Photo Courtesy: CBS Archive

Fyvush Finkel, whose 80-year career included starring in numerous Yiddish theater productions in addition to the touring production of “Fiddler on the Roof” and the 1990s.  He was 93.

Born Philip Finkel on Oct. 9, 1922, in Brooklyn, he was the son of a Polish tailor and a Russian homemaker who had immigrated earlier.Finkel first appeared on the stage at age 9, and acted for almost 35 years in the thriving Yiddish theaters of the Yiddish Theater District of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as well as performing as a standup comic in the Catskill’s Borscht Belt, until those venues died out in the 1960s.

Finkel made his Broadway theater debut in the original 1964 production of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” joining the cast as Mordchai, the innkeeper, in 1965. The production ran through July 2, 1972. Finkel then played Lazar Wolf, the butcher, in the limited-run 1981 Broadway revival and eventually played the lead role of Tevye, the milkman, for years in the national touring company. Shortly afterward, Finkel succeeded Hy Anzell in the role of Mr. Mushnik in the off-Broadway musical “Little Shop of Horrors.” In 1988, Finkel’s work as Sam in the New York Shakespeare Festival revival of the Yiddish classic “Cafe Clown” earned him an Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination. Finkel made his movie debut in the English-subtitled, Yiddish sketch-comedy revue “Monticello Here We Come” (1950), then after small parts in an episode of the television series “Kojak” in 1977 and the miniseries “Evergreen” in 1985, returned to film in the detective comedy “Off Beat” in 1986. TV producer-writer David E. Kelley cast Finkel as public defender Douglas Wambaugh in the television series “Picket Fences” which ran on CBS from 1992 through 1996. For the role, Finkel earned a 1994 Emmy Award, announcing at the televised ceremonies that he had waited 51 years for that moment Finkel continued to appear onstage in productions such as 1997’s “Fyvush Finkel: From Second Avenue to Broadway” and in 2007’s Classic Stage Company’s historical drama “New Jerusalem.”

I saw Fyvush earlier this summer at the Sutton Place Synagogue in a nostalgic evening of memories of Monticello and Borscht belt memorie. He was endearing and on top of his game. I thought he could go on forever.