On the Man Behind the ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ : Festival: The ‘Ashkenazic Culture and Music’ celebration commemorates the life and times of author Sholom Aleichem.

A yahrzeit for Sholom Aleichem, who wrote about shtetl, will take place on Zuntik . Tzimmes will be served.

Perhaps a glossary is in order.

“Sholom Aleichem is known as ‘the Yiddish Mark Twain,’ ” explained Vicki Feldon, 72, chairwoman of the “Ashkenazic Culture and Music” celebration Sunday at the Jewish Community Center in Costa Mesa.

“ Shtetl are the small towns in Eastern Europe where Jewish people lived,” Feldon said. “ Ashkenazic refers to East European Yiddish culture, and a yahrzeit is the Ashkenazic marking of the anniversary of a death in the family.

“ Tzimmes is a kind of carrot stew.”

Tzimmes is also the term for a commotion, a big to-do: The program includes performances of Yiddish folk songs, fiddle tunes and dancing as well as art displays. Special patron tickets will admit bearers to a post-performance reception featuring shtetl foods including kugel (noodle pudding), cholent (baked beef stew), blintzes (thin rolled pancakes) and mamaliga (cornmeal porridge).

The commemoration begins with free lectures sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities.

Louis Fridhandler, who has translated some of Aleichem’s works, will look at the author’s life (1859-1916) and the background for his stories, on which the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” was based. Eli Simon of the UC Irvine drama department will speak on Aleichem and Yiddish theater. A short excerpt of Aleichem’s work will be read in English and Yiddish by Fridhandler and Yakob Basner.

“In his will, Aleichem requested that his stories be read aloud in remembrance but not in mourning,” Feldon noted.

Feldon earned her master’s degree in folklore and mythology at UCLA and her Ph.D in comparative culture from UC Irvine with a focus on Eastern European immigrants. She’ll trace shtetl images in the works of writer Aleichem, painter Marc Chagall, photographer Roman Vishniac and illustrator William Gropper.

“The shtetl no longer exists, because they were all destroyed, the people annihilated,” Feldon said.

“Significant aesthetic expressions in the shtetl world included the wooden synagogues built prior to World War I. All of Eastern Europe was at one time heavily forested, and the vernacular architecture was wooden. There were extremely beautiful buildings, churches as well as synagogues, many thousands (of them) destroyed by Nazis,” she said.

Vishniac made his documentary record of the shtetl villages in the 1930s, before the Holocaust.

“You see photographs of the men and women in the shtetl, you look at the paintings, and you find kind of a haunted look in the faces,” she said. “These people were on the brink, pressured on all sides by the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Vishniac’s images show children at play that are hardly carefree, even pathetic in some ways.”

Aleichem worked at the turn of the century, during the period of pogroms. Feldon says that Chagall’s strongest works were produced prior to World War I. Gropper made his suite of lithographs illustrating Aleichem’s stories in the 1970s in Los Angeles. “Still,” Feldon pointed out, “you find this haunted look, definitely.”

There are more lighthearted images, she said. Hasidic dance during happy events, for instance, is an important Ashkenazic image, and the fiddle even more so.

Appropriately, then, klezmer fiddler Maimon Miller ( klezmorim were itinerant shtetl musicians) will play Yiddish wedding tunes at the celebration and speak on Romanian klezmer history. Fuundala Folk Dancers, women in their 60s, 70s and 80s from Leisure World, Laguna Hills, will perform shtetl dances.

“Dance was a means of getting away, the only truly carefree images we find,” Feldon said. “In that case you’re really transported to another world.”

Because Ashkenazic culture often addresses the fact that life is inherently difficult, and that periods of unadulterated happiness are rare, other upbeat images, the fiddle included, are tempered.

“In European folklore in general, the fiddle is the devil’s instrument,” Feldon noted. “It can hypnotize people, lead them astray, lure away young girls. I would rather ignore that particular aspect, of course. But it is a magical instrument.”

She also reiterated one of the themes of the Aleichem short story that inspired a Broadway musical: “The ability to celebrate is as precarious as a fiddler on the roof.”

* “Ashkenazic Culture and Music: A Yahrzeit Commemoration for Sholom Aleichem” takes place Sunday at the Jewish Community Center, 250 E. Baker St., Costa Mesa. 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. JCC members, $5. Non-members, $8. Patron tickets, $18, includes post-performance reception. Free lectures, 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. (714) 751-0608.