http://democracynow.org
- We spend the hour remembering the renowned actor, musician, composer and
activist Theodore Bikel, who died Tuesday at the age of 91. Bikel was known for
creating the role of Baron von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" on Broadway and for
the role of Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof," which he played more than 2,000
times. He was also a beloved folk singer who co-founded the Newport Folk
Festival with Pete Seeger and could accompany himself on guitar, mandolin,
balalaika and harmonica. He made more than 20 albums, many of them in Hebrew and
Yiddish. But Theodore Bikel, a man so closely identified with Israel and with
Jewish life, was also an outspoken critic of Israeli policy, especially a
pending measure to forcibly relocate some 40,000 Bedouin Arabs from their
ancestral lands. "One thing that is absolutely clear in my mind is that human
beings cannot be treated like cattle," Bikel says in a 2014 extended interview.
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