The Politics of Jewish Theatre

Lecture delivered at the Tikun Olam Conference, Vienna, 22 March 2007
By Motti Lerner

This discussion is intended to examine the politics of Jewish Theatre in the 21st century against the backdrop of the macro-political changes that have taken place in the world from the mid-20th century to the present day, and mainly against the backdrop of the phenomenon known as 'globalization', or more precisely, cultural globalization. Cultural globalization is usually defined as the standardization of world culture that enables different cultures to acquire cultural products from one another. "Theatre products" also move from culture to culture - subject to verbal and visual language constraints - but due to the theatre being an extremely powerful tool that examines human phenomena in such great depth, the intercultural shift of "theatre products" is more complex, and we can identify in it two contradictory streams: the global and the particularist. These two streams of thesis and antithesis not only contradict one another but are also mutually enriching - and the synthesis between them will determine the development of world theatre in the coming centuries.

Let us elaborate somewhat on these two streams.
The global stream contains three main components which enable intercultural mobility of productions and plays: the first is Man being a creature with similar attributes in all cultures; the second is the family, in all its forms, being of a similar model in all cultures; while the third is more surprising - many of the principal human archetypes are common to all cultures: God in all his various forms, the angel, Satan, the king and queen, the prophet and prophetess, the saint and sanctity, mother and father, the villain, the warrior, the whore, and so forth. The advances made by the media in the Modern Era enable theatre audiences in any society to identify these archetypes despite the minor differences between them.

The particularist stream reflects the aspiration of every culture to create a theatre of its own and develop theatrical works reflecting the particular in it: its language, the visual images existing in it, its historical and political development and the particular cultural creation in it that has been formed over thousands of years of cultural isolation. As we might expect, political theatre tends towards particularism since it is preoccupied with particular political phenomena.

The clear advantage of the global stream is that it enables unlimited abundance in the enrichment of theatrical creativity. Any writer can be inspired by thousands of other writers, hold a dialogue with them, and develop as both a human being and a writer by means of that dialogue. The clear disadvantage of the global stream is that its global engagement is liable to distance the writer from his private world and from its particular components, and create alienation between him and his writing, alienation that might impair its depth and meaning.

On the other hand, the clear advantage of the particularist stream is that it enables a profound intimacy between the writer and his work, an intimacy that allows the writing process to go deeper, to become refined and reach a pure subjective truth which will create the revelation we seek. The clear disadvantage of the particularist stream is that due to its introversion it is liable to create flawed cultural mutations - just like those likely to be created through intermarriage.

These clarifications demonstrate the great importance of the synthesis between the global and particularist streams: If we participate in the global stream without deepening the particularist stream, our contribution to the global stream will be limited. On the other hand, if we focus on the particularist stream without participating in the global stream, we will become introverted and degenerated. The synthesis between the two can ensure both richness and depth.

Let us begin by discussing the particularist stream, that is, the development of a particular Jewish identity based on Jewish culture, history and religion, and also on the socio-political processes undergone by Jewish society in its thousands of years of existence, especially in recent centuries. What is this identity? As this discussion is not judicial but cultural, I shall try to provide a cultural definition of Jewish identity: a person has a Jewish identity if his collective subconscious contains Jewish experiences and Jewish archetypes. The more Jewish experiences and archetypes he holds in his subconscious, the stronger his Jewish identity is. I have difficulty in accepting Karl Jung's argument that large parts of the collective subconscious are hereditary. It seems to me that it is more correct to assume that they are acquired by our subconscious from the day we are born, while observing the world around us. In other words, we possess a certain degree of control over the contents of our collective subconscious, or to put it in even stronger terms, we have a certain degree of control over the definition of our identity. If this argument is correct and we indeed have a certain degree of control over our identity, this means that we have freedom of choice. We can choose to be, or not to be Jews. And here, of course, we must ask ourselves a further, pretty frightening question: why should we choose to be Jews? Just because our forefathers were Jews? Just because of the fear that if we move away from Judaism, then the anger of the fanatical and terrible God who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation will heighten, and in his wrath he will punish us for it? In our global reality we can reasonably assume that most of us will remain Jews and continue developing our Jewish identity only if it is worth our while. Only if the benefits of our Jewish identity outweigh the benefits we can obtain from other identities. Let us therefore discuss the question of what is our benefit from our Jewish identity.

It seems to me that the answer to this question is quite clear. A large part of the benefit of Jewish identity lies on the bookshelves of libraries, museums, in theatre and cinema auditoriums and in concert halls. Judaism has created cultural works of tremendous scope and profundity. From the Bible, the Mishnah and the Talmud in ancient times, through Maimonides, the poets of medieval Spain, to the vast contribution of Jews to modern culture throughout the world and also in Israel. The characters, images, ideas and plots found in libraries, museums, in theatre and cinema auditoriums can become, over time, archetypical experiences that permeate our collective subconscious and make us deeper people, capable of undergoing deeper cultural experiences. No less a benefit can be obtained by dealing with questions of Jewish existence in our distant and our recent history - dealing with questions of religion, nationalism, survival, law and ethics through Jewish characters creates empathy with them, and they, too, become archetypes embedded in our collective subconscious and contribute to the deepening of our identity and our development as human beings. It is not my intention to state that other cultures are incapable of creating a deep cultural identity, but rather to emphasize that our intrinsic accessibility to our cultural treasures and our historical, political and social processes creates for us an opportunity for cultural benefit that should not be relinquished because of its richness and power.

What are the themes that our engagement with them will intensify this identity? I shall propose a list of ten themes, which is, of course, only partial, but I hope that it can serve as a stepping-stone in the search for other themes, which dealing with them in a theatrical framework is both possible and vital:

1. A reexamination of the foundations of the Jewish religion: God, his appellations, his authorities, his place in our private, social and cultural life.

2. A reexamination of the place of religion in Jewish and Israeli politics.

3. An in-depth examination of the Israeli-Arab conflict, its history and implications, must be conducted not only in the Israeli theatre but also in Jewish theatre throughout the world.

4. A reexamination of the relationship between Judaism and other religions, particularly Christianity and Islam.

5. A reexamination of the relationship between the Jewish community in Israel, where 40% of world Jewry currently live, and other Jewish communities throughout the world.

6. A reexamination of religious pluralism in the Jewish world - orthodox, conservative, reform, and secular.

7. A reexamination of the responsibility of Jewish communities vis-à-vis the fate and welfare of Jewish communities in distress.

8. A reexamination of Jewish morals in the 21st century and a debate on ethical issues arising between people within the Jewish community, and between Jews and people from other communities.

9. A reexamination of modern anti-Semitism in the Christian and Muslim worlds; the link between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

10. The theatre must continue to examine the way in which the Jewish historical memory is sustained in its broadest context in Jewish communities worldwide and in Israel.


These themes are a framework for a discussion on the particularist stream of Jewish political theatre. As I have already stated, this discussion must be held with a dialectical linkage to a discussion on the global stream. I will now move on to the global stream and detail a number of proposed themes for that discussion:
1. The Jewish theatre must deal with global-political subjects from both a historical and contemporary viewpoint, and follow the macro-political changes taking place in the world, from the collapse of the Soviet Union, through the rise of nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe, to China's increasing economic and political power.

2. The Jewish theatre must deal with the process of political, economic and cultural globalization and examine whether it embodies exploitation of the periphery by the Western conglomerates in a way that creates prosperity for a small minority by exploiting billions of poverty-stricken Asians, Africans and South Americans.
3. The Jewish theatre must deal with the process known as "the clash of civilizations" and create possibilities of dialogue between the clashing civilizations.

4. The Jewish theatre must deal with the fate of endangered non-Jewish communities, particularly those threatened by genocide.


The list of particularist and global themes I have mentioned here is broad and comprehensive. It can, in fact, include almost any political subject worthy of a play. The multiplicity of subjects in the list is also its weakness - it is not restricted to a small number of subjects and does not prioritize them. Yet I hope that the list is internalized by theatre managements, playwrights, directors and actors, and that in the end the Jewish theatre will be able to stage political plays inspired by some of these themes. But the large number of subjects has a further, no less important objective that is connected with the special demographic situation of the Jewish people. Jews began their dispersal throughout the world on the day that Jacob and his eleven sons went down into Egypt around 1700 BC, that is to say, some 3,700 years ago. Their dispersal in the world on the one hand, and their maintaining of a clear religious and national identity on the other, turned the Jewish people into a unique national phenomenon. This is not the place to discuss the numerous aspects of this phenomenon, but still, I would like to mention one of them: from time immemorial Jews have been the agents of change and progress throughout the world; progress that began with the development of the idea of monotheism, which negated all the idolatrous religions, continued through the writing of the Bible that laid the foundations of literature and poetry in the ancient world, and later with the writing of the Talmud whose influence on the development of law and justice in the Western world is gradually becoming clear (only recently I read an article on this subject in the annual publication of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute). In the Modern Era, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews continued to make a massive contribution to the development of science, economics and culture, a contribution measured, for instance, by the unprecedented number of Jewish Nobel Prize laureates. The Jewish theatre must continue to be part of this tradition of continuously demanding progress. It must therefore be a laboratory for radical thinking. It must be a laboratory for subversive oppositionist ideas. It must cast doubt upon every establishment, every regime, and every idea. It must protest against every injustice and support all those whose rights are infringed. It must be both farseeing and deep-seeing. Without bias. Without shame. Out of an aspiration to decode human nature, out of an aspiration to bring about a true Tikun Olam.

And indeed, not by chance this conference is entitled "Tikun Olam" - A World Reform - and not "Tikun Ha'am Hayehudi" - which means the reform of the Jewish People. This choice expresses a trend embedded in our collective subconscious as Jews, and reflects our desire to be part of a global stream that encompasses the whole world as our field of activity. As I have contended earlier, the global stream will only be of value side by side with the particularist stream. For two thousand years our particular culture was mainly religious, and only at the end of the 19th century, with the inception of Zionism, was it joined by clear nationalist elements. It was in the wake of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel that these nationalist elements became the main thrust of our particular culture. It is still unclear whether, as many predict, the globalization process will actually weaken nationalism in the world. If it does, then the centrality of the State of Israel in Jewish culture will become weakened, and Jewish culture will have to define a particular identity for itself that is not based on nationalism, and apparently not on religion either. On what, then, will our future particular identity focus? I hope that the focus will be on the same aspiration towards progress, depth, and universal justice - on the same "Tikun Olam", whose importance was sensed by the organizers of this conference, and who chose it as the title of their vision.

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