Save

Print

Email Page

Post Comment

Passing The Love of Women

Play by Motti Lerner and Israel Zamir
Based on Bashevis Singer’s short story Two
Stage adaptation: Hannan Snir
Produced by :Habima National Theatre Tel Aviv

The Play
It is the wonderful story of Zissel and Azriel, a couple of Yeshiva students, in love with each other, yet unable to consummate their love in the small town. Zissel leaves his wife, dresses in her clothes and runs away with his lover to the town of Lublin. There they live together as husband and wife, but they are unable to disconnect the contradiction between their leanings and their beliefs. Zissel, wearing women’s clothes, cannot study in the Yeshiva . Finally Azriel decides to “go back inside” and marry a woman. The animosity between them grows, only their bitter end brings their love to its conclusion.

The playwright's Writing Voyage 

By Motti Lerner

Motti Lerner  Born in Israel 1949. Studied mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Studied theatre in various theatre workshops in London and San Francisco. In 1976-1979 wrote and directed plays for experimental and street theatres. In 1979-1984 was director and dramaturg at the Khan Theatre in Jerusalem. Since 1984 freelance playwright and screenwriter for the major theaters and TV channels in Israel. His plays have been produced in the U.S, England, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Australia. Teaches “political playwriting” and “community theatre” at Tel Aviv University.
In 1992 was writer in residence at The Center for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies in Oxford. In 1994 won the Prime Minister of Israel Award for Writers. In 1997 was Visiting Professor at the Drama Department, Duke University, North Carolina. In 2000 participated in the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. He frequently lectures at European and American Universities on various issues regarding Israeli theatre and especially about Israeli theatre and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. E-mail: motti@macam.ac.il  

One morning, or perhaps it was evening, Israel Zamir called me on the phone and suggested I read a short story by the name “The Two”, written by his father, Isaac Bashevis Singer. I read the story, enjoyed it and pondered. It is one thing to write a story, yet quite another to write under the inspiration of a play. It was clear to me that I could not write a play unless there existed a strong bond, spiritual and emotional, between the characters and myself. What is this bond between the two Yeshiva students from the town of Frampol, Dittel and Azriel and myself? After all, their very existence is essentially different from that of the Israeli existence in which I grew up and in which I write – Israeli existence torn and divided politically, idealistically and morally. Their language is different from mine, their sexual leanings are different, the contents of their bookcase differ from mine and largely they are believers with all their heart, yet I am but a sworn atheist.
It seems to me that the beginning of the bond lay in the intuitive sense that it is possible to shape these two Yeshiva students into being tragic heroes, whose love was more important to them than life and ultimately they both choose death, through a feeling that life in this world has no importance if it is not possible to realize their love. This tragic plan does not appear in the story of Bashevis Singer and although it seems to me that the story benefits from its creation, on the other hand as an incorrigible romantic I could, by means of it, deepen my emotional connection with the two.

The play serves as an allegory for the right of man to set his own limits to his emotional world.
An additional point of contact lies in the sense of the struggle of these two students and is an allegory relating to man’s right to set the limits to his emotional world. Their struggle demonstrates modern man’s right to independence in regard to his life and his loves and his right to assume responsibility for his emotions as opposed to being controlled by the authorities regarding his sex, especially being divine authorities in all their forms: God, the Divine spirit, angels, prophets, priests and rabbis.
The concealed part of the spiritual world of someone whose world has been created through writings of S.Yizhar, A.B. Yoshua and Amos Oz.
A third and no less important point of contact only revealed itself as my writing progressed.
In order to become acquainted with the world of the two Yeshiva students from Frampol I re - read other writings of Bashevis Singer, writings of his brother I.J.Singer, S.Agnon, Mendele the Bookseller and Shalom Aleichem. To my great surprise, I discovered that the characters hurrying around the literary creations of these writers were much closer to me than I had imagined. I – whose spiritual world, created from the writings of S.Yizhar, A.B.Yoshua, Amos Oz and Yoshua Kend – had in this world an additional and concealed sub-world that I had refused to admit to its existence. In this world Hebrew discourse has “Jewish” origins and not “Israeli” origins and has moral discourse both profound and sensitive to problems; it occurs in Eastern Europe; the characters within it suffer and struggle just as those in the greatest tragedies of the world, in spite of the fact that they live in a “small” town.
Writing this play both enriched and deepened my sense of identity, I hope that it will also enrich and deepen the sense of identity of those who watch the play.

Thanks
This voyage of writing would not have reached its goal without much assistance from Israel Zamir and Chanan Snir. My heartfelt thanks go to Israel who helped me much in understanding his father’s creation and especially in creating the different layers within the language used by the various characters in the play, endless thanks to Chanan Snir who, in his great sensitivity and writing, showed me things I had not observed and taught me things I had not learnt.

Apologies

It is impossible to end the description of the voyage without an apology. The author, Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose birth centenary is celebrated at this very time, is one of our greatest writers. I am well aware that I had moved far from the story of “The Two”; I changed characters, added characters, removed others, changed the plot, relationships, and even changed the inner processes that the principle characters undergo. It may be possible that some of the spectators, familiar with the story of “The Two” will raise an eyebrow in surprise from the events they see unfolding on the stage, but I am certain that Bashevis Singer himself, watching us from his heaven, remembers Moshe our leader when our God showed him how Rabbi Akiva gave a sermon to his students. He did not understand yet he saw reason when Rabbi Akiva said to his students: it is all Jewish law – Halacha to Moshe from Sinai. Bashevis Singer, familiar with the long tradition of the law would be able to see this play too, as a sermon relating his own story.

University on an Apple Tree
by Israel Zamir

One day in the late hours of the afternoon in 1984 , I visited my father  Isaac Bashevis Singer in New York. Through the window of the apartment the setting sun was visible, surrounded by a ring of gold and a wind wafted through Broadway. The boulevard swayed her head, her feet buried in a covering of rusty colored fallen leaves. My father was sprawled on the sofa, gazed outside and talked of his life, his literary creations and Poland of the Jews that no longer existed.
“I have brought you a certificate of honor: ‘ Notable Member of the Bet Hatfuzot’  I said, as he glanced at the certificate with a smile of satisfaction on his face. “I have received dozens of certificates of doctor of honor in my life from universities and research institutes, yet you may be surprised to hear that I do not even have a matriculation certificate”. He became quiet for a moment and suddenly smiled, “ on second thoughts, you could say that I gained my education on an apple tree-top. In my youth, I often absconded from the Hassidic ‘cheder’ classroom to the house of the learned Jewish watchmaker named Todros and upon leaving I would hide forbidden - to - read books of non - religious content under my shirt. With my treasure, I would climb up the apple tree that grew in the yard of our house in Bilgoray and would become engrossed in reading. My mother, Bat Sheva comes along (the name Bashevis is named for her), complaining and angry. Because of me, they may dismiss her father from the role of town mayor. Between the branches I became acquainted with the writings of Mendele the Bookseller, Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Perez and others.

Searching for Books in the Market.
When the First World War broke out Jewish organizations in the United States sent food parcels to Poland, to the Jews who suffered immense hunger. Together with the food products, literary creations from all over the world were included in the parcels, translated to Yiddish and amongst them were books by Torgenyev, Tolstoy, De Maupassant, Chekhov, Spinoza and others.
“When I had finished reading, I would wait breathlessly for the next shipment. I would often travel to the neighboring towns and run around their markets searching for books.
I arrived in Frampol, the town of Gimpel the Fool and Zissel, heroes of two of my short stories; to Goray that filled me with inspiration for writing “The Devil from Goray”; to Yozipov – a town from which Jacob was kidnapped in my book “The Slave” and to Lublin, in which based on my familiarity with its pathways, I wrote “The Magician of Lublin”.”

Bilgoray Without Jews
In the month of May 2003, my wife and I were invited to Bilgoray, to a convention on the subject: ‘The Singer Brothers and the World that is Gone’, participants were literary thinkers from Poland and the United States, who lectured on the family in respect to all its generations and on Polish Jewry, gone for ever. At the close of the convention we were taken for a tour, our guide was a professor of literature. Whenever we reached a certain town he quoted from my father’s letters and pointed out buildings in which Jews had lived, Beith Midrashs, Synagogs , Mikves– a Jewish world wiped out by command, consumed by fire.
At the time I suggested to my father that we travel to Poland together yet he declined. “If there were Jews living in Bilgoray or in Frampol – believe me, I would be there in no time, I would feel as if I was part of the family. I remember every passageway, every ‘learned man’s’ house, where the circumciser lived and where to find the butcher, but I will not go to a Poland with no Jews living there.”
The play “Passing the Love of Women " was written based on one of my father’s stories (“The Two”) started in Frampol and ended in Lublin. The play tells of Jewish life, a complicated relationship and irregularity, the results of which trouble us even today.

About Isaac Bashevis Singer

In one of his more light-hearted books, Isaac Bashevis Singer depicts his childhood in one of the over-populated poor quarters of Warsaw, a Jewish quarter, just before and during the First World War. The book, called In My Father's Court (1966), is sustained by a redeeming, melancholy sense of humour and a clear-sightedness free of illusion. This world has gone forever, destroyed by the most terrible of all scourges that have afflicted the Jews and other people in Poland. But it comes to life in Singer's memories and writing in general. Its mental and physical environment and its centuries-old traditions have set their stamp on Singer as a man and a writer, and provide the ever-vivid subject matter for his inspiration and imagination. It is the world and life of East European Jewry, such as it was lived in cities and villages, in poverty and persecution, and imbued with sincere piety and rites combined with blind faith and superstition. Its language was Yiddish - the language of the simple people and of the women, the language of the mothers which preserved fairytales and anecdotes, legends and memories for hundreds of years past, through a history which seems to have left nothing untried in the way of agony, passions, aberrations, cruelty and bestiality, but also of heroism, love and self-sacrifice.

Singer's father was a rabbi, a spiritual mentor and confessor, of the Hasid school of piety. His mother also came from a family of rabbis. The East European Jewish-mystical Hasidism combined Talmud doctrine and a fidelity to scripture and rites - which often merged into prudery and strict adherence to the 1aw - with a lively and sensually candid earthiness that seemed familiar with all human experience. Its world, which the reader encounters in Singer's stories, is a very Jewish but also a very human world. It appears to include everything - pleasure and suffering, coarseness and subtlety. We find obstrusive carnality, spicy, colourful, fragrant or smelly, lewd or violent. But there is also room for sagacity, worldly wisdom and shrewd speculation. The range extends from the saintly to the demoniacal, from quiet contemplation and sublimity, to ruthless obsession and infernal confusion or destruction. It is typical that among the authors Singer read at an early age who have influenced him and accompanied him through life were Spinoza, Gogol and Dostoievsky, in addition to Talmud, Kabbala and kindred writings.

Singer began his writing career as a journalist in Warsaw in the years between the wars. He was influenced by his elder brother, now dead, who was already an author and who contributed to the younger brother's sprtritual liberation and contact with the new currents of seething political, social and cultural upheaval. The clash between tradition and renewal, between other-worldliness and faith and mysticism on the one hand, and free thought, secularization, doubt and nihilism on the other, is an essential theme in Singer's short stories and novels. The theme is Jewish, made topical by the barbarous conflicts of our age, a painful drama between contentious loyalties. But it is also of concern to mankind, to us all, Jew or non-Jew, actualized by modern western culture's struggles between preservation and renewal. Among many other themes, it is dealt with in Singer's big family chronicles - the novels, The Family Moskat (1950), The Manor (1967), and The Estate (1969). These extensive epic works have been compared with Thomas Mann's novel, Buddenbrooks. Like Mann, Singer describes how old families are broken up by the new age and its demands, from the middle of the 19th century up to the Second World War, and how they are split, financially, socially and humanly. But Singer's chronicles are greater in scope than Mann's novel and more richly orchestrated in their characterization. The author's apparently inexhaustible psychological fantasy has created a microcosm, or rather, a well-populated microchaos, out of independent and graphically convincing figures. They bring to mind another writer whom Singer read when young - Leo Tolstoy.

Singer's earliest fictional works, however, were not big novels but short stories and novellas, a genre in which he has perhaps given his very best as a consummate storyteller and stylist. The novel, Satan in Goray, written originally in Yiddish, like practically all Singer books, appeared in 1935 when the Nazi catastrophe was threatening and just before the author emigrated to the USA, where he has lived and worked ever since. It treats of a theme to which Singer has often returned in different ways and with variations in time, place and personages - the false Messiah, his seductive arts and successes, the mass hysteria around him, his fall and the breaking up of illusions in destitution and new illusion, or in penance and purity. Satan in Goray takes place in the 17th century, in the confusion and the sufferings after the cruel ravages of the Cossacks, with outrages and mass murder of Jews and other wretched peasants and artisans. The people in this novel, as elsewhere with Singer, are often at the mercy of the capricious infliction of circumstance, but even more so, their own passions. The passions are frequently of a sexual nature but also of another kind - manias and superstitions, fanatical hopes and dreams, the figments of terror, the lure of lust or power, the nightmares of anguish, and so on. Even boredom can become a restless passion, as with the main character in the tragi-comic picaresque novel, The Magician of Lublin (1961), a most eccentric anti-hero, a kind of Jewish Don Juan and rogue, who ends up as an ascetic or saint.

This is one of the most cnaracteristic themes with Singer - the tyranny of the passions, the power and fickle inventiveness of obsession, the grotesque wealth of variation, and the destructive, but also inflaming and paradoxically creative potential of the emotions. We encounter this tumultuous and colourful world particularly in Singer's numerous and fantastic short stories, available in English translation in about a dozen collections, from the early Gimpel The Fool (translated 1953), to the later work, A Crown of Feathers (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as, The Spinoza of Market Street (1961), or, A Friend of Kafka (1970). The passions and crazes are personified in Singer as demons, spectres, ghosts and all kinds of infernal or supernatural powers from the rich storehouse of Jewish popular imagination. These demons are not only graphic literary symbols, but also real, tangible beings - Singer, in fact, says he believes in their physical presence. The middle ages rise up in his work and permeate the present. Everyday life is interwoven with wonders, reality spun from dreams, the blood of the past with the moment in which we are living. This is where Singer's narrative art celebrates its greatest triumphs and bestows a reading experience of a deeply original kind, harrowing, but also stimulating and edifying. Many of his characters step with unquestioned authority into the Pantheon of literature, where the eternal companions and mythical figures live, tragic and grotesque, comic and touching, weird and wonderul people of dream and torment, baseness and grandeur.

Plays and Films by Motti Lerner

1. KASTNER – A political/historical drama about the tragic negotiations conducted by the Jewish community in Hungary during World War II with Adolph Eichmann, head of the Gestapo unit 4-B on rescuing the remains of European Jewry. Originally produced by the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv (1985). Winner of " Play of The Year" award (1985). Also produced by the Heilbronn Theatre, Germany (1988). Available in English and German.

2. THE WITNESS – A drama based on a novella by Shulamit Har’even about a young Jew who fled from Poland to Palestine in 1942 whose reports about the catastrophe of European Jewry was believed by no one. Produced by the National Theatre for Youth, Tel Aviv (1986)

3. PANGS OF THE MESSIAH – A political drama about the Right-wing settlers in the West Bank who resist the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan and blow up the holy mosques in Jerusalem to sabotage it. Produced by the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv (1987). Available in English.

4. PAULA – A monodrama about Paula Ben-Gurion, the wife of the first prime minister of Israel, in which she questions many of the issues her husband dealt with. Produced by the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv (1987).

5. EXILE IN JERUSALEM (Originally titled “Else”) – A drama based on the last five years of the life of the great German-Jewish poetess Else Lasker Schuller, who fled from Nazi Germany in 1933 and found refuge in Jerusalem where, in spite of her greatness, she died isolated and forgotten. Originally produced by the Habima National Theatre, Tel Aviv (1990). Also produced at the Royal National Theatre Studio in London (1992), The Jewish Ensemble Theatre in Detroit (1993), Tri-Buhne Theatre in Stuttgart (1994), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Massachusetts – with Julie Harris in the title role (1994), the Wienkelwiese Theatre in Zurich (1995), Theatre “J” in Washington DC (1998), La-Mama Theatre in New York (1998), Freie Buhne theatre in Vienna, Salt Pillar Theatre in Melbourne (2000). Bamah Theatre in Berlin (2002) Available in English and German.

6. POLLARD – A political drama about the scandal created by the Israeli intelligence services that hired an American Jew employed by the American navy to spy for Israel. The play was produced by the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv in 1995 while Pollard is still in an American jail. Available in English.

7. LOVES AT BITANIA - A television drama about the dramatic changes that took place in the social and moral structure of the kibbutz in the last decade. Produced by Israeli Television. (1993)

8. KASTNER'S TRIAL - A three-part television drama, based on the Kastner Affair, in which the leader of the Hungarian Jewry during World War II was accused of collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of Hungarian Jewry, and who was later assassinated by a Right-wing militant in Tel Aviv in 1957. Produced by Israeli Television (1994). Winner of the Israeli Academy Award for the best T.V Drama. (1995)

9. AUTUMN – A drama about a middle-aged farmer who falls in love with his former lover’s daughter, but is caught by his wife and children who kill him to stop the affair. Originally produced by the Beit Lessin Theatre, Tel Aviv (1996). The play was also produced by the Heilbronn Theatre, Germany (1996), at La-Mama Theatre in New York (1996) by Duke University Drama Program (1997) and by Georgetown University Drama Program (2001) Available in English and German.

10. BUS 300 - A five-part television drama about one of the most traumatic scandals in the Israeli secret services. Four terrorists hijacked a bus and were stopped by the army. Two of them were taken alive after the army broke into the bus, interrogated by the secret service and killed immediately afterwards. The government issued a statement that all four terrorists were killed in the attack, but press photographers had taken pictures of the two terrorists who were taken alive from the bus. The drama includes the struggles between the government, the attorney general, and the secret services that were trying to bring the scandal to an end, each in its own way. Produced by Israeli Television. (1997)

11. EGOZ - A three-part television drama about the flight of Moroccan Jews to Israel in the 50’s and the early 60’s. The drama describes the organization of a group of 44 Jews by the Mossad, their journey from Casablanca to the Mediterranean, and how they perished on the boat “Egoz”, which sank in a storm. Produced by Israeli Television. (1998)

12. THE MURDER OF ISAAC – A play about the assassination of Yitzhak (Isaac) Rabin, Israel’s former prime minister who was assassinated after initiating peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The play explores the infrastructure of Israeli society in an attempt to present the deep internal conflicts that led to this tragic event. Produced by the Municipal Theatre of Heilbronn, Germany (1999) Available in German and English. The play has had staged readings at: Theatre “J”, Washington (2000), “Famous Door”, Chicago (2001) “Center Stage”, Baltimore (2002), and A.C.T, San Francisco (2003)

13. THE INSTITUTE - A 12-part television drama series that takes place in an institute for psychotherapy and deals with the life of the therapists, the life of the different patients, the relationships between therapists and patients, etc. Produced by Tel-Ad for Israel Television Channel 2 (2000)

14. A BATTLE IN JERUSALEM – A three-part television drama that takes place during the 1948 War of Independence. A group of 20 soldiers is sent to take an Arab position near Jerusalem. After twenty hours of terrible fighting they decide to retreat, but as they are unable to carry their wounded, they blow up the position with the wounded in it. Produced by Israel Television Channel 1. (2002)


15. COMING HOME - One Act play which tells the story of a young soldier who returns from his army service at the occupied territories suffering severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Originally produced by Tzavta Festival for One Act Plays (2003). Further produced as part of the play GEGENSETIEN written by a group of 8 Israeli and Palestinian writers in Heilbronn, Germany (2003), and by Golden Thread Theatre in San Francisco (2003).


16. HARD LOVE – A play about a secular writer and his ultra-Orthodox ex-wife who are trying to re-marry after twenty years of divorce, but discover that they have changed so much that living together is impossible. Produced by Haifa Municipal Theatre (2003)

17. THE SILENCE OF THE SIRENS – A TV feature film that takes place in the headquarters of the Israeli Army Intelligence during the 10 days before the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The film explores the reasons why the head of the military intelligence couldn’t foresee the coming war in spite of the accurate information he had. Produced by Israeli TV Channel 2 (2003)

18. PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN – A play inspired by “Two” a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (written in collaboration with Israel Zamir) about two yeshiva students in 19th century Poland who discover that they are homosexual, and one of them has to disguise himself as a woman so he can live together with his lover. First Produced by Habima National Theatre, Tel Aviv (2003). Another production is scheduled for May 2004 at Theatre “J” in Washington DC.

Related Links: