Yoel Nitzarim

Playwright

Biographical Statement

I have been a Language Educator for the past thirty-four years. My experience spans elementary school, middle school, high school, college, university, and a cultural center: from the fourth grade to senior citizens. In the main, I have taught English composition. Additionally, I have been privileged to have some of my poetry, essays, short stories, and photography published in literary journals in New Zealand, Israel, the US, and Canada. Presently, I am teaching English Composition I at College of Lake County, in Grayslake, Illinois. Most importantly, I am married; and we have two daughters.

Play Roster

A Lone White Dove
One of the best ways to get people together is through sports. Probably the most widely played sport is football. People love to watch it; they also love to play it. Even though religion and sport make “strange bedfellows,” there is a little-known common factor shared by the two of them: a yearning to become a part of something more than the self, a need to feel whole and complete. Whether it be through the worship of God or the observation or participation in a team sport such as football, such a need may become fulfilled.

Since Judaism and Christianity are the two oldest monotheistic religions still being practiced in the world today, their adherents do share many characteristics in the present as well as in the past. Those common attributes might be a foundation upon which to pursue a journey into the relationship between the two in the crucible called Israel. Israel is the outcome of thousands of years of yearning for Jews; it is the birthplace of the Christians’ Messiah. Whereas the two Temples of the Jews and Jewish prophets once stood in Jerusalem; Bethlehem and later Nazareth provided the background for the early stages of a new religion rooted in Judaism and evolving into Christianity. However, Jews and Christians have perpetually found that their perspectives differ fundamentally regarding the meaning of monotheism in conjunction with the coming of the Messiah. The characters in this play A Lone White Dove draw on the aforesaid differences in an attempt to find a common ground for discussion: the humanity and mortality which the characters portray demonstrate the possibility for dialogue, understanding, respect, and acceptance.

The inclusion of the football allows for a semiotic treatment of the sensitivity of the main issue: finding common ground between Jews and Christians given their 2000-year-old troubled, shared history. Like many important issues in human relationships, dissension may best be coped with via a third part. For the sake of fairness and understanding, mutual caring and respect, and the shared objective of improving relations between Christians and Jews, the employment of the object most associated with football’s mutual reliance, the football, can furnish symbolic direction and movement.

Understanding also needs to be sought after within religious communities. A rather deep schism still exists between religious and secular Jews throughout the world and especially in Israel. One way to bridge this rift may be found through sympathy, and more profoundly, empathy. Tzvika and Motti seek out their familial connection, and it is, unfortunately, Motti’s illness which makes Tzvika aware that the two really do rely on each other on the human level together with their shared religious/historical/cultural past.

Peace is the key to solving the conflicts between people of the same religion in addition to those who practice different religions. The presence of a dove symbolizes peace. To intensify the meaning of this peace, the color white would signify innocence and truth. What a powerfully persuasive combination of signs to show a real, meaningful peace: the white dove!


A Panoply of Faces in One Another's Arms
When one reads a play about the Middle East, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all sorts of feelings play into interpreting and decoding the text. Most often, the characters may very well be already pigeon-holed into a set of characterizations before the actual plot unfolds. The characters in the play A Panoply of Faces in One Another's Arms literally create a novel portrayal of the wealth of humanity one may potentially witness in Israeli-Palestinian relationships among the youth living in the metropolitan Jerusalem area. These youngsters possess the ability and, more importantly, the possibilities aligned with their mutual future as they make every effort to design understanding, compassion, and empathy in their lives. The adolescents become invested in an extraordinary school project whereby they are to work side-by-side

in both the classroom and the community in order to discover a medium of civil communication. As the play begins with a heroic statement made by a female narrator, the reader becomes prepared for an epic drama of as yet unheard of proportions. Four Jewish Israeli and four Muslim Palestinian high-school seniors will attend the same classes in a high school in East Jerusalem. These students will study the same curricula every day, day in and day out. At the outset, their preconceptions about one another will afford them little chance to succeed in the classroom. Notwithstanding, over time the students learn about one another to the extent that their gravest fears have to be confronted and overcome once and for all. By studying in diverse settings outside of the classroom, such as in a hospital, in the homes of Jerusalemites, and in the library, the students are able to hypostatize their subjective perceptions of reality in a common way: they are ready and able to find common ground in their combined existence as students studying in the Jerusalem metropolitan area. Feelings play the greatest role in helping the students learn both from and about one another. They, therefore, learn to laugh together, to cry together, to get angry together, and to be pleased together. Moreover, they learn that human beings share feelings that are human feelings, that human beings do not live alone in a world unto themselves. It is compassion, empathy, and charity that are the driving forces in the lives of these Israelis and Palestinian students by the conclusion of the play. The future, then, for these adolescents may very well show promise and hope.


The Bus That Never Arrived
The Jewish past is full of sorrowful events beginning with the patriarchs and matriarchs. Even some 4100 years ago, Abraham and his clan had to cope with what was then a new anti-Semitism: adherence to the faith centered on the belief in one God. Throughout this colossal amount of time, persecution, discrimination, oppression, pogroms, and finally the Holocaust have taken their toll on the Jewish people. So much suffering, so much loss, so much tragedy. Truly, the memory of the Jewish nation both in the Diaspora and in Israel reflects the earmarks of every age worldwide for the better part four millennia. And the cogwheel of this memory has always been the value of living as a Jewish people: the good and the bad. However, the linchpin for Jewish survival has consistently taken precedent in the Jewish collective memory. For every Jewish community, then, there is a stirring memory of the suffering endured by its membership.

In this play, the characters debate the existential weight of living with a collective memory reflecting Jewish suffering. Since they literally stand at a bus stop for a rather lengthy portion of the play, they show how casual and matter of fact debating the thrust of their lives actually is in Israel. Changing venues to someone’s nearby garden only accentuates the utter aesthetic value of this debate, for time, space, and motion have dictated meaning in Jewish spheres for ages. With Israel’s having had to act as the capstone of contemporary Jewish culture, it has incorporated fragments and remnants of the world Jewry that has comprised its residency. To remember the past of a religion, people, nation, and country is no easy feat, especially when exploitation, subjugation, and murder have interplayed with the Jewish lives on such a grand scale.

Yet, hope is also a major source of motivation in the Jewish community. With all of the trying times still filling the minds of even this new Jewish generation, it is the hope of a new vantage point, a novel approach, an innovative assessment, and, perhaps, a creative reassessment which could augment the doleful assortments of memory in yet to be seen positive, sanguine ways. The role of the story in Jewish life has the potential to achieve just this end. So the characters engage in story-telling to invent new beginnings.


The Lasting Taste of Asphodel Cottage Cheese
During their daily train ride to work, two middle-aged women discuss and debate their resolution to live their lives in Israel despite their having been born and raised in the Chicago area. The exploration of sentiments regarding making aliyah opens up a discourse which transcends the moment of travel from their town Pardes Hannah to their workplace in Tel Aviv. In fact, the journey is one of patent introspection, self-revelation, exaltation, self-abnegation, and exultation until an unexpected tragedy terminates their trip. Along the way, an unexpected fellow passenger shares his raison d’etre in his quest for partaking in Israeli life. The concept “memory” is applied through both national and tribal mythology in order to explain the role aliyah has played in the lives of these passengers. In contrast, the role of the “refugee” in Jewish history is considered in order to show an application of an understanding of the difference between living in a Diaspora seemingly on the periphery of contemporary Jewish history and living in Israel, the core of the current Jewish experience. Judgment is neither proffered nor implied relative to the place and type of living by which a Jew decides to lead a life.

Extensive allusions to the Bible and biblical figures, pre-eminent Jewish writers and their literary works, an illustrious British poet’s famous poem, and the role of ethnicity in determining one’s identity are explored in the dialogue. The strength of the dialogue does not lie in the characters’ descriptions; nor does it appear in consequence of external factors or conflicts. Its vigor is forged through the characters’ disclosure of their internal conflicts. In fact, the dialogue maintains a self-motivating pace coinciding with the characters’ ongoing discussion.


Not until the final scene does the audience finally come to understand the importance of the title. At this time in the play a tragedy unravels the dreams of the two women in an unexpected way.


When Unlikely Faces Encounter Memory
The Jewish past is full of sorrowful events beginning with the patriarchs and matriarchs. Even some 4100 years ago, Abraham and his clan had to cope with what was then a new anti-Semitism: adherence to the faith centered on the belief in one God. Throughout this colossal amount of time, persecution, discrimination, oppression, pogroms, and finally the Holocaust have taken their toll on the Jewish people. So much suffering, so much loss, so much tragedy. Truly, the memory of the Jewish nation both in the Diaspora and in Israel reflects the earmarks of every age worldwide for the better part four millennia. And the cogwheel of this memory has always been the value of living as a Jewish people: the good and the bad. However, the linchpin for Jewish survival has consistently taken precedent in the Jewish collective memory. For every Jewish community, then, there is a stirring memory of the suffering endured by its membership.

In this play, the characters debate the existential weight of living with a collective memory reflecting Jewish suffering. Since they literally stand at a bus stop for a rather lengthy portion of the play, they show how casual and matter of fact debating the thrust of their lives actually is in Israel. Changing venues to someone’s nearby garden only accentuates the utter aesthetic value of this debate, for time, space, and motion have dictated meaning in Jewish spheres for ages. With Israel’s having had to act as the capstone of contemporary Jewish culture, it has incorporated fragments and remnants of the world Jewry that has comprised its residency. To remember the past of a religion, people, nation, and country is no easy feat, especially when exploitation, subjugation, and murder have interplayed with the Jewish lives on such a grand scale.

Yet, hope is also a major source of motivation in the Jewish community. With all of the trying times still filling the minds of even this new Jewish generation, it is the hope of a new vantage point, a novel approach, an innovative assessment, and, perhaps, a creative reassessment which could augment the doleful assortments of memory in yet to be seen positive, sanguine ways. The role of the story in Jewish life has the potential to achieve just this end. So the characters engage in story-telling to invent new beginnings.


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