Theresa Tova, the Paris-born, Calgary-raised actor, singer, and playwright, is synonymous with the Canadian Jewish musical stage. Creator of the award-winning Holocaust-themed musical Still the Night, one-third of the globe-trotting sensation The Three Yiddish Divas, and now starring as Yente in the first-ever Canadian production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, Theresa joins the show for a wide-ranging conversation about her life, career, and the relationship between identity, memoir, and performance.

Catch Theresa in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, running May 25–June 2, 2026, at Toronto's Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company!

This episode features snippets of Theresa's songs "Under Your White Starry Heaven," "Telling Stories," and "Night & Day," which you can listen to in full in the foregoing links! You can find all of Theresa's albums here.

And don't forget to check out the Canadian Jewish Life Writing Project, a new initiative to capture personal narratives about the Canadian Jewish experience!

This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.  

Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.

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