My late father’s voice opens a window to a vanished Jewish life

JONATHAN FREEDLAND: Fifty episodes of the iconic You Don't Have To Be Jewish are now on BBC Sounds

PLENTY OF JEWS WELL UP when they see Fiddler on the Roof. It’s only natural. But I might be in a very small minority of people who need only hear the opening few bars of the score to feel their eyes pricking.

That’s not because of a deep love for the musical – though I do have that — but rather because of the tune’s association with a long-running radio programme, You Don’t Have to be Jewish, which ran for nearly 25 years and was produced and presented by my late father, Michael Freedland.

There will be JC readers who remember it well too, for whom my father’s voice was one of the sounds of Sunday morning. At 9.30am each week throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, he would serve up a half-hour of Jewish conversation: interviews, music, debate, the odd bit of breaking news. But for my sisters and me that programme, even that signature tune, was the soundtrack of our childhood.

FULL STORY My late father’s voice opens a window to a vanished Jewish life (Jewish Chronicle)

Photo: Michael Freedland