Even though Sheldon Harnick says he has been asked about "Fiddler on the Roof" so many times that "I think I've discussed it into the ground," the lyricist for one of the greatest of all Broadway musicals seems willing to talk about it yet again. During a recent telephone conversation from his apartment on Manhattan's West Side, Harnick remembered Jerome Robbins and the period when they worked together on the original New York production, he as lyricist and Robbins as director and choreographer. "He was obsessed," Harnick says.

That obsession paid off. In 1964, the original production of "Fiddler" won three Tony awards, including Best Score and Best Musical. Forty-six years after it began its initial Broadway run of 3242 performances, there is still hardly a day when the show isn't being staged somewhere. It has had four Broadway revivals, the most recent in 2004, and has been translated into languages from Yiddish to Hindi. It begins a more modest theatrical run of 11 performances at the JCC Center Stage on April 24.

Although the appeal of "Fiddler" is universal, Director Ralph Meranto explains that CenterStage chose to give it yet another revival because, "we eventually agreed that there is a special connection when performing the play at the JCC, because the story is very personal for many in the audience."

Set in the fictional village of Anatevka in 1905, "Fiddler" tells the story of Tevya, a poor dairyman; his wife and five daughters; and the small Jewish community of which they are a part. Life is difficult but shaped by tradition before unsettling new ideas sweep old beliefs away. Pressed between his age-old faith and his need to adapt, Tevya struggles to protect his family and maintain his personal equilibrium.

Harnick, who recently turned 86, explains the show's longevity: "When [Robbins] was 6, his parents took him back to the village in Poland where their family came from. It was very emotional even though he was so young. Then in World War II, the Nazis exterminated the place. So he set out to bring it back to life. His obsession translated into a perception of a world that's a lot more real as a result."

Acknowledging that he and Robbins, along with composer Jerry Bock and librettist Joe Masteroff, were the descendents of Jewish immigrants, Harnick adds, "One of the show's early titles was ‘Where Papa Came From.' In a way it was dedicated to our fathers, who left their own shtetls to make new lives here. We were the beneficiaries. We had to do a lot of rewriting but because we called on the memories and stories of our relatives. It was a labor of love."

Harnick also recalled how Robbins immersed them in that world. "He took us to Hasidic weddings so we could see the way they separated the men and women, and carried the bride and groom around on chairs above their heads," he says. "At one of them, we saw this old man who danced with a bottle balanced on his head, and that's where that idea came from." Robbins used it as the centerpiece of the rousing all-male dancing during the wedding celebration for Tevya's oldest daughter, Tzeitel, and Motel the Tailor.

Although "Fiddler" is a demanding show, Harnick thinks he knows why high schools and community theaters continue to revive it. "People use it as an example of tolerance," he says, even though he knows that such attempts sometimes fail. He cited a school production in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early 1990's. A teacher with a lot of black and Hispanic students chose it because of the tensions between African-Americans and Latinos on one hand, and a nearby Hasidic community on the other. Harnick says disappointedly that the ultra-orthodox Hasids would not accept it. "They were treating Shalom Aleichem [the Yiddish writer from whose stories the play comes] as holy writ. There were cops in the street preserving order. It embarrassed me as a Jew," he says.

Harnick says that he thinks about "Fiddler," not in terms of songs, but as a score. But he also remembers that the hardest song to write was a minor number, "Now I Have Everything," while the easiest was one of the show's most touching songs, "Sunrise, Sunset." "Jerry Bock came up with a waltz," he says. "When I heard it, the words simply crystallized on the melody, and there it was. We tested everything we wrote on Jerry's wife. When we sang it for her, she cried. So did my sister, and we thought, ‘We really have something here.'"

"Now I Have Everything," on the other hand, took him four or five tries because the young revolutionary who sings it is a shy intellectual. "I needed to find a way for him to express himself freely, even though he wasn't the sort of person who would do that sort of thing easily," he says.

Although he insists that he is not a theater historian, Harnick believes that "Fiddler" is as important as it was successful. "What we wrote freed other writers of musicals to tackle darker themes, knowing there'd be an audience for them," he says.

Lyricists who know music often have an advantage over those who don't, and Harnick is a one-time professional violinist. Although he has not had a new score on Broadway since 1976, he has continued to write. Among his later musicals is an adaptation of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," with music by Joe Raposo, known for his songs for "Sesame Street." Only last year, Harnick completed both words and music for a new musical based on "A Doctor in Spite of Himself," by the 17th Century French playwright, Moliere. It is awaiting consideration by the highly regarded Roundabout Theatre Company in New York.

Many people still remember "Fiddler on the Roof," and Harnick finds satisfaction in its continuing appeal. Through "Fiddler," he says, "it astonishes me that I've become part of American culture."

"Fiddler on the Roof"

April 24-May 16

JCC CenterStage, 1200 Edgewood Ave.

$16-$24 | 461-2000 x235, jcccenterstage.org