Dudu Fisher sings, as soon as he escapes from the mall

Known for his voice and Sabbath observance

By Michael Orbach Issue of September 25, 2009/ 7 Tishrei 5770 It seems that you can be a world-famous cantor and stage performer, but like most other Jewish husbands, when your wife and daughter want to go shopping at Woodbury Commons, you’re still stuck. “I am here at Starbucks. On the internet,” Dudu Fisher lamented to the Jewish Star. Fisher, one of Israel’s best-known singers, has appeared on Broadway and London’s West End in Le Miserables, and performed for former President Clinton, the British royal family and the pope. He was on his way back from his annual Yomim Nora’im job at Kutsher’s Hotel in the Catskills, where he has led High Holiday prayers for the last twenty-seven years.  “That’s a lifetime,” Fisher said. “For the last ten years, I talk about Kutsher like [Isaac Bashevis] Singer said about the Yiddish language: the Yiddish language is dying for the last hundred years, but it’s still alive. The Catskills are dying already for twenty years and the Kutsher’s is [still] running. I’m very happy for them and happy to be here. Every time I come here I feel Dirty Dancing, especially since Patrick Swayze died.” “It’s brings back memories of the heyday of the Catskill Mountains; it’s a world that has vanished.” Fisher began singing with his grandfather who was a ba’al tefilah. His first musical memory is his grandmother singing to him in Yiddish. After serving the Israeli army’s rabbinical choir during the Yom Kippur War, Fisher began what would become a long cantorial career, first in Tel Aviv’s Great Synagogue, then as cantor in shuls across the world. Over the years Fisher has produced over forty albums of music in Hebrew, English and Yiddish as well as a successful line of DVDs for children. He has also appeared off-Broadway in Never on Friday, his one-man show about his experience as a Shomer Shabbos performer. Fisher is currently on tour across America and will perform in three shows in New York and New Jersey at the end of October. He spoke to the Jewish Star about theater, being religious, and if he’ll ever return to the theatrical stage. Jewish Star: When did you first know you wanted to go on stage? Dudu Fisher: In the rabbinical choir of the Israeli defense forces, that was the first time I experienced the feeling of the stage, and since then it’s never left me. Even when I became a cantor, I was always dreaming about the stage. Sometimes when I finished a service in South Africa, people started to applaud and the shamas starts to shout [for them to stop]. I always used to say in my head: ‘Let them applaud!’ I guess I was always dreaming about stage, but I didn’t know where it was going to take me. Thank G-d it went for me very well. JS: Is it hard being a Shomer Shabbos singer? DF: I can probably say I have the title of the Sandy Koufax of the theater. I was the first one on Broadway to have a contract that excludes me playing on Friday and Shabbat; I was the only one and even not to me after. So now the only dream of mine is to open a show, a one-man show on Broadway; I hope I’m on my way. JS: What is your show about? DF:  It’s a gathering of the Jewish people. In times [like these] we need to be together, to come to hear my stories: the story of my life and my father’s survival; he built the country with his bare hands, the story of Jerusalem and the songs of Israel, I think it’s time to get together. We don’t live in the greatest time. JS: Do you think it’s a dangerous time to be Jewish? DF: I don’t think it’s a dangerous time; we live right now in a very difficult time for Israel. Not for Jews around the world. We might have another time when the Jews will have to run away; now we have a country — a place where every Jew is welcome. We are a strong country and I don’t think it’s a dangerous [time] for the survival [of the Jewish people]. When we are together, when we are one, we are like a hand. When the hand is open every finger has a different shape, but when you close the hand the fingers looks like they are all even. Together we have the power to do things that we cannot do separate. JS: What is the feeling towards President Barack Obama in Israel? DF: Most Israelis do not like Barack Obama because they feel the pressure is very high. Without going into politics, they are not very happy with what’s going on now. JS: You sang for former-president Bill Clinton when he came to Israel. Do you think you’ll sing for Obama? DF: I sang for him [Clinton] when he was here. Barack Obama, if he calls me, I’ll come and sing for him songs which come from the heart. JS: As one of the best-known performers of Yiddish songs, what are you feelings toward the language? Is Yiddish dying? DF: We’re not going to lose the language, it’s being spoken in Borough Park and Williamsburg, but we’re losing the culture, the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholom Aleichem. You cannot translate Yiddish to any language. There are such great lines that can’t be translated. My grandmother, she said, ‘Whenever you go sing, sing at least one Yiddish song,’ and I really do it. I always sing Yiddish. I really love the language and I think if I can contribute one thing to this language to stay alive, then I am very grateful to do it. JS: Is there any type of music you prefer to sing? My nephews like your kindergarten tapes. DF: It’s funny. Sometimes when I come to concerts, even in Israel, some of the young people think I started my career as a children’s singer. They don’t really know I’ve been a cantor, that I’ve been in Broadway. I prefer to come to Israel to rest and shoot the movies. The concerts I used to do around the world, now, I’ve started going back [to perform in Israel]. JS: What was your most challenging role? Jean Valjean in Le Miserables? DF: There’s no doubt, Le Mis. It was my first role on stage and I got the part without taking any acting lesson. I was a cantor. I went to the stage of the theater directly from the bima of the shul. It was a very big surprise that the director that came to Israel from London chose me to do it. I knew I was the only one who could do it. My manager thought I was crazy. But when I saw [Le Mis] for the first time in 1986 [in London], when the curtain opened I knew this was my life and this was what I had to do. No one else believed it and when the offer came from Broadway it was a shock to everyone including me and when they accepted that I couldn’t play on Friday or [the] Saturday matinee the shock was even greater. JS: Do you see yourself playing Jean Valjean again? DF: No. I did it three years in Israel and a year in Broadway then a year in London and 4-5 months in America. That’s enough. To tell you the truth I did really want to do many roles. I wanted to do Phantom of the Opera. I was accepted but the Friday night off — [Andrew Lloyd] Webber didn’t agree. I grew out of it. I’m enjoying so much doing my own shows. JS: Do you see your role in Israel, as a Yiddish singer and a son of a Holocaust survivor, as somewhat emblematic? DF: I think so. Most of my generation, all my friends, are people like me that grew up second-generation in Israel and second-generation of Holocaust survivors. Those are the people who built the country. I think I definitely am representing the generation who not only had to live with the horror stories of the Holocaust and also had to fight so many wars since the [beginning] of the state of Israel. I have lost so many friends; my kids went to the army and lost their friends, but hopefully there will be an end. England was fighting France and now they’re talking to each other. Not long ago there was a world war and countries bombed by Germany are now [in the] European Union. We have to be optimistic, otherwise the continuous war goes on and on. The question is till when will our children be sacrificed on the mizbe’ach (altar) of war? You must be optimistic. JS: What was the highlight of your career so far? DF: I felt very special not long ago when the pope came to Israel and I was chosen to sing for him. I knew that just before [the pope] came on stage, he met Gilad Shalit’s parents and I felt that maybe I can help; maybe when he hears the song ‘Bring him home’ from Le Mis, it will open his heart and maybe, I don’t know if he can — if anyone can — pressure Hamas to release this poor guy there. When [the pope] jumped out of his chair and shook my hand, I felt I moved something in him. I could just be fooling myself but I felt something happened to him.