Today, in “The World Is A Strange And Unsettling Place, Musical Theater Edition”: The family of Topol—the theatrical and cinematic legend best known for playing Tevye the dairyman from Fiddler On The Roof more than 3000 times over a multi-decade career—has announced that he was also, occasionally, a spy.
This is per Deadline, reporting on an announcement the family made this week, just a month or so after Chaim Topol—mostly known professionally just by his last name—died. Said announcement revealed that, in the midst of all that massive theatrical success, everyone’s favorite roof-fiddler speculator also sometimes participated in missions for Mossad, the intelligence agency of his native Israel.
The family gave this news to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, including stating that Topol’s international fame made it easy for him to take pictures or deliver documents without anybody thinking anything other than, ‘Oh shit, Tevye!” Here’s Topol’s son Omer, describing some of what his dad got up to over the years:
I don’t know exactly what the appropriate definition is for the missions and duties he performed. But what is clear is that Dad was involved in secret missions on behalf of the Mossad. His status in those years was that of an international star, and he could go anywhere he wanted. He had the ability to deliver documents and take pictures without anyone questioning anything. But he was no James Bond or anything like that!
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None of what Topol is alleged to have done—including supposedly assisting in the bugging of an embassy, and “pretending to be a dental patient to cover for drilling noise”—quite rises to the level of, say, Gong Show host Chuck Barris claiming to have killed people for the CIA. (Claims Barris mostly later admitted were a joke, albeit one he got a book and a movie out of, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.) Even so: It’s going to make that next watch of the 1971 Fiddler movie a little more exciting.
