Shabbat Shuvah, 5787

Tonight is a special Shabbat—the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) also known as the High Holy Days. 

Like all New Year traditions, it’s a time a renewal and reflection, of repentance and repair, and of commitments made to do and be better in the year to come. 

There is a Hasidic teaching Rabbi Alan Lew (author of “This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared”) loved to repeat:

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”

At first, this sounds like a contradiction. We know what heartbreak feels like. It does not feel whole. It feels like something has gone catastrophically wrong: a rupture, a break; a relationship has ended, a hope has failed, a person we love is gone, or we have finally seen the harm our own choices have caused. We may arrive at the High Holy Days carrying shards of ourselves we would prefer not to examine too closely…

But Rabbi Lew asks us to distinguish between a shattered ego and a broken heart.

The ego shatters when the story we tell about ourselves can no longer be maintained: 

I am always right. 
I am in control. 
I am the injured one. 
I would never cause harm. 

When that self-image is threatened, we may become angry, defensive, or ashamed.

But a broken heart is different. A broken heart is undefended. It no longer has the strength—or the desire—to pretend. It says: 

This is what happened. 

This is what I did. 

This is what was done to me. 

This is what I cannot repair alone.

And, according to Rabbi Lew, this is not a spiritual failure. It may very well be the beginning of new kind of spiritual life.

Jewish tradition gives us an extraordinary image for this. Moses descends from Sinai carrying the first tablets of the covenant, carved by G-d. When Moses sees the Golden Calf, he throws them down, and the tablets shatter. Later, after anger, grief, pleading, and reconciliation, Moses carves a second set with his own hands.

Jewish tradition teaches that both sets were then placed in the Holy Ark: the whole tablets and the broken pieces. The remnants of the “perfect” tablets, and the ones constructed from a place of grief and repentance. 

The shattered tablets were not discarded. They were not treated as an embarrassment to be hidden outside the camp. They were carried in the very holiest place, beside the tablets that had remained whole.

Shabbat Shuvah is an invitation to our hearts:
May our hearts become like that Ark. 
May we carry what is whole in us—our generosity, courage, wisdom, and capacity to begin again. 
But we also carry the broken pieces—the promises we did not keep, the grief we could not prevent, the words we cannot call back, the selves we once believed we had to be. Our brokenness is not the whole of who we are. But neither is it refuse. When held honestly, it too can become sacred.

This is the work of teshuvah. We often translate teshuvah as “repentance” but its deeper meaning is turning or returning. 

We turn away from illusion and toward reality. 
We return toward the people we have neglected. 
We return to the truths we have avoided. 

We return to the self beneath our defenses. 
And in doing so, we discover that we have also returned to the Divine.

Forgiveness, then, is not a matter of persuading a distant deity to become merciful. Mercy is already woven into reality. The prophet Micah tells us that G-d does not retain anger forever, but delights in steadfast love; that G-d returns to us in compassion and casts our misdeeds into the depths of the sea.

Yet mercy does not require us to deny what happened. Rosh Hashanah confronts us with din—the clear, unsparing vision of judgment. We must first see. 
We must name. 
We must stop hiding. 
Only then can we experience the spaciousness of rachamim on Yom Kippur—the spirit of compassion.

This is why, during these holy days, we gently strike the heart as we confess. Some say we are punishing ourselves for our misdeeds. I see this differently. We are not punishing ourselves by beating upon our breasts. We are knocking on the doors of our hearts, crying out:

“Open, oh fragile and resilient heart of mine. 
Open to what you regret.
Open to what you have lost.
Open to the person you have harmed.
Open to the ways you, too, have been wounded.
Open to the possibility that honesty need not end in shame or humiliation.
Open to mercy. To forgiveness. To compassion. 
It is already here” 

We cannot force such an opening. 
The ego cannot muscle its way into surrender. 
We can only become willing: willing to be vulnerable, willing to relinquish control, willing to stand before the Divine without disguise.

Rabbi Lew wrote,

“Every soul needs to express itself. Every heart needs to crack itself open.”  

These are not new needs. They are among our most ancient human yearnings: to move from anger toward healing, from denial toward consciousness, from numbness toward renewal.

So perhaps the question before us is not, “How can I make myself perfect enough to be forgiven?”

Perhaps it is: “Can I become honest enough to be found?”

May we have the courage in 5787 to carry both sets of tablets: what is whole and what has shattered. 
May our hearts become holy arks, spacious enough to hold them both. 
And through the openings in those hearts, may compassion enter.

Open our hearts.

And help us begin again. 💜

 

©Nick Bantock (who else?) 

 

43

I used to write a little birthday post every year. I would list all the interesting things about the number/age I was turning and reflect. I glance over them now and feel charmed by how innocent they are. They were before the years felt "piled up." 

- I distinctly recall turning 24 and having the realization that childhood was truly over and I had "missed it."

- I remember waking up in San Francisco on the morning of my 30th birthday just after West Side Story had closed (the cast sang to me at midnight!) and feeling like life was truly all ahead of me... not fully realizing that less than two years later I would have a diagnosis and so much fear and pain. 

- I remember 36—the first birthday with Alec in my life—and not knowing where to put all of my peace and joy and happiness. 

- And 40. Days before I turned 40 I quit a high profile job and thought my career might be over, but the relief I felt at walking away from something so toxic was a level of certainty I couldn't ignore, and realized I had fought too hard to be alive to live feeling that horrendous about my work...

 

So. Hello 43. 

 

For decades my life has been organized around earning: health, approval, love, safety, another day. This year is the first in which I seem to have experienced what psychologists sometimes call "earned security"—not perfection, but a nervous system that is slowly learning, "Wait wait wait what: I don't have to manufacture every ounce of love that comes toward me?"

___
 

Last week, Chicago was flirting with one hundred degrees. The sort of heat that makes the buildings shimmer and convinces everyone they have suddenly become experts on hydration. 

 

Alec looked at me and said, "Beach?"
For me that answer is always "Obviously."

 

If you've never been to a Chicago beach in the summer, it feels vaguely illegal. You're standing in one of the largest cities in America, surrounded by skyscrapers, and somehow there's an inland sea stretching toward the horizon with no opposite shore in sight. Lake Michigan has always refused to behave like a lake. It insists on being mistaken for an ocean.
It is also? My water.
I grew up diving into it from the Michigan side, and every time I return, my body recognizes it before my brain does.
Without ceremony, I walked straight into the bone-shivering water with abandon.

 

Or perhaps...with ceremony? Because as the cold overtook me, something unexpected happened. My entire body began to tingle with the intensity of an arm waking after it's fallen asleep. Every nerve ending seemed to announce itself at once. As though someone had quietly switched my awareness back on.

 

I couldn't help thinking about the mikveh—the ritual bath that marks transition, renewal, emergence into a different chapter of life. I've always loved that Judaism understands water as more than water. Sometimes immersion is less about washing something away, than becoming someone new.

 
Standing waist-deep in Lake Michigan, I found myself waking up.
To health.
To gratitude.
To the astonishing, ordinary miracle of having a body that can carry me into freezing cold lake water without fear.

And excuse me please but let's pause here to appreciate one of the quieter miracles in this story:
I got into a bathing suit, mmkay? 
I walked into the water without negotiating with my reflection.
For decades, body dysmorphia/ disrodered eating/ general self-loathing literally stole moments like these from me. Even when I longed to swim in my favorite thing on earth: The Water, some cruel internal accountant insisted I hadn't yet earned the right. My body was something to apologize for before it could become a vessel to enjoy human experience.

This time, I didn't bargain.
I just got in.

The greatest victories increasingly resemble freedoms.
Not achievements.
Freedoms.
 

A few days later, I celebrated my birthday.
Forty-freaking-three.

And I can say, without hesitation, that it was the most beautiful birthday of my adult life.
Not because of presents.
Not because of messages of celebratory messages.
Not because that evening I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting onstage as Désirée Armfeldt and singing "Send in the Clowns"—(though, TBH: beginning a new year of life with one of Stephen Sondheim's most searing songs felt like a piece of theatrical symmetry too intense to have been planned?)

It was beautiful because, for perhaps the first time in my life, I allowed myself to receive it.

Receiving turns out to be much harder than giving. I used to pride myself on giving more than I received— if ever allowing myself to receive at all! As if that were some sort of superior virtue. Ah, youth. How wrong I was. 
But understandable, of course. Giving feels active. Noble. Productive. Receiving requires something far more frightening.
It requires believing that you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you're worthy of being loved.
And after all, for most of my life, I didn't believe that. My grandfather taught me—without ever saying the words outright—that love was a wage.  Approval was conditional. Safety was earned and re-earned— every day. Even accomplishment wasn't enough, because yesterday's accomplishment expired overnight. Whatever affection had been earned on Tuesday needed to be re-earned on Wednesday. Then Thursday. Then Friday. The treadmill never stopped.

I internalized the lesson so completely that I confused striving with living.

If I just worked harder…
If I were just more successful…
More talented.
More useful.
More exceptional.

Then perhaps I could finally exhale.

Of course, the finish line kept moving.
 

Illness complicated all of this in ways I'm only now beginning to understand.
When survival itself becomes your full-time occupation, you learn to live in a perpetual state of bracing. You become extraordinarily good at enduring.
But enduring and living are not the same thing.

This year, something shifted.
Perhaps it was writing Brigadoon.
Perhaps it was playing Désirée, who seemed determined to interrogate every illusion I still carried about worthiness.
Perhaps it was the privilege of being surrounded by extraordinary collaborators and friends who loved me without asking me to audition for the role.
Perhaps it was simply enough years between myself and the girl who learned to hustle for approval.
Whatever the reason, I noticed something extraordinary on my birthday.
When people loved me...
I let them.
I didn't rush to deflect the compliment.
I didn't immediately calculate how to repay every kindness.
I didn't secretly wonder whether I'd disappointed them somehow.
I simply received it. 

With the enormous gratitude a true gift deserves.

That's the lesson: truly receiving love is its own act of generosity.

If love is a gift, who am I to deflect it so callously? To decide whether or not it is deserved? Someone has thought of me, gone out, selected it, purchased it with hard earned wages and wrapped it up for your delight. 

Receive all of that. Without fuss or deflection. 

It is gracious to do so.  

People want to celebrate one another.
They want to uplift.
They want to cook dinner, write cards, send messages, hug you far longer than etiquette requires. They aren't keeping score. 

Healthy love isn't transactional. 

It isn't waiting for reimbursement.
It longs to be accepted.

I went to sleep that night feeling something I don't remember ever feeling before.

Full.
As though every kind word, every embrace, every laugh, every song, every impossible twist of fortune this extraordinary year had offered had finally been allowed to land.
 

For the first time, I wasn't carrying the bucket beneath a waterfall, frantically trying to prove I deserved the water.
I simply stood in it.
 

The beautiful thing about fullness, I've discovered this year, is that it doesn't end with you.
It overflows.

And flows ever-outward.  
The more completely we allow ourselves to receive love, the more freely we can offer it away again tomorrow.
 

The birthday gift of 43 is learning that there comes a moment in every life when we can finally stop asking, 

"Have I earned this yet?"

 

And simply answer, with gratitude:

 

"Isn't it rich?"

receiving: with my whole, damn grateful heart

The Talkback: An Epilogue

 Epilogue: *

 * "It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue..."
— William Shakespeare

1. This clearly touched a nerve.

I'm vaguely in awe of the enormous response to my post regarding the talk back. The shared outrage and anger surprised and moved me. I'm not certain why— but perhaps it's because in my "Other" roles I so often feel left hanging so I didn't expect such support. 

 

But genuinely? 

None more so than as a woman.
We don't allow women to speak. 

And when we do, we don't listen very well, or at all.

2. Compassion first

 I want to acknowledge that these older men (one declared himself to be Jewish — the other spoke with the authority of someone who identified as Jewish) seemed to be in a lot of pain.
And you know what?
I get it.
I respect their pain.
In some ways I share it.

I share the pain of a human being with a few "Other" status' (like billions of humans) who thought they had not merely the hope but the firm belief that the arm of history was moving in the direction of a more compassionate, loving world. When they look around, I imagine these men see shadows of things they assumed were long gone, and feel despair.

And something I have that they do not? Is more time. They have less time on earth to see the world course correct. And it brings them grief and outrage and fear and hopelessness that everything they've devoted their lives to is evaporating.

I have more time to change the world than they do.
I understand.
If they had given me a chance, I would have validated their pain.

 

3. Demand no "pound of flesh"

 

Their valid pain? Is no excuse for further pain.
 

And the almost breathtaking irony is that this is the precise larger theme of The Merchant of Venice.
 

Oppression can warp us, if we allow it. And hurt people hurt people.

We must rise above our personal and collective agonies and demand no “pound of flesh”— no matter how
"justified." We must heal ourselves and our communities so that we cause no further harm — micro and macro.
 

May the bringing of peace begin within the quietness of our own souls.

 

 

 

The Talkback: Part 2

This piece is a more detailed account of a specific negative talk-back that occurred, and is continuation from more universal theatre talk back experiences. For those thoughts, Part 1: is HERE.

Helpful background

 

Now, as for what happened tonight after The Merchant of Venice. The producers advertised this particular evening as "Pride Night—" and welcomed the audience to stay to discuss the themes of "Othering" in society, the play itself and in our production. 

 

For those who may not be familiar with the piece, a quick background: 

The Merchant of Venice is a play written around 1594 by William Shakespeare and listed as a "comedy." The play centers around three main protagonists who are all "Others" in the hetero-normative, Christian, male society of Venice: Antonio is a queer man, Portia is a woman, and Shylock is a Jew. The play has long been considered extremely controversial for the portrayal and ultimate fate of it's "comic villain" Shylock-- who goes after the Christian Antonio (whom he despises for his blatant bigotry of Jews) in court when he fails to meet their iron-clad money-lending agreement promising that should Antonio fail to meet the terms, Shylock may exact "a pound of flesh" from Antonio, ostensibly killing him (for he has Antonio's heart in mind). 

Yet, despite Shylock's legal "correctness," Portia—dressed as a man and serving as the loophole-finding lawyer for the case—Antonio is spared, and ultimately stripped of his property and life, only to be saved in the end if he agrees to give up all his worldly goods and, of course, be converted to Christianity. 

 

My take: Honestly? It is a play about some rather horrible people doing some truly horrible things. And along the way there are some great laughs, fun subplots, and some of Shakespeare's most iconic and beautiful poetry and prose.  

 

In short: it's complicated.

Our Production

Now MoV has much more than Jewish themes— it also has the othering of women and LGBTQ+ people. Not to mention the total lambasting of countless nationalities and cultures in the smaller parts of the original text. 

Our production—for better or for worse, not my call—eliminated the queer themes utterly, which I felt was a missed opportunity. It also largely diminished my role as Portia and did little to illuminate her lack of agency, her blinding intelligence, her loneliness and really any redeemable part of her humanity. (I hear you asking and yes, sure: it wasn't my favorite take on this play, and not my favorite acting experience, but I'm not in charge. That's the deal we sign as actors! Sometimes an actor has to trust, commit fully to a director's vision as an instrument of and extension of their artistic expression and suppress one's own preconceived notions and ideas. That's the gig. And globally: I applaud anyone for taking a bold "swing" and really trying something). 

 

With these two arms of the triumvirate diminished, our production did, however, focus almost exclusively on Shylock: on ancient and contemporary Antisemitic tropes, on the way we treated Jews then, and continue to today.

Tonight

After the show, we sit down, a moderator is present and highly qualified to speak on the subject of the evening, but does not have journalistic credits. They do not set any ground rules, they do not create a "container" for how this is going to go. I am immediately concerned because the subject matter is so intense, and it is obvious that audience members are experiencing high emotions.

 

An older man took up an enormous amount of airtime speaking for over 5 minutes about his background as a Eastern European Jewish immigrant, then proceeded to express his "disappointment and outrage" at our production. He used inflammatory language. He was clearly angry and directing a great deal of his anger in my direction.

 

I interrupted him (as politely as possible) in minute 5, noting that no one else—not the moderator nor the producer—was putting an end to a speech that was clearly going off course. I stated calmly that I "didn't hear a question." He replied, impassioned: 

 

"How can you do this?"  

It went downhill quickly from there. 

 

I won't get in to the minutia of his words, I will ask you to trust that this was not a conversation, and his comments and his tone were inappropriate.  His feelings are of course, valid, but there is an appropriate  audience, time, place and manner in which to express them.  And my feelings were valid: it was perfectly reasonable to become defensive when asked—as an actor—to personally "defend" a production I did not direct or produce.

 

It needed to be shut down long before it was dealt with. And there was no need for it to ever arrive at such a confrontational place to begin with, had infrastructure been in place.

 

I will own my part: I became defensive, in my fear and anger I "puffed:" I rattled off facts, figures and basically barfed the encyclopedia at on onto these men— to prove something. My intelligence, my worthiness of respect; to show that they had underestimated and belittled me? I don't know exactly. I'm still figuring it out in the aftermath. I was also defending myself because I felt unsafe! No one was stepping in and meaningfully coming to our aid! I was terrified that there was no infrastructure in place from our moderator or producers to help the exposed actors navigate this moment. As the conflict escalated, both ushers and audience members left. 

But where the conversation turned ugly for me was when this man, and another older man sitting beside him (also outraged) vociferously attempted to "teach" me—not the men—about Jewish history. They spoke directly to me, looked me in the eyes and used demeaning language to do so. I believe used tone and language that insinuated that I was too young, too goyishe, and too female to possibly understand the nuances of 5000 years of Jew-hatred.

So, allow me to be clear, gentlemen:

1. I am Jewish.

I understand that I may not "look Jewish" you.
Your assumption of my exclusion says more about you than it does about me.

2. Yes, I am a woman. 

I understand that 10 minutes ago, I was dressed in nothing more than a pink bikini (and looking ravishing-by the way) and that possibly leads you to believe that I am an intellectual lightweight whose beauty is her only asset. But my attractive, apparently "youthful," hyper feminine woman-ness makes me NO less capable of academic rigor, dramaturgy, context, nuance, curiosity, or for a deep and secure grasp upon my Peoples' history, Theatrical history and of history itself.
 

Just because I am a beautiful woman does not mean I am a stupid one.

Do not assume that you "must" "TEACH ME" anything. (Yes, sir, I am speaking to you who felt it necessary to teach me about The Rothschilds in front of an audience.)

3. Censorship is a society-killer. 

Also? Yes, this play is officially a "comedy" and yes, it is problematic. But to quote Professor James Shapiro author of "Shakespeare and The Jews"

“I have tried to show that much of the play's vitality can be attributed to the ways in which it scrapes against a bedrock of beliefs about the racial, national, sexual, and religious difference of others. I can think of no other literary work that does so as unrelentingly and as honestly. To avert our gaze from what the play reveals about the relationship between cultural myths and peoples' identities will not make irrational and exclusionary attitudes disappear. Indeed, these darker impulses remain so elusive, so hard to identify in the normal course of things, that only in instances like productions of this play do we get to glimpse these cultural fault lines. This is why censoring the play is always more dangerous than staging it.”

In essence: we must be willing to see.
Censorship in art achieves nothing.

 

4. Producers and Moderators, please protect your actors and creatives. 

This is a professional engagement. We might love our work, but a labor of love is still labor. And our time, safety and dignity should be respected by implementing safeguards before and during audience engagements. It is respectful. To all.

5. Never assume: onstage and off. 

Finally, this talk-back revealed through it's "failure" precisely the reason we were gathered:
The assumptions we make about Others based on a myriad of preconceived beliefs, prejudices and assumptions. I—like millions—exist at the cross-section of many identities. None of them should be questioned, tested, proven, explained or even educated-about against my consent. Particularly in a public forum.

We are, all of us, capable of prejudice, bigotry, rage and hatred.

Equally, we are, all of us, capable of great compassion, empathy, curiosity and courage.
I welcome you to—whenever possible- align yourself with the latter.

Take care of yourselves, your communities and one another.
And to all a good night.

Call Me Adam: Merchant of Venice

1. I can't believe it's been six years since our last interview together! At that time, you were starring in Camelot in Washington DC. How would you say you have changed the most since that time?

 It’s almost unutterable how much I have personally changed and how much the world has too.

I have had a major organ removed and reconstructed. It saved my life.
I fell in love and got married.
I turned 40

There was a worldwide Pandemic. And the world is even more inside out and upside down. 

2. This fall you are starring in an updated William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice at Classic Stage Company. What made you want to sign on for this re-telling of The Merchant of Venice?

It is a dream-like opportunity to portray one of Shakespeare’s great leading roles in New York City—a dream I have had since childhood. To be a Jewish actor (born into a Catholic-Jewish largely secular family) in this particular moment in world history, telling a story that involves Jew hated, feels like another sensitive, challenging and important task.

It’s a thrill to ask hard questions in the room, to know we might never find answers, and to be a vessel for complex dualities onstage and off. 

3. Why do you feel audiences should come see this modern version?

We live in a world of knee jerk reactions, polarized camps and a culture that feels obedient to loudly chanting the “right” ideas for fear of estrangement from our communities, rather than arriving at points of view on our own — of much more nuanced.

I think The Merchant of Venice is a play that people have a knee jerk reaction about — assuming it cannot be done (and thus cannot be viewed) without a moral indictment of those both creating the production AND viewing it.

I welcome modern audiences to walk in ready to be confronted with very hard questions and thoughts and ideas— but leave room within themselves for growth and awe and surprise. Igor/our take on this piece is bold and yes, confrontational— but not in the ways you might assume. I welcome you to join us and be surprised. Have your expectations and your assumptions exploded. I won’t say more than that because of spoilers!

4. In the show, you are playing Portia. What do you relate to most about her?

Her loneliness and isolation.
I’d like to think we share a fierce intellect and large capacity for love. 

5. What is one quality of hers you are glad you yourself don't possess?

Even though your previous question asked about complimentary shared (pardon the expression) *qualities* It would be arrogant of me to assume that I — or anyone— don’t share all of Portia’s less favorable qualities as well. We contain multitudes.  

And I’ll admit that while i do not love, and endeavor daily to overcome, them , I possess such negative personal attributes such as

• self-obsession
• self righteousness
• Snobbery
• Manipulation
• Conscious and unconscious bias + “isms”
• Selective memory
• Elitism and classism

The list goes on.

Don’t you …posses those too?
In some level, Don’t we all? 

Knowing something is bad or wrong doesn’t eradicate it from our psyche — it gives us an opportunity to overcome it and behave differently despite ourselves. To offer ourselves and others grace and dare I say it? “Mercy.” 

6. In this re-telling, Superheroes and their archenemies battle it out to protect good in the face of evil. Considering the tumultuous times we are living in, how do you protect the good of the world with so much evil lurking at every corner?

I strive to do what I can in the ways that feel natural and accessible to me. I have always been on the quieter, slower and more thoughtful side of political, philosophical and ethical thought—preferring long and deep conversations to protests or more traditional advocacy. That is where I think I thrive, and where my gift for humanizing the “other,” for empathy, asking deep questions, the power of story and story telling, can be a light in the face of darkness.

I don’t always succeed. Many days I flail and fail. Some days I hang out at my rock bottom. But I endeavor. 

7. In our 2011 interview, you had mentioned that one day you hope to work with Director Matthew Warchus, act or sing opposite Audra McDonald, and be in the presence of John Adams. Have any of these come to fruition?

None. But I have new dreams now. 

8. What is the best advice you've given, but not taken for yourself?

“Don’t wash wool.”

9. What is something that you and your best friend like to do together?

Send texts and voicemails that begin the middle of an ever-on-going conversation. 

10. When you watch an episode of "The Golden Girls," the ladies would always solve their problems over cheesecake. If we were to sit down to Cheesecake:

* What problem of your own would you want to solve?
* What kind of cheesecake would we solve this problem over?

Ohhhh nothing huge just:
What in the heck shall I do with the time that has been returned to me post surgery, and that I blessedly have left on this earth?

Blueberry. 

11. What didn't we get to talk about in this interview that you'd like my audience to know about you?

I’m an introvert. 

 

The Eleventh Classmate

Originally published by Broadway World on 19 Jan, 2024

Stephen Ochsner as Jacob Katz

* 

Last spring, I came on board to participate in a casual reading of Our Class by Tadeuz Słobodzianek. Political polarization, disinformation, families and friendships in crisis over ideologies were front and center of all our minds that day:

How could ten ordinary classmates growing up through extraordinary times make such horrific choices, respond to traumatic events in such barbaric ways, inspired by so much fear and so little empathy?

The answers might be difficult to comprehend, but it is not hard to find contemporary evidence— it exists right before use every day. In the comments sections. In our direct messages. Across tense dinner tables. And screamed violently at parallel protests. It seems the global population have one thing in common for certain: we are all terrified.
And in our fear, we have all become more rigid, more intolerant;
    and far less capable of compassion, nuance and meaningful listening.
In that fear, is where our friendships, communities and wider societies begin to break down.

It feels virtually impossible to hold more than one truth these days, but it’s what I feel compelled to do. There’s the visceral: the outrage, the grief, the loss, the fear, the violence, the deaths, the horror. There’s the global proliferation of hatred from every angle. And there’s the relational: the how could yous and the how could you nots. Every day online and in the street I feel the pain going septic behind everyone’s rage.

In Our Class — ten Polish classmates — five Jewish, and five Catholic — grow up as friends and neighbors, then turn on one another with unutterable brutality; in traumatic, life and death consequences.  It is inspired by the real life events surrounding a 1941 pogrom in a small Polish village of Jedwabne.  

It is staggering.  Shocking. Stomach-churningly timely. We follow the lives of the classmates from the age of 5 through eight decades of the 20th century. It examines the nature of hate, and how we—as human creatures— have the potential for both brutality and love.

Yes, the play hits differently than it did last spring. Yes.

 FEATURING THE PERPETRATORS

    From the very beginning our visionary (Ukrainian-born and Jewish) director Igor Golyak told us what his most important concept was: it had nothing to do with visual imagery, playing-style or group dynamics. It was the central idea that we must not approach this play as a story that happened “back THEN, far away from here to and by people that are nothing like me.” We had to do everything in our power to center our own personal morality and humanity into the exploration of this play to make sure it was not a PAST-TENSE play. It was a PRESENT-TENSE play.
    Our Class is not history, it is our present and our future.

    We had to be courageous enough to reckon with that within ourselves.
How?
By making friends with confrontational thoughts.
Rather than asking ourselves
    “how could THEY?”
we were forcing ourselves into twisting our own psychology into an excruciating moral question mark:  
    “How might I? What would it take for me to behave in this way?”
By acknowledging that by the very nature of being human we have the capacity for great cruelty, we don’t distance ourselves from the perpetrators, we acknowledge that at any moment, we might very well become them, were the circumstances “just right” enough to push us over the edge of our own moral compass.
    It is—without exception— the most challenging, fully enacted moral exercise of my career.

Myself as Rachelka turned Marianna

This brings me to an interesting question on the lips of so many these days: how many more stories of oppressed peoples’ trauma (in this instance Jewish trauma) do we need to bear witness to? Haven’t we been through enough? How many times can we hear and see these stories played out and still not experience social change in a wider sense?

Fair questions. And I don’t have neat answers. What I can provide is an idea central to the import of Our Class: the featuring of the perpetrators.

Last week while speaking with a journalist, we discussed the rule in journalism that has become a kind of law— when an act of violence is carried out, do not feature the perpetrators, focus on the victims and their memory. Wise indeed in journalism— where we (at least we used to) get our neutral facts and information. No need to create cult heroes out of perpetrators of violence.

But art is a different matter. We look to artists to meet different needs within society— we “hold the mirror up to nature” and beckon audiences to examine themselves. More than just culture preservers, historians, or beauty-makers— artists have been crucial to social change, catharsis  and personal examination since the dawn of the art form in Ancient Greece. We need art in order to grow as a collective.

For the majority of the 20th century Holocaust art largely followed the focus on victims just as journalists did— it was almost a moral imperative as the last survivors were reaching the ends of their lives. Preserving the crucial stories of victims was the very definition of our collective sobriety toward hatred. It solidified a restored humanity in Europe and around the globe.

But by framing the Holocaust as a mystifying, totally incomprehensible evil to be exacted by “animals” we distance ourselves from the atrocities as impossible to see within ourselves. To view the events and the thinking that got us there, as— to quote Elie Wiesel—“the ultimate event, the ultimate mystery, never to be comprehended or transmitted,” we shield our consciousness from the absolute certainty of our own human capacity for evil.

Gus Birney as Dora

Our Class is no such piece of avoidance or moral circumvention.

Through Słobodzianek’s use of direct address, the audience is implicated— the characters speak not just to one another, but to the audience as the “11th classmate” asking over and over again the haunting question:

    “What could I do?”

Perhaps Słobodzianek is indeed asking us:
    What could we do?
    What are we doing?
    What will and might we do?
And perhaps most chilling of all:
    who are we to judge these characters if we never dare to fully observe ourselves?


That is what distinguishes this piece from others.

NEVER-FORGETTING

Every day I grapple with fear of forgetting. With the fact that I am two generations removed from the events of Our Class (and so many other stories I’ve had the privilege to tell on stage and page). I was not alive during the war — and these memories do not belong to me.


When people continually try to deny the reality of the Holocaust, being a dramatic story-teller complicates matters. These events truly did happen, and perhaps the fear is that if one makes it fiction, people will think it isn’t true.


But we have learned that the documents alone are not enough. A 2022 U.S. survey by the Anti-Defamation League found “widespread belief in anti-Jewish tropes, at rates unseen for decades.” In the first two months of 2023, attacks on U.S. synagogues increased 71 percent.

Second- and third- and soon-to-be-fourth generation storytellers from all genres — as well as those who are not direct descendants — attempt to combat this evaporation.

“Never forgetting” is a trope if it is not followed by meaningful action. And it seems that action is changing and shifting— as those charged with remembering inherit a different—but in many ways identical—world.



Despite challenging subject matter, Igor Golyak’s production features whimsy, music, laughter and even joy. It features 10 incredible performances by beautiful actors. It includes designers that are each the absolute top of their chosen art form— all coming together to tell this story with breathtaking beauty.

As my character Rachelka says:

“We all have our destiny. Our b’shet.”

Perhaps mine—at least in this era of my life— is a kind of theatrical never-forgetting.
We’ll see.

Jewish Represetnation in the Theatre Panel at BroadwayCon 2023

A few photographs and thoughts from the absolutely soul-expansive, mind-blowing, joy-forward panel on Jewish Representation in the Theater at this year’s BroadwayCon.

To sit beside this group of brilliant minds, talents and Jewish people was such an unspeakable honor, and to really comb through the nuances of the contemporary conversation was as illuminating as it was affirming. 

This was just the beginning for this brilliant crew (and many others).

1. I am not exclusively an “only mothers can play mothers” reductionist when it comes to casting and artistic expression. Buuut 

2. When the story centers around a character’s ethnic and religious-identity, is crucial to the fabric of who they are, and includes self-effacing parody OF that identity—then the casting of said identity is not only critical but to ignore it is actually harmful. 

Finally 

3. In these identity-forward times, the conversations around these issues are not always going to be directly parallel (ie a conversations comparing and contrasting the issues of various oppressed groups). It’s not the oppression Olympics. We must all breathe, LISTEN, check ourselves and remember that liberation is a GROUP PROJECT.

Thank you to Becca Suskauer and Ari Axelrod for organizing, and to Talia Suskauer, Brandon Uranowitz, Zachy Prince and Shoshana Bean for your heartfelt insights.

All photos © Rebecca J Michelson: also a genius Jewish person

 

Keep lighting candles

Happy festival of lights.

 

Tonight the chanukiah will be full. It's my favorite night of Hanukkah.

 

This year I just want to keep lighting candles, over and over again, night after night, all winter long. Let’s get every dusty menorah down from the dusty back rooms and abandoned closets we haven’t laid eyes on in years, and just keep lighting and lighting until we fully illuminate every place, every space in ourselves, that hasn’t seen light for a very long time.

The miracle is the spark of hope, the possibility that tomorrow is a new day.

So let's go gather all of our chanukiot and as we light again and again, we will keep telling the story of the 1 jar of oil that lasted 8 nights, and the less-powerful defeating the too-powerful, not because it was true but because we believe it can be.

 

Chag urim sameach.

 

Own Your Star

One of the most profound ways to fight Anti-Semitism is to live a joyful and proud Jewish existence. In times of hatred and annihilation, ✨JOY CAN BE A RADICAL ACT. ✨

So on this Shabbat, I welcome you to pause and fully experience your joy in any form it arrives in.
Dance.
Sing.
Make music.
Read poetry.
Be in nature.
Nourish your body.
Experience togetherness.
—Whatever makes you feel connected.

 

The Hillel International #OwnYourStar campaign was launched to create a public and shareable sense of peace, pride, community, and safety in Jewish students around the globe—by declaring our joy and “owning our star,” more Jews will know they are not alone in fighting the evils of hatred.

Shabbat Shalom, dear friends. 

Joy always.
Joy everywhere. 

 

 

Henry

Are these screenshots from me and Henry Goodman doing an advertisement for the Jewish Film Festival of London? 

Why yes it is.

Did we ride the train back to London Bridge together and say goodbye on the train platform... because that is always how Henry and I say goodbye? 

Also yes. 

Henry, "God alone knows when we shall see each other again," but leaving it "in His hands" is always a sure bet. I love you, thank you for sharing the most heart-opening scene of my career thus far.   It was a joy to affirm with words, after all these years, that it meant as much to you as it did to me.

 

 

The Fo(u)r MORE Questions!

This weekend is Passover, 2021. Remember how last year we all said "Next Year in Person" and we were so certain that that precise joy would be our reality? 

Not so for many of us. COVID19 still rages on, millions across our aching planet are dead (many, so needlessly due to mismanagement, denial, and the preposterousness of politics), and many have a tragic (and tardy) new understanding of the systemic racism and inequality that pervades every part of society. Plague and oppression? Several plagues and the evils of slavery? Well it sounds like Passover and all the themes the Book of Exodus offers us, cannot come soon enough to help us to confront, to celebrate, and to heal.

One of the great gifts of this tumultuous year has been the gift of learning that activism, and the fighting of evils, comes in many forms. Well, this year I have learned over and over again that my most authentic weapon against darkness... is light. 

The story of Exodus is about the enslavement and oppression of the Jewish people, but it has served as a metaphor for oppressed people everywhere for countless generations. The year we have spent with the coronavirus has revealed many excruciating oppressions that remain today. The ones that shall always be the most immediate for my existence and safety is the fight against Anti-Semitism, and sometimes, fighting Anti-Semitism is not just about declaring violence and hatred to be evil and wrong, it is equally crucial to be PRO-Semitic, to shed light upon the beauty of the things all kinds of Jews across the planet hold dear, and to do so with passions, joy and the enthusiasm of my whole soul.

And so? I want to offer you all a little Passover gift, from my seder table to yours.

Here is a download of fourteen questions for your Passover dinner table! Passover is all about questions, so I wanted to offer something beautiful and meaningful to keep the conversation going long after the traditional "Four Questions" have been asked. 

- Click the link.

- Download the artwork. 

- Print on any paper or card-stock you desire. 

- Cut down the center, and then cut every "color block" / individual question out (with scissors or a paper cutter)

- Spread them out on your Passover table for all to see, 

     or keep them in a deck to "pick a card any card" 

          or thumb through them throughout the night. 

Use them however it feels fun and meaningful to and for you.

 

Chag Semeach, one and all. May we all know greater freedom in 2021, and may we also be greater liberators of the oppressed who need our advocacy.

 

:: KOL NIDRE ::

It’s here. Yom Kippur 2020 and whoa boy do we all have a lot to atone for, personally and as a society at large.
 
The first communal prayer service of Yom Kippur actually takes place immediately prior to sunset on the evening of Yom Kippur. This service is called Kol Nidre (“All Vows”). These are the first words of a special legal document that is recited at the beginning of this service and is traditionally chanted, recited or sung, three times. (The singing of a legal vow-based legal document? Sounds kinda like a medieval “One Hand One Heart.”)
 
There are several melodies and versions used, but here is my humble attempt at the “Fromm” version (which is my favorite), up a step from the original key because, soprano. Also, because it is traditional to wear a white garment for the whole of the holiday I’m giving you several all-white garment *lewks* Just call me The Woman in White. LOL.
 
The Kol Nidre legal ritual is believed to have developed in early medieval times because at various times in history Jews were forced to convert to upon pain of death, and make vows to another faith. Vows in those days were very different than they are now— they were lifelong and permanent.
 
However, after the danger had passed, many forced converts wanted to return to their Jewish communities, but because of the seriousness with which the Jewish tradition views verbal promises (remember the *draaaama* of “They gave each other a ‘pledge’ from 'Fiddler On The Roof!'), the Kol Nidrei legal formula was developed precisely in order to enable those forced converts to return to the Jewish community, absolving them of the vows that they made under mortal duress.
 
Thus “All Vows” was created and remains a crucial part of the ceremony to this day.
 
It’s an interesting time to think on vows we have made under duress. On broken promises and an affirmation to do and be better.

Wishing you all every possible grasped-at joy during these dark days, and May we all *vow* to be better in the days to come.  
 

Many special thanks are due that made this video possible —
- Rabbi Matthew Green of Brooklyn Jews for inviting me to participate in HIGH RESOLUTION
- Rabbi Samantha Frank for teaching me alllll about Kol Nidre.
- Alec for allowing me to drag him to the east river to film this
- And last but not least Cantor extraordinaire and very dear old friend Marla Aviva Beider for the sheet music and supportive guidance.

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A post shared by Alexandra Silber (@alsilbs) on Sep 27, 2020 at 4:24am PDT