Broadway's Les Mis Stars One of Israel's Top Cantors
BY MICHAEL ELKIN
Special Correspondent

He is a new Broadway star with a story worthy of Hollywood. Israeli David Fisher has dreamed a dream that makes Field of Dreams look like a sad sandlot story: For his theatrical debut, the Tel Aviv-born cantor cum performer snagged the lead role of Jean Valjean in the venerable Les Miserables, the multi-award winning musical based on the Victor Hugo novel.
Fisher is at home both on the bimah and on Broadway, where he will be starring for the next six months as the persecuted petty thief who steals the audience's heart by the evening's end.
An engaging sabra with a song in his heart, Fisher has found the synagogue and the stage the perfect setting for his considerable talents.
Even as he enters a new stage in his life on Broadway, Fisher is not abandoning the bimah. The kipah remains on his head; the head remains very much on his shoulders.
"I still am a cantor," he says, adding that he performs at Kutscher's in the Catskills during the High Holidays and has served as cantor at such Israeli sites as the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv.
"It is a great life," notes the cantor, waiting in the wings for his Broadway debut earlier this month at the Imperial Theater. The barrel-chested Fisher scales the barricades of Les Miserables and any obstacles life would dare hurl in from of him.
"'Cheech' keeps hocking me not to leave cantorial music," chuckles Fisher over the nudges he gets from Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat, whom he counts as a mentor.
"'Cheech' has done incredible good for cantorial music; he really pushed me. In a way, my work in cantorial music is a tribute to him." Not that Fisher lacked guidance. Mention mentors and the cantor kvells, sharing shtetl type stories about his grandfather, "half-rabbi, half-cantor who ran the synagogue in Petach Tikva," a suburb of Tel Aviv Fisher now calls home. "All the basics I know of music I learned from him," says Fisher. Fisher has been hailed as one of Israel's acclaimed cantors, taking top honors in the competitive Hassidic Festival and the "Festival of Jerusalem," among many other honors over the years.
He also captured the hearts of critics and audiences at concert performances all over the country. But it was a trip away from his homeland that helped Fisher home in on Broadway.
"I was visiting my sister in London, and everywhere I heard these songs in the hotels, on the street, everywhere," recalls Fisher of that fateful sojourn in 1986. Told that the music was from a hit show then in London, Fisher decided to see and hear for himself. He got tickets to Les Miz and was held spellbound by its story of operatic proportions. Scheduled to return to Israel, he kept postponing the trip back home. One more day, he figured. "Every night I kept returning to the theater to see the show. From the moment the curtain went up, I cried. It was the most amazing show."
As was the whole theatrical experience, relates Fisher. "After all, I'm a yeshiva bucher, never knew what the back of a theater looked like. In the yeshiva, they taught you that life can be very good without ever knowing Victor Hugo."
But Fisher made good on Hugo, buying the novel, studying it as well as other Les Miz material. "When I finally returned home to Israel, my daughter, who was 3, got hold of one of the books," a souvenir program from Les Miserables, opened it and said, 'Look, it's you, Daddy!'"
What she saw was a photo of the show's star. What Fisher saw was a glimpse of recognition. "This is me!" he said of the role. But could others see him - a cantor/performer who had never starred on a stage before - in the part? It didn't matter. Fisher could. "My manager told me that the show was coming to Israel, and I told him to get me an audition."
The incoming musical already had a star for the part on tap, but Fisher was operating in a constellation all his own. At the audition ("I was number 13," he smiles), Fisher's rendition of the musical's soft and searing 'Bring Him Home' brought him the approval that comes with stunned silence. "By the time I walked home to my apartment - a five-minute walk - the phone was ringing," recalls Fisher, canceling the chorus of Jean Valjean under-study wannabes lined up for their shot at fame and fortune.
Cantor Fisher had stepped out of the shadows into the spotlights and dazzled all. He was offered the lead, taking the role originally intended for someone else.
As Jean Valjean, Fisher had stolen the producers' hearts. For Fisher, it was the grandest of larcenies born of the conviction of his own talents. Even Javert, his onstage nemesis, would have applauded the effort.
"It was the most beautiful experience I ever had," recalls Fisher of his Tel Aviv theatrical debut. Not that everyone was convinced that the cantor from Petach Tikva could do it all. "They talked of me going for acting classes, but (director) Steven Pimlott told those in the Tel Aviv company, 'Don't touch him. I want him as is. And if they don't agree,' Steve said, 'I'll put him in the London production,' " recalls Fisher. "Well, they figured if I'm good enough for London, I'm good enough for Tel Aviv." Was he ever. Fisher performed as Jean Valjean more than 600 times. When producer Cameron Mackintosh put together an international cast of Les Miserables for a special command performance before the Queen of England in 1989, he chose Fisher as his Vaijean.
Fisher doesn't have to choose between roles as cantor and actor. In a way, they're co-mingled, he says. "To be a cantor is also to be an actor," he says with a smile.
"But when you finish your service as cantor, there is no applause. That is hard to deal with," he says good-naturedly.
On the bimah or on Broadway, Fisher doesn't have to make choices between the secular and religious tugs at his unorthodox arrangement - maybe a first for Broadway - the Orthodox cantor will not be performing during Shabbat. Fisher credits Mackintosh for the special arrangement. "This time of year was chosen for my engagement here because it will not interfere with any Jewish holidays," says Fisher. "My six months end just before Passover."
His Broadway debut brings it home for friends and family that Fisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, means business about his theatrical career. "It is a shock for a lot of people," he says with a laugh, "including my wife and parents and some fans. I was very famous among certain people in Israel," says Fisher of the religious section of the country who covet his recordings of Yiddish and Chasidic works. "But the non-religious people don't know my name."
Now that he is making a name for himself in theater, maybe all that will change. On the other hand, "When I started doing Les Miserables in Tel Aviv, the Hassids felt that I left them."
He went on the record to let them know that was not the case. "After three years in Les Miz, I recorded another Hassidic record," he notes.
As an observant Jew, says Fisher, he doesn't close his eyes - or any doors - on the Jewish community he has served for so many years. Fisher gives thanks that the character who has brought him to the edge of fame is a man of faith also. "Jean Valjean is a religious man," notes the cantor. "He prays a lot. So do I." His prayers are being answered. Fisher feels God is helping him on his quest to find happiness - and success - on stage. "He puffs at me, pushes me, all the time," says Fisher.