionesco and Brecht. His breakthrough came in Ephraim Kishon's comedy Sallah Shabati (1964), about a Mizrahi immigrant family; it won him a Golden Globe as most promising newcomer and became the first Israeli film nominated for the Academy Award for foreign-language film. In 1966 he made his English-language debut alongside Kirk Douglas in Cast a Giant Shadow.
The role that defined his career came in 1967, when he played Tevye, the dairyman of the Pale of Settlement, in the London production of Fiddler on the Roof; a few months after the opening he was called back to Israel for reserve duty in the Six-Day War. In the 1971 film he won the Golden Globe for best actor and an Academy Award nomination. He returned to the part for decades, in London in 1983 and on Broadway in 1990–91, when he was nominated for a Tony. Wikipedia credits him with more than 3,500 performances as Tevye; Theodore Bikel's obituaries, by contrast, describe Bikel's 2,000-plus as the most of any actor. In 2010, when Topol was injured on a North American tour, Bikel took over the role.
He appeared in more than thirty films, including Joseph Losey's Galileo (1975), Flash Gordon (1980), as Dr Hans Zarkov, and the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981), as Milos Columbo. He was also an illustrator, and in 1967 founded Variety Israel, which serves children with disabilities. In 2015 he received the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. He died in Tel Aviv on 8 March 2023, aged eighty-seven.
"His parents, who had been members of the Betar youth movement in Warsaw, emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in the early 1930s; he was born in Tel Aviv in 1935."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russian Empire (father, born there; town not recorded); both parents later in Warsaw
His father, Jacob Topol, was born in Russia — year and town are not recorded — and came to Mandatory Palestine in the early 1930s with his wife, Rel; both had been members of the Betar youth movement in Warsaw.
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Russian Empire (father, born there; town not recorded); both parents later in Warsaw. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.