Jewish theater is being censored for the bazillionth (a real number, probably) time. On October 22, news broke from the archdiocese of New York that the Connelly Theatre, owned by the Roman Catholic Church and known for groundbreaking stage productions such as “Circle Jerk,” “Kate” and “Job,” would no longer allow any work that does not fit within the doctrines of the Catholic Church to be presented or filmed in its space.
This updated content guideline came as a shock to at least three New York City theater makers who planned to rent out the venue, two of which were scheduled to put up shows by or about Jewish people. New York Theatre Workshop, who planned to put up a stage adaptation of transgender Rabbi Abby Chava Stein’s memoir “Becoming Eve,” was told that the work may no longer be performed at the Connelly. And in September, the Church canceled Jewish comedian Zach Zucker’s show, which was scheduled to perform at the Connelly, at the last minute. Though the details of the content guidelines and what is considered complementary to Catholic doctrine according to the archdiocese hasn’t been revealed to the public, works that prominently feature topics about gender, sex and reproductive rights have been at the top of the hit list.
But this isn’t just an isolated incident. For as long as the Jewish people have been allowed to partake in stage performance— yes, allowed— our art has been challenged by Tsars, Puritans, Nazis and obscenity laws.
Seeing as there is no agreed upon definition (that I can find, anyway), I define Jewish theater as theater made by, for, or about Jewish people. The most relevant and influential form of Jewish theater in the West is without a doubt Yiddish Theatre, which finds its roots in the Purimspiel — an Ashkenazi Jewish tradition which tells the story of Purim adapted from the Scroll of Esther live on stage. From the Purimspiel came the basis for a proliferation of Yiddish plays, musical comedies, satires and more in the 19th century, ushering in an era of artistic liberation for the Jewish people. However, great success for the Jews, as it often does, came with great consequences. Yiddish Theater was banned entirely from Russia in 1883 after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II was blamed on the Jews, which in turn caused an increase in pogroms. This ban did nothing to stop the Yiddish Theater from developing further and only caused it to run away to other countries like Poland and the United States.
Fleeing to the United States was, in one of many beginnings, very fruitful for Jewish theater practitioners. At the height of its success there was a Yiddish Theater District in New York (located in what we would now call the East Village) and at least 22 Yiddish theaters dedicated to the genre. It was in the Yiddish Theater district that great acting teachers of the 20th century like Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, who would go on to teach generations of actors for the stage and screen, got their first experience with the proscenium play. For an American audience with Puritan foundations, however, Yiddish theater was incredibly raunchy and crass. In contrast to Europe which had for centuries put on suicidal soliloquies by Shakespeare and moody monologues by Moliere, theatre had actually been banned in the United States upon the Puritans arrival, who believed that theater could only encourage sexual sin. Theater performance would only begin to gain popularity in the United States through racist minstrel shows of the antebellum period. Jewish theater found itself being censored once again in 1923 when sensitive audiences saw the opening night of “God of Vengeance,” a play by Sholem Asch which features the first kiss between two women ever seen on Broadway. The producer and cast were arrested and charged with obscenity.
In the American education system, Jewish theater is continually challenged. In 2006, 59 years after the Red Scare and HUAC Trials, a Missouri public high school principal banned a performance of “The Crucible” by Jewish playwright Arthur Miller, citing potential backlash from the community and controversy surrounding the classic. To those who think this may be a byproduct of Southern conservatism, consider the backlash faced by a Catholic high school’s production of “Cabaret” in the San Fernando Valley of California. The musical, which takes place in the Weimar Republic and follows the Nazi’s rise to power, was described by objectors as “hav(ing) no positive moral lessons… It is dangerous for the minds and souls of the children performing…” In 2015, one of our century’s foremost Jewish playwrights Paula Vogel premiered her play “Indecent,” which recounts the unrest surrounding Asch’s “God of Vengeance.” In 2023, 100 years after the Broadway premiere of “God of Vengeance,” “Indecent” was set to be performed at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida. It was shut down on its first day of rehearsals by the Duval County school board in accordance with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Just a month later in February of 2023, a Kansas school board voted to ban “The Laramie Project” from high school English classrooms, a verbatim theater piece co-written by Jewish playwright Moises Kaufman about the brutal and homophobic murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard.
Outside of the United States, Jewish theater has been banned countless times. In 1933, a cultural federation of German Jews called Der Jüdische Kulturbund was formed in an effort to create employment for Jewish performers of a variety of artistic disciplines in Nazi Germany. Their inaugural theater performance, “Nathan the Wise” by Lutheran playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, took place on October 1st, 1933, in the Berliner Theater. “Nathan the Wise” is about Jewish, Christian and Muslim characters in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade and makes the case that religious tolerance and diversity is not only possible, but central to humanity. The play had its curtains called by Nazi officials after only one night of performances. In Pinochet’s Chile, “Fiddler on the Roof” was banned for its “marxist tendencies.” According to the country’s then Secretary General, Colonel Pedro Ewing Hodar, marxism was something “of which the Jewish people as well as our country have been victims.” Apartheid South Africa banned “Godspell,” a musical about the Gospel of Matthew by Jewish composer Stephen Schwartz, in 1973 due to the presence of a racially integrated cast.
As a Jewish playwright myself, I know that bans like these exist in order to control the narrative around Jewish people and stoke fear about those who may be identified as “different.” A musical like “Parade” which details the lynching of Jewish American Leo Frank in 1915 Georgia is met with antisemitic protests at a Broadway theater by neo-Nazis, but the portrayal of Shakespeare’s Shylock, who some claim is an antisemitic character and was portrayed exclusively as such until the 20th century, is played on stages around the world with little to no outrage. The Archdiocese of New York’s refusal to stage NYTW’s “Becoming Eve” is nothing more than an attempt to suppress Jewish and queer voices because they are scared of what such an intersectional play which encourages deep questioning could ask of their audience.
When art by anybody is censored, we are all censored. When speech is at risk, the state of our democracy itself is at risk. I will continue to lift my voice up loudly in the tradition of the many Jewish scholars and yentas before me, and I hope that you will too.
