Dispatches from Israel 19

[Helen Kaye, my friend in Tel Aviv, sent me a pair of new reviews from her gig at the Jerusalem Post.  As usual, I’m putting them together to post as “Dispatches from Israel 19,” but this installment is a bit different from the previous 18 editions of the series. 

[In her first review below, for Tikun by Amnon Levy and Rami Danon, Helen mentions that the play is a revision of an earlier play, Tikun Hatzot, by the same authors.  I thought it would be interesting to republish the review of the original play alongside Helen’s notice of the current incarnation, just for the sake of comparison —and curiosity. 

[It turned out that Helen saw Tikun Hatzot, but hadn’t written the JP review and had no written record of the performance.  The current publisher of the Jerusalem Post decided some years ago to suspend the paper’s on-line archive, so there are no articles on file for the recent past years.  But I was in luck!  The production of Tikun Hatzot was back in 1996, before the archive was ceased, and the New York Public Library has a database of JP articles from the years before the suspension. 

[So, following Helen’s review of Tikun is Naomi Doudai’s notice of Midnight Prayer, the English title of Tikun Hatzot.  Following that notice is Helen’s recent review of another play, Dancing Lessons by U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain.]

Tikun
By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon
Directed by Rami Danon
Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 19 September 2019

by Helen Kaye

‘Tikun’ is one of those slippery Hebrew words that have a literal, figurative and emotive meaning, as in ‘repair’, ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘reform’ or ‘certain prayers’, all of which come into play in this production, an adaptation by the authors of their earlier Tikun Hatzot.  [I’ve transcribed the 1996 review of Tikun Hatzot, under its English title, Midnight Prayer, below Helen’s recent one.  ~Rick]

That one, like the current production was all about relationships, belonging and identity, to understand which it’s necessary to know that Ashkenazi Jews – aka Lithuanian, aka Eastern European – tend to look down upon, if not hold in contempt, their Sephardic (Mizrachi) brethren as lesser beings when it comes to the Torah world of learning. In an attempt (mostly fruitless) to mitigate this, young ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews are sent to Lithuanian yeshivot (religious institutions of higher Jewish learning) to absorb Lithuanian learning, aka values and outlook.

Berke (Dan Shapira) is one such young man and is the pride of his Rabbi’s heart until he learns that his beloved Rabbi Shtat (Rami Baruch) intends to send only Mizrachi students to the army – they are so much the more easily dispensable. Moreover, Shtat’s casually contemptuous denigration of Berke’s Sephardic Hacham (Wise Man) Moshe (Shimon Mimran) has caused the latter formally to curse him up hill and down dale.

Now Berke, named Dib by his Moroccan-born father Pinchas (Avraham Selektar), finds himself morally adrift and unsure of who he really is or where his allegiance lies.

One supposes that the bulk of Tikun attempts to answer that question. Perhaps it tries to but never quite gets there. The play lacks a center, goes all over the place in an attempt to make all its voices heard, which only makes it the more confusing.

Which is perhaps why none of the characters seem real, despite the actors’ best efforts to make them so. Shapira brings earnestness and charm to his portrayal of Berke/Dib. Rami Baruch’s nonagarian Shtat offers a moiety of roguishness under his unbending exterior while Mimran as his Sephardic counterpart properly blusters and puffs. Selektar convinces as the simple Pinchas, a man wrenched far beyond where he thought he was going. Eran Mor obediently plays Finger, a young man first at odds with, then allied to Berke, but doesn’t give us a real hint of who or why he is. Then there’s Shlomi Avraham who deftly plays the seemingly slightly retarded Kopp, but again, why is this character here? Whom or what does he represent? Is it the uncritical obedience the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis require from their flocks? The kind of obedience that causes Berke so to flounder when he must think for himself?

The action takes place on Eran Atzmon’s bleak grey set that looks (perhaps deliberately?) more like a warehouse than a school with other venues (such as Pinchas’ home) brought on and off by the actors.

But when the play ends, what is it we’ve been watching? Does this Tikun reflect us, our society, our mores? If it does, it needs to say so.

*  *  *  *

[Below is the review, published in the Jerusalem Post on 14 May 1996 (page 7), of the performance of Tikun Hatzot, the earlier verson of the play Tikun that Helen Kaye reviewed on 19 September.  Both productions were staged at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater and directed by Rami Danon, the co-author of the plays.  The reviewer of Tikun Hatzot, Naomi Doudai, uses the play’s English title, Midnight Prayer, for her notice, although the performance was in Hebrew (as was that of Tikun).

[Doudai includes a box at the top of her column to list the production’s cast and staff, which I’ve chosen not to reproduce here.  Instead, I’ll insert the character’s names in brackets into Doudai’s text as she names the actors.

[Helen gives brief definitions of the words Ashkenazi and Sephardi in her column, geared toward the play’s context.  Doudai doesn’t define the words at all, assuming, I presume, that her Israeli readers will know what they mean.  For Rick On Theater‘s U.S. (and non-Jewish) readers, I’ll give more general definitions for the words.  The explanations below are based on passages in my post on “Crypto-Jews,” published on ROT on 15 September 2009:

Jews descended from Central and Eastern European ancestors are Ashkenazim.  The word comes from the medieval Hebrew name for what we now call Germany, but it also refers to Jews from the Slavic lands, Hungary, France, and even Italy.  The traditions, cuisine, and language of the Ashkenazi Jews are distinctive to that group, influenced by the German and Slavic cultures within which the Ashkenazi Jews lived.  Yiddish, for instance, is derived from medieval German with elements of Hebrew (whose alphabet the language uses), Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Polish.

The Jews from Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and North Africa are Sephardim (from the word that in modern Hebrew is the name for Spain).  Their religious practices are quite different from those of the Ashkenazim, though the religious tenets are the same.  The foods, including the Seder meal, of Sephardim is markedly different from that which we know as “Jewish food” in the United States and Western Europe, and the lingua franca of Sephardic Jews is Ladino, which bears the same relationship to Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Arabic that Yiddish does with German, Russian, and Polish.

[Helen made a parenthetical reference to another ethnic group of Jews, the Mizrachim, closely associated with the  Sephardim.  My explanation of this Jewish group is as follows:

Mizrachim are Jews from the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.  The name, which derives from the Hebrew word for ‘easterners,’ refers today, especially in Israel, to Jews from Muslim-majority lands, especially Arabic countries and Iran.  Also called Oriental Jews, their traditions are similar, even identical to those of the Sephardim, but Mizrachim speak many different Judaic languages based on Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish, or the other native tongues of the regions in which they live (or lived, as most have fled their Muslim-dominated homelands, many for Israel, because of oppression and violence).] 

Midnight Prayer [Tikun Hatzot]

By Amnon Levy and Rami Danon

Directed by Rami Danon

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 14 May 1996

by Naomi Doudai

With the advent of a drama like Midnight Prayer, audiences in this country are at long last being exposed to a convulsive frontal explosion of Sephardi resentment against Ashkenazi attitudes.

The staging of this play marks a rare and rancorous release of what hitherto has been an overtly suppressed though long built-up hostility nursed by citizens of oriental origin against the patronizing-cum-contemptuous view in which they are held by many of their European counterparts. As an outspoken, embittered outcry as well as a significant socio-political manifesto, it should have a powerful impact.

Yossi Graber [Rabbi Shtat] and Arieh Elias [Hacham Atiya] give masterly studies symbolizing the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi religious establishment respectively.

Yoram Hatav [Berke] depicts a Deri-prototype emotionally and slavishly trapped in the former, while Avraham Selektar [Pinhas], in the most genuinely moving role of the evening, plays his simple Sephardi father.

Characterizations apart, the text is however by no means on a par with the performances or the thematic projection. First, the religio-political juxtaposition of sacred and profane is, to put it mildly, out of balance.

There is, too, something of cheap sentimentalization as well as a sense of forced sanctity in episodes like the ecstatic Ashkenazi ritual dance and the Sephardi religious liturgy.

Then there is the psychological aspect. While the agonized frustration of conflicting ethnic identity and its consequent sense of inferiority are graphically documented, they are not realized artistically.

The victor-victim confrontation pictured here is a one-sided, partisan structure of half truths.

[Doudai uses the word ‘Deri-prototype’ above, but it’s not a word I’ve ever encountered before and I couldn’t find a definition of it anywhere on line.  So I e-mailed Helen Kaye to see if she could help—and she did!  Her explanation: It’s a reference to “Arye Deri, a Sephardic Jew educated in a Lithuanian (Ashkenazi) yeshiva, an influential politician (for his adherents)  who went to jail for three years on corruption charges.”

[For a little more background for ROT’s U.S. readers, Arye Deri (b. 1959 in Meknes, Morocco) is an Israeli politician who’s one of the founders of Shas, a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) religious political party in Israel, and acts on its behalf as Minister of the Interior, Minister of the Development of the Negev and Galilee, and a member in the Security Cabinet of Israel.  He previously served as Minister of the Economy (2015), among other posts.  In 1999, Deri was convicted of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and given a three-year jail sentence.  At the end of 2012, ahead of the elections for the nineteenth Knesset (January 2013), he returned to lead Shas party.  He was placed in the second position, and was re-elected to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  In May 2013, Deri was re-appointed to the role of Shas chairman.

[Israeli police recommended on 20 November 2018 that he be indicted for "committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses."  In December 2014, however, Israeli television released video footage in which the founder of Shas attacked Deri as a wicked man and a thief.  Deri handed a resignation letter to the rabbinical board of Shas, which refused to accept it.  Deri then presented his resignation to the Knesset speaker.  Nevertheless, he was reelected to the Knesset in 2015 and appointed Minister of the Economy in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth government, in which he held several other ministerial posts.  He resigned as Minister of the Economy in November 2015, reportedly over an unpopular gas monopoly deal, and then resigned from the Knesset in October 2016.  Israeli police recommended in November 2018 that Deri be indicted for “committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses.”

[Last August, Deri, as Interior Minister, barred U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, from entering Israel.  On 17 September this year, Israel held new parliamentary elections and the outcome was indecisive.  Netyanyahu was forced into a coalition with his prime rival, Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White, a centrist and liberal political alliance, in order to form a government. of national unity.  Deri retained his Knesset seat, but at this writing, the government hasn’t been formed and cabinet ministers haven’t been appointed.]

*  *  *  *

Dancing Lessons

By Mark St. Germain

Translated by Eli Bijaui

Directed and choreographed by Miri Lazar

Bet Lessin, Tel Aviv; 5 October 2019

by Helen Kaye

“Only connect” is the recurrent theme of Howards End, C. S. Forster’s 1908 novel about class and convention in England, and connection is finally achieved between Ever (Tom Hagi) and Senga (Meyrav Shirom). Ever, a professor of geo-sciences, wants a dance lesson so that he can function appropriately at an awards dinner. Simple, no? Not really, because Ever has Asperger’s Syndrome, an adjunct of the condition known as autism. Although he functions at a very high level professionally and intellectually, Ever cannot connect, not physically, not emotionally. He can’t bear to touch or be touched by another person. He is verbally, well, indiscreet. Says things that others may not want to hear. Senga – she was supposed to be Agnes but her aunt reversed the letters on her birth certificate – is a dancer, was a dancer, that is, because her leg is in a brace, but she won’t even entertain the idea that she may never dance again, because without dance, what is she, why is she?

Ever, and Senga, both damaged, both stunted, slowly, slowly learn that there’s more to life than their limitations. “Change requires courage,” says Ever bravely, “with courage anything is possible.” And so it is. The emergence of both from the chrysalis of solitude and obsession that constricts them is what drives St. Germain’s often funny, often very touching, sometimes uncomfortable romantic comedy.

Ms. Lazar has not hurried (or constricted) her actors. She has allowed them room, has let them discover; both Hagi and Shirom have grabbed their opportunity and what we see are nuanced, truthful performances that show us the selves underneath the selves we let others see.

Hagi’s Ever is awkward, afraid, inhibited and uninhibited, brave and cowardly all wrapped in a charm that pokes from within and teaches him to listen. As Senga, Shirom is angry, resentful, aggressive, terrified, needy, but slowly, slowly, she too becomes willing to listen. And then they reach out, one to the other.

A huge window dominates Shani Tur’s diagonal interior set, a metaphor, perhaps, for the barriers that initially pen in the characters. It works, as do Shira Wise’s schlumpy costumes and Ms. Lazar’s musical arrangements. The latter sometimes form a backdrop for three dancers whose presence is entirely superfluous because the play, the actors and the direction do the job perfectly well, thank you.

[Dancing Lessons is U.S. playwright Mark St. Germain’s eighth play.  It premièred In 2014 at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  The play was presented at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota in 2015 and in 2016 at the Orlando (Florida) Shakespeare Theater.  St. Germain is also the author of Camping With Henry And Tom, which won the 1995 Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards; Forgiving Typhoid Mary, one of Time magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best” in 1991; and Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer, winner of a 1993 AT&T “New Plays for the Nineties” Award.

[For non-Yiddiphiles, schlumpy is the adjective from schlump (or shlump), which means, according to Martin Marcus’s Yiddish for Yankees: or. Funny, You Don’t Look Gentile (Philadelphia; New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1968): “A slow, slovenly person; a sad sack.  What you feel like the day you wear your shiny suit and ratty tie to the office and the chairman of the board pops in for an all-day conference.”]