BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) – Shari Zimble donned a red headscarf and her kids wore peasant garb, too, on Sunday as they sang along with “Fiddler on the Roof,” a movie that, to her, is more than just a movie.

“We love to sing and this is their heritage,” she said at the Coolidge Corner Theater, with son, Davin, 9, daughter Risa, 7, and one of Risa’s friends at her side. Zimble and the kids were among the nearly 600 people who bought tickets as the Boston Jewish Film Festival put a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” twist on the much-loved 1971 movie musical set in a turn-of-the-century Jewish community in czarist Russia.

The crowd in the theater spoke their favorite lines, sang along with the movie, waved their arms and swayed in their seats as the story unfolded of Tevye, the dairyman in the village of Anatevka, who is trying to find husbands for three strong-willed daughters.

People have dressed up and participated in the cult film “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for years. The Coolidge Corner has had a “Sound of Music” sing-along. And Jewish film festivals in Seattle and San Diego have had sing-along “Fiddlers.” But the sing-along was a first for the Boston festival.

Organizers of the festival said that people may think of Jewish film festivals as serious, somber affairs, mostly focused on Holocaust films.

But Sara L. Rubin, executive director of the festival, said the festival includes both “fun stuff and serious stuff.”

Rubin said the festival, which will show more than 40 films this year through Nov. 16, tries to present the best contemporary films from around the world on Jewish themes and to explore Jewish identity, experience and culture.

Rubin said the festival is one of the oldest and largest of the Jewish film festivals in the United States. The festival is in its 15th year, and Rubin is hoping that 15,000 people will attend the films, which are primarily shown at Coolidge Corner and the Museum of Fine Arts, and the talks by visiting artists and panelists.

People interviewed at the theater said they loved musicals and they loved “Fiddler.” They said they were looking forward to singing along with a favorite musical and famous songs such as “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man” without feeling self-conscious about it.

“This is a place you totally have permission to make an idiot of yourself,” said Elizabeth Sackton, 47, of Lexington, who had brought her two children.

Cynthia Graber, 30, a journalist from Cambridge, was with a group of nine friends, and said she looked forward to singing.

“We all know most of the words from growing up Jewish,” she said.

Jerry Jacobs, of Needham, a man in his 50s who was dressed as Tevye, said, “I saw the play and the musical and the movie and I’ve been loving it for years. It reminds me of my grandparents who are from Russia.”

Zimble, 44, of Cambridge, noted that her daughter, Risa, was named after her great-grandmother who had been a girl of her age during the pogroms in the Ukraine. The end of the movie, in which everyone in the village is forced to leave, made her kids sad, Zimble said.

“I said, ‘That’s not really the ending. You were the ending,” Zimble told the children. “All of your great-grandparents fled from Eastern Europe at this time. So you’re the happy ending.”

AP-ES-11-09-03 1658EST