I feel honored to be cast as Eta Lebowitz in the
first American production (see flyer below) of this excellent play on religious fundamentalism as
written by novelist, Naomi Regan. Even though I am not Jewish, I feel this is a
situation that is possible within any tightly-controlled religious sect,
regardless of theosophy. It clearly reflects how, when given an
opportunity, mankind can be quite despotic determining "God's Will" through
a select few and keeping followers within their own society through fear of
transgressing those edicts. We were fortunate enough to have the playwright
Naomi Regan present during the first few days of rehearsal and she is very
much looking forward to being able to see the full production in October.
(From our lips to God's ears!) You are all welcome to come visit the
Raleigh-Durham area and make Women's Minyan a must-see on your list of
things to do!
In addition, she has been kind enough to allow me to use the
following excerpt from her own web site and make available other books she
has written. I do hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to
come to know this perceptive and thought-provoking woman through her books
and articles.
Naomi's
Books
A Minyan of Women by Zipi Shochat
(Ha'aretz, July 4, 2002)
The play, which premieres tonight at
Habima in Tel Aviv, is
based on a true story: a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) woman, wife of a rabbi,
mother of 12, leaves her home and stays with a friend. The community's
"modesty squad" tries in vain to force her to go back. Her friend is
physically attacked, her arm and leg broken. The rabbi's wife is punished:
she is cut off from her children, against her will.
The woman now lives in a small, moldy apartment in Jerusalem's Mea
She'arim neighborhood, trapped by social forces she is unable to overcome.
She is ill, and can barely support herself. Her children live nearby, but
she has not seen them for seven years.
Novelist Naomi Ragen ("Jephte's
Daughter,""Sotah"
and others) learned of this tragic story several years ago from an article
in Ha'aretz. "We've been together ever since then," she says. "They simply
crushed this wonderful woman who never committed any crime. So when Yaakov
Agmon asked me to write a play for Habima, I thought that I would like to
tell this woman's story. It's not a melodrama. It's a story of social truth,
like Ibsen's "A Doll's House."
"I tried to write a play about the status of the Jewish woman in the
strictly Orthodox world," continues Ragen. "The religious woman does not
have any public place in which she can express her opinions in a natural
fashion. Conversely, every man can say whatever he wants from the stage of
the synagogue, on any subject, including current events.
"The religious woman has never had access to the stage. In synagogue, we
pray upstairs in the women's section, while the men get up and say what they
want to the entire congregation. Why shouldn't the woman have the same
right? Is she less intelligent? Does she have fewer interesting things to
say?"
(more)
