When Unlikely Faces Encounter Memory: A One-Act Play Engaging The Imaginations Of Those Who Would Wish To Know The Yearnings Of The Jewish People

Prologue: [A memory: A beautiful afternoon at Sachne, Israel, a limpid, natural spring in the lower Galilee, July 1977. Children's voices screaming, laughing, crying, speaking rather loudly can be heard in the background.]

Panusch: Tzachi, see what a beautiful day it is! Come, let's sit down under this date tree. It'll supply us with shade and the fertility of thought. Attending a regional kibbutz high school, I feel left out from the whole religious scene. You're my cousin. Out mothers are sisters. Look at how wide a world there is between siblings!

Tzachi: Nu (Hebrew word indicating the intention to elicit continued dialogue). So what's there to discuss? My world is so vastly different from yours.

Panusch (Sighs.): So what. We're first cousins . . . the same age. Almost brothers. I want to listen about your world. I have aright. I am a Jew, too.

Tzachi: A Jew?

Panusch: Yes, a Jew.

Tzachi: You really want to knnow? All right, I'll tell you some things. You must study Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) in school.

Panusch: Yes, we do. But I have a feeling it's not the way you do.

Tzachi: That's for sure. Do you question?

Panusch: What? Do we question?

Tzachi: I mean, do you sit in pairs and study commentary on the Torah? Do you have havrutot in your school? I mean, do you take a tractate, a part of the Mishnah (the oral Torah) and its commentary in the Gemara (rabbinic commentary on the oral Torah) on a given passage in the Torah? Try to figure out the meaning of the Torah passage as it relates to the larger picture in which it fits . . . and to your own lives. You see, studying Jewish tradition lets you better understand and follow Jewish law. It's a kind of contesting each other's understanding of the Law.

Panusch: Where does the questioning come from?

Tzachi: (Quietly, almost to himself.) Come in? (Louder as if to an unseen audience.) Come in? It's all part of the same process. I explain a passage, a sentence, or even a part of a sentence. (Louder.) You explain the same passage, sentence, or part thereof. (Louder.) We dispute and cooperate in an endeavor to comprehend the passage, sentence, or part of the sentence as it explains some small portion of the Law. (Louder.) We play off each other and thereby learn from both the Talmudic (pertaining to the central rabbinic text in Judaism) commentator and each other's explanation. To be sure, we both learn something deeply spiritual from this experience. It's a purely chavaya datit (Hebrew: deeply felt religious experience).

Pausch: Oy va'voy (Hebrew: alas), Tzachi. My hearing is fine. You don't need to yell. Can everything be questioned?

Tzachi: What do you mean by everything?

Panusch: (Each group of words is recited faster than the previous one.) All of the creations and creatures on earth. The whole universe. Even God Himself!

Tzachi: Yes, this is Jewish teaching. As Ein Ha-Berakhah, the Lord's work should be for a blessing; but sometimes we may not understand. And then it becomes the work of Temira de Temirin (Hebrew: Kabalah, "concealed of the concealed). The Shoah (Hebrew: Holocaust) might be such an Event, or even mundane events, circumstances, understandings, and misunderstandings. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakki taught the following precept to his disciples: "Don't make a distinction between men. You who make peace between men, you won't face hard times."

Panusch: Ah, I see. The questioning is meant to help us better value the "who" which we make of ourselves, what we are doing here, why we do what we do, why things happen in the world, and, especially, that we must understand that we make the world what it is by relating to it, by responding to it, by interacting with it, and by attempting to become one with it. We live by this principle on the kibbutz.

Tzachi: How so? How could secular Jews possibly live by the teaching of one of our most beloved rabbis and martyrs? I ask this question not to hurt your feelings, but just without any understanding at all.

Panusch: Tzachi, look at me. I'm your cousin. We are blood relatives. As one Jew to the next, as kith and kin, I say to you that your history is my history, your learning is my learning, your dream of shalom is mine as well.

Tzachi: Yes and no. I am dati, an observant Jew. And you? I follow the Law (of the Torah, that is God's Law). And you? I pray three times a day. And you? I fast seven times a year to commemorate the tragedies and suffering of our people: Yom Kippur (Hebrew: the day of atonement); Ta'anit Bechorim (Hebrew: a day commemorating the fact that I am the first-born male in my family.); Tzom (Hebrew: fast) Tammuz (Hebrew: the fourth month of the Jewish calendar); Tisha B'Av (Hebrew: A fast day commemorating the destruction of the two Temples on Mt. Moriah, in Jerusalem, Israel; Tzom Gedaliah; Asarah B'Tevet (Hebrew: the tenth day of the tenth month in the Jewish calendar); and Ta'anit Esther. And you? I lay tefillin (Hebrew: phylacteries) every morning. And you? I wear tzitzit (Hebrew: woolen fringes commemorating the Jewish male's obedience to the One God and His commandments). And you? I always wear a kippa (Hebrew: a skullcap). And you? I have payot (Hebrew: sidelocks on Jewish males based on the Biblical injunction against shaving the corners of one's head). And you? I keep kasher (Hebrew: dietary laws according to the Torah. And you?

Panusch: All true. All true. I can always return to the type of Jew you are.

Tzachi: Teshuva (Hebrew: a Jew's returning to his or her roots, origin, or family so to speak)? Return.I was born into the Jew that I am. My family has carried on the Tradition. And yours?

Panusch: My parents were the children of Jewish socialists. Why even in Russia my grandparents joined a group preparing them to live in Palestine at that time: Hashomer Hatzair (Hebrew: Protect the young). My nationality--belonging to the Jewish nation--is my identity. As for Tradition, we do study Tanakh (Hebrew: Jewish Scriptures or the Hebrew Bible) in school. The Bible, then, is our link to the past; yet the past is not prologue for us; whereas the present and the future is where we place our emphasis. Oh yes, we study Shakespeare. We learn about the key world events, personalities, and lessons and their applications to life experiences. Notwithstanding, we also study the real world through science: the real world and its effects on us: our abilities too contribute to it.

Tzachi: Tikkun Olam (Hebrew: Restoring or repairing the world). Repairing the world, improving the human lot in life--these goals are important Jewish teachings. This concept arises every so often--an understatement--in our school as well. Now you're talking! I can relate to this! We work on community projects. Just this last week we went to a daycare center for mentally challenged adults aged twenty-five to sixty. We read stories to them, played table games with them, and just plain talked to them about our school program. Then the facility director, a rabbi himself, conducted an abbreviated Schaharit (Hebrew: morning prayer service) service. Everyone participated in the morning prayer. The morning was so warm and productive.

Panusch: So, what did you do?

Tzachi: I read a simplified version of the life of Hannah Senesch.

Panusch: A secular Jew?

Tzachi: She exemplified the Jewish pride, determination, and courage of those Jews who could fight back to save the lives of fellow Jews in distress and persecution. True, they were few in number those Jews--many of whom had escaped the clutches of the Nazi regime only to return to gather in the exiles in their most evil perimeters--who showed the world that Jews could not only protest but physically protect their own kind. Of course, the majority of European Jews were defenseless aside from their bare fists.

Panusch: You sound belligerent.

Tzachi: No. There is a beautiful piyyut (Hebrew: a Jewish liturgical poem) composed by a sixteenth-century mystic named Shlomo ha-Levi Alkabetz, "Lekha Dodi." In this liturgical hymn, chanted on erev Shabbat (Hebrew: the eve of the day of rest), one verse delivers my sentiments: Shmor v'zachor. B'dibur echad. Hashimi'anu el ha'meyuchad. Echad u'shmo echad. L'shem u'litiferet ul'tahala. (Hebrew: Keep and Remember" a solitary declaration, the one and only God has had us hear: God is One. His name is One, for honor and wonder and glory.)

It is simultaneously the effort required to sustain the Jewish people and the reason required to stay in touch with the past that allowed for those Jewish heroes, such as Hannah Senesch, to face death in order to save life. In whose name would those proud heroes summon up the strength of their Jewish souls to combat the evil Nazis? In His, or course!

Panusch: You know that here in Israel we kibbutzniks made up a disproportionately large percentage of those fighting for Israel's existence, especially in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Our desire and commitment to preserve the security of our borders has lain at the heart of our determination to secure peace for our people.

Tzachi: Just as "keep" and "remember" go together in keeping the Jewish people in two with God's ways, so too do "faith" and action." The first pair are the meeting place of holding on to Jewish memory; the second, a putting into the present God's plan through human endeavor. And then there is courage . . . .

Panusch: How do we know God's plan?

Tzachi: We don't. We can't. We can only follow His commandments, avoid evil, and do good.