NEW YORK — No matter how often you go to the theater, productions that soar off the stage and straight into your soul remain rare and wonderful. I treasure more than my fair share of shows like that and, since last week I have one more to cherish. In fact, it’s a musical I have seen many times, but never like this: “Fiddler afn Dakh,” or “Fiddler on the Roof,” in Yiddish, from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.

Directed by the great musical theater artist Joel Grey, this transcendent production is worth a trip to New York all by itself. 

That is precisely what my cousin, professor Jamie Horwitz, and I hoped for, and we were absolutely right. Already extended several times, “Fiddler afn Dakh” is now set to run through Nov. 18 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. That’s right: As you leave the theater, you look across the water to the Statue of Liberty, the magnificent lady who greeted Tevye and his family when their journey from Anatevka brought them at last to a safe new home in the Golden Land.

It would make you weep if you weren’t already weeping — but you probably are. That’s because this gorgeous musical not only enjoys all the power of Jerome Robbins’ original production but layers it with the pure, emotional, sonic resonance of language — of the language that Tevye, his family and neighbors actually would have spoken.

You don’t speak Yiddish? Not a problem. Supertitles in English and in Russian (this is New York) explain everything. I do speak a little Yiddish (thanks to a superb teacher, Ida Stack of blessed memory) but more importantly, I have seen “Fiddler” time and again. Like many theater lovers, I know what’s going on in every scene.

But hearing the actors, most of whom, I assume, learned their lines phonetically, speak in Yiddish gives the play a resonance that escaped even the brilliant Robbins (nee Rabinowitz). The difference between “Fiddler” in English and “Fiddler” in Yiddish is like the difference between cotton and corduroy.

Cotton is familiar, it’s comfortable, it breathes. Honestly, we all love cotton. But corduroy? Corduroy has texture. Corduroy’s ribs climb up like hills, fall down to valleys, climb up again. It’s rich and velvety — though here and there, after years of use, corduroy may surprise us with a bald patch. Corduroy is complex; corduroy is full of intricate mysteries that invite exploration again and again.

Like Yiddish. Like “Fiddler afn Dakh.”

This production is the American debut of the Yiddish “Fiddler,” translated by Shraga Friedman and first performed in Israel in 1965. The museum’s intimate theater is ideal for this moving portrayal of shtetl life, with a simple, eloquent set designed by Beowulf Boritt, a fine orchestra under Zalmen Mlotek, and Robbins’ famed choreography delicately scaled down and reinterpreted by Stas Kmiec. 

Don’t worry, the bottle dance is still here, as impressive and as touching as ever. 

Steven Skybell’s warm, intelligent performance as Tevye, the dairyman who talks to God and his neighbors in the same easy manner, is dazzling in its persuasive power, setting a high mark that the talented company rises to meet. Spend a couple of hours with them, and it feels like more than entertainment: It’s time travel. As for me, I think I met my great-grandparents.

“Fiddler” — in English — will play the Fox Theatre in St. Louis in January. It may be terrific. But for a “Fiddler” that transports you to the world of the musical, you need to go to New York. 

For ticket information, visit nytf.org online or call 866-811-4111.