Name	Fyvush Finkel
Height	6' 1"
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	9 October 1922
Place of Birth	Brooklyn, New York, USA
Famous for

Fyvush Finkel was born at home in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York City, the third of four sons of immigrant tailor Harry Finkel, from Warsaw, Poland, and housewife Mary, from Minsk, then part of Russia.Born Philip Finkel, with no middle name, he adopted the stage name "Fyvush", the Yiddish translation of Philip.

Finkel first appeared on the stage at age 9, and acted for almost 35 years in the thriving Yiddish theaters of Manhattan's Lower East Side, as well as performing as a standup comic in the Catskill's Borscht Belt. In 2008 he recalled that,

“ I played child parts till I was 14, 15, then my voice changed. So I decided to learn a trade and went to a vocational high school in New York. I studied to be a furrier, but I never worked at it. As soon as I graduated high school, I went to a stock company in Pittsburgh, a Jewish theater, and I played there for 38 weeks, and that's where I actually learned my trade a little bit as an adult.

He worked regularly until the ethnic venues began dying out in the early 1960s, then made his Broadway theatre debut in the original 1964 production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, joining the cast as Mordcha, the innkeeper, in 1965.The production ran through July 2, 1972. Finkel then played Lazar Wolf, the butcher, in the short-lived 1981 Broadway revival, and eventually played the lead role of Tevye the milkman for years in the national touring company.

Shortly afterward, Finkel succeeded Hy Anzell in the role of Mr. Mushnik in the Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors.Then in 1988, Finkel's work as "Sam" in the New York Shakespeare Festival revival of the Yiddish classic Cafe Crown earned him an Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination.