SCENA …

Taking the sacred to the stage, not only decodes the holy texts in ways conventional and not-so-conventional commentaries have not even contemplated, it also translates these texts into [page 244] chaotic art. I use the word 'chaotic' here in the sense of unruly, boisterous, hectic and frenzied. In terms of the profane, the theatre is at once well outside and deeply within the scope – physical and cerebral – of what is not sacred. Because it is more than prose narrative and not necessarily less than spiritual and/or mystical inquiry, it allows for responses to and interpretations of biblical and talmudic texts that do not rely solely on the imagination of an individual sage. Through directorial imagination, it may introduce music to the poetry to create song; movement to testimony to create dance. It may allow instrumental and percussive backing to accompany dialogue and lift it to realms the mere speaking or reading of it aloud to a congregation simply cannot. While I do not suggest that theatre can supplant worship or its actors the divine, however vigorously modern culture with its idols of stage and screen might beg to differ, I do most keenly hold that it may illuminate it. For me, it is critical to light at least a pair of candles in the darkness.

To take each verse of "I Am Woman" and attempt, scene by scene, an account of the play's progress would be a lengthy and not necessarily enlightening modus operandi for the purposes of this paper. I shall be brief regarding a number of verses, for not all spoke to ancient text; neither were all actually subverted by playwright and players. The pious girl, for example, who 'paled as her mother raised her hands to her eyes/ for the blessing over the Sabbath candles', was represented simply by a rendition of the blessing followed by traditional song and dance. The 'Hassid's daughter,/ infused with her father's fervor/ who went out defiant, with her hair cropped,/ to educate the people', used the polemic and rhetoric of the union meeting. Present were rebels and rabble-rousers, Emma Goldman, Klara Lembeck, Rose Schneiderman and Pauline Newman. Feminists before their time and, by definition, thus outcasts, they incited strikes, advocated both free love and birth control, risking their lives each time they mounted their platforms.

The 'barrier-breaker/ who freed love from the wedding canopy,' utilised a moving monologue,(9) that explored the condition of Jewish lesbianism. Its jokes were greeted with faint [page 245] and nervous laughter and its conclusion with a confronting silence before a storm of applause. It was not text-based in its references and therefore not profane in the sense of challenging and restating rabbinic mores and tenets. In the Jewish canon, lesbianism is not, in fact, against the law, because, it has been suggested, such an act was beyond the scope of the otherwise quite vivid, if not fervid, rabbinical imagination. Even, however, to place tales of the sacred matriarchs and heroines on the same stage as lesbianism was seen as a profanity. For this and, I presume, myriad other reasons, one rabbi in our fair town forbade his congregants to buy tickets to the show.

The 'pampered girl' who 'force[d] the gray desert into life' and 'whose fingers tightened around the hoe,/ on guard for the steps of the enemy,' was an irresistible target. Through her we deconstructed the feminist myth surrounding the early Zionists, a move risky and provocative in a city which holds Zionism only marginally less sacred than the Holocaust. I saw it as a necessary evil, in spite of – or perhaps because – I had grown up believing that fairy tale of most passionately of all.

VI

THE PLAY'S THE THING …

I admit that although those scenes which subverted the dominant paradigm were the most difficult to write and the most thorny to communicate my intentions about to director and actors, they were and remain my favourites. It is not simply that I hail from a long line of paradigm subverters or that as a daughter of rag-traders and manufacturers I was brought into the world profoundly understanding the meaning of cutting (not just fabric) against the grain. It goes without saying that my default setting was one of a weaver and a spinner of yarns and that my most beloved tales told of quests ostensibly doomed and unpredictably redeemed by unlikely heroines.

[page 246] As a girl-child, I accepted the exaltation of Rachel's role in Rabbi Akiva's life. Taught the canon by small 'c' and not inordinately erudite conservatives, it seemed quite logical for the times (my own as much as Rachel's) for a woman to subsume her entire life to her man's. To do so for the sake of Jewish learning – there could be no higher cause.

But with more luck than brains as the old Yiddish aphorism has it,(10) I found my way inside the manuscripts. Armed initially with only my schoolgirl's Hebrew, (marginally advanced by those months spent in Israel pursuing the Z.S. Dream), I discovered that all around me (in virtual rather than actual time and space: Australia, unlike Israel and the U.S., offered little by way of serious learning/teaching without ideological, religious or gender constraints) women sought the key to the Hidden Torah. Not 'hidden' in sense of esoteric or impenetrable which, our sages teach, is the true Torah, accessible only to those who have reached the most sophisticated and elevated levels of understanding and holiness respectively. I refer simply to the phenomenon of Torah hidden from women because they were a) illiterate in the language of text, b) forbidden to study much of it should they somehow attain literacy and c) programmed to believe that its innate sacredness was not only better suited to investigation by the male mind but also egregious to the female.

I mention these obstacles because without an understanding of them, the fact of women writing about and staging a performance that questions millennia-old principles has no real context. It is one thing to challenge from a position of power, or at least from one of some precedent and knowledge, quite another to dive in at the deep end of a pool knowing only that to avoid drowning it is imperative to exhale continuously. Creating air-bubbles may guarantee one's eventual rising to the surface, but these self-same bubbles are a fragile defence against the tide of hostility awaiting the head's reappearance above the water-line.

For all that, let us still look deep inside, finding footnotes and aggadah(11) which tell the story behind the story. Such 'afterthoughts', with their often whimsical embroideries of biblical [page 247] subject matter, assumed women's eyes would never see their pages. Thus freed from constraints of 'appropriateness,' flowering with arcane specifics that illuminated the austere original in a strange, mediaeval light, they fearlessly examined physicality, psychology and eroticism. The dazzling narratives of these post biblical, Dark-Age poets penetrated the heart of the fiery text, revealing elemental detail to those both foolish and fearless enough to confront the blaze.

i

I am the exalted Rachel
Whose love lit the way for Rabbi Akiba.

In order to understand my approach to this story, it is necessary to take a brief look at kabbalistic idea of nizozot ha-neshamot (sparks of the souls) extensively developed, although not conceived, by Isaac Luriah and his followers. The roots of all souls, this premise supposes, were once contained in that of Adam, but their sparks were dispersed with the introduction into the world of the very first transgression against the word of God. In each successive gilgul, or incarnation, the souls experience the possibility of restitution for sins committed in previous embodiments. The more effective the reparation, the more closely the souls approach their original structures. Pre-Lurianic Kabbalah suggested that Cain and Abel were reincarnated within Jethro and Moses. David, Batsheba and her husband Uriah play out the drama of Adam, Eve and the serpent, but matters are clearly not resolved within this second incarnation. In Sefer ha-Gilgulim,(12) both Isaac Luria and his student Chaim Vital elaborated on the biblical possibilities of transmigration of the souls, further broadening their account to embrace key characters from the pages of the Talmud. Thus I discovered the story of the earlier, tragic [page 248] incarnations of Rabbi Akiva and his beloved. In a very early draft of the play, the narrative, ultimately much abridged and proclaimed against a background of drums, appeared something like this:

In an ancient tome of the Kabbalah, in a volume called The Book of Incarnations, the sacred words weave a mysterious tale about the obsession of the rabbi and this woman…

Once upon a time there was the only daughter of Jacob, the Patriarch, and her name was Dinah. A prince fell in love with her; his name was Shechem. He raped her and then asked for her hand in marriage. Furious, her brothers, Shimon and Levi, slaughtered Shechem, his father and all his subjects. They said, 'Should our sister be treated as a common whore?'

Centuries pass, The Book of Incarnations relates, and another prince, this time of Israel, whose name was Zimri, fell in love with Kazbi, the beautiful princess of Midian. Zimri challenged Moses publicly, claiming, 'If you can marry the Midianite, Zipporah, can I not take for my wife, Kazbi?' Before all of Israel, Zimri carried her to his tent to possess her. At which, Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron, followed them inside and slew them, impaling both lovers on his one spear.

Again, the centuries pass, and once more, this dual passion is reignited. This time, it manifests in the body of Rabbi Akiva, the wisest of all men. Inside him reside the souls of Shechem and Zimri, but now he has learned restraint. Conversion and marriage pave the way for a passion, whose first spark was lit on the day Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, went out to visit with the girls of the town. Now it achieves the quality of sacred, not strange, fire and it does not destroy. When Rabbi Akiva sees his soul mate one thousand years after the tale began, the story of the wandering gilgulim ends [page 249] without bloodshed, the sparks returned in peace to their original souls.

What both intrigued and incensed me, however, was the fact that this soul mate of Rabbi Akiva's was not the 'exalted Rachel whose love lit the way' for him to be regarded forevermore as the greatest scholar ever produced by the Jewish tradition. It was Rufina, wife of the Governor of Judea, Tyranus Rufus. Tradition is somewhat muddled as to when exactly this union took place, whether Rufina divorced Tyranus Rufus for the rabbi or was widowed by the Governor, or even whether the savage execution of Rabbi Akiva was in some way connected to his temerity for having married (and caused to convert to Judaism) a Roman aristocrat.

All that notwithstanding, it is made quite clear in the Talmud – and in the drama I scripted – that for marrying Rabbi Akiva when he was still only a poor, unlearned shepherd, his first wife, Rachel, was disinherited by her father, Kalba Savua, one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem. She yet went ahead with the marriage, we are told, in the winter. The newly-weds slept in a barn and, when they arose, the scholar-to-be had to pick pieces of straw from her hair. "If I had the money, instead of this straw, I would adorn your hair with a golden ornament that had Jerusalem engraved upon it," the Talmud interpolates,(14) suggesting rather early in the Akiva narrative that we are dealing with a somewhat quixotic character, a romantic, in fact, whose emotional intensity will match that of his extraordinary intellect.

In the same passage, it is clear that Rachel takes the initiative and charges Akiva with the task of going away and becoming a Torah scholar by learning at the Yeshiva. Thus he spends the next twelve years, at the end of which he returns home. Before entering, he hears from the outside how a wicked neighbour taunts his wife. Trying to stay as close as possible to the original text, I wrote the next part of this drama virtually by copying it word for word, changing only the format so it could function as theatre:

[page 250] Neighbour (stands, and moves downstage, talking as she moves): Your father did the right thing disinheriting you! Firstly, your husband is not your kind – he is poor and ignorant and the son of converts! And worse – he left you a living widow all these years.

Rachel: If my husband would listen to me, he would stay in the Yeshiva and learn another twelve years.

Rabbi Akiva (who has been walking towards Rachel and is half-way there, hears her words and says to himself, as he turns around and walks again downstage): Since she is giving me permission, I'll go back.(15)

This evoked the first laugh of the evening, but it was clearly ironic in nature, from an audience which understood the mentality and tacitly approved of it even while acknowledging the inequity upon which it was based.

After an absence of twenty-four years in total, Rabbi Akiva returns as a celebrated sage and teacher, accompanied by 24,000 disciples. Everyone comes out to pay homage to him, his wife and children in rags among them. Rachel is almost not allowed to pass because of her dishevelled and pitiable appearance.

When she came close to him, she fell on her face and kissed his feet. His attendants tried to push her aside but Rabbi Akiva cried out to them, "Leave her alone! My Torah and your Torah are due to her!"(16)

After her husband's poignant acknowledgement of her role, she vanishes entirely from the narrative, but the poet, the dreamer, the advocate of doomed quests, the scholar and the [page 251] lover goes on to experience many more adventures. Who is to say which is his greatest? In order, however, for the sparks of his soul to fulfil their destiny, he must unite with the woman with whom, for a thousand years, he has attempted and failed to find peace. As mentioned above, she takes the form, this time around, of Rufina, going unwittingly to her fate.

Once again, the talmudic text required little adjustment to tell its arresting tale.(17) My script, following its lines very closely in all but the stage directions marked by bullets – an important caveat – do little more than transcribe the action:

Narrator: There was a Roman governor of Judea by the name of Tyranus Rufus. It was his habit to challenge Rabbi Akiva to debates on theological matters, but it was also his habit to lose. One evening, after yet another defeat and humiliation, he came to his wife's chamber.

His Lady: You seem dejected and irate, my lord. Tell me what ails you?

Tyranus Rufus: It is the Jew, Akiva. Each time we meet, he confounds me with his cleverness. It seems I can never best him.

His Lady: You are aware, my lord, that the God of the Jews despises immorality. If you will allow me, I will humble him. I will cause Rabbi Akiva to sin and he will lose his impertinence, his pride and his presumption.

Tyranus Rufus: Do as you understand.

Narrator: So the fine and noble lady, bathed, anointed and adorned herself.

• [page 252] All women, wherever they are on stage strike and hold provocative poses.
  
  
• Tomi plays "May West – Ancient Rome" on piano.
  
  
• Rabbi Akiva now comes centre stage & collapses at the sight of all the female pulchritude. As he collapses, he inadvertently slides through Fred's legs, coming up in front of her to face the audience.

Rabbi Akiva: Oy! (He then proceeds to spit, to laugh and to weep).

The Lady: My lord, are you not well? What is the meaning of such outlandish actions?

(Provocative poses now unstruck and all non-participants return to original seating).

Rabbi Akiva: Two things, I can explain to you, the third, I cannot… I spat, dear lady, because I was remembering the manner in which all of us – the high-born and the lowly – are brought into the world: by a drop of sperm which resembles my spittle. And I wept, dear lady, for the exquisite beauty you parade before me that, one day, will lie rotting in the ground.

The Lady: You must tell me, sir, I insist, why you laughed. Do you find me amusing? An object of mockery? Absurd?

Rabbi Akiva: I laughed for, with the spirit of prophecy God has gifted me, I saw that one day soon, you will convert because of your love for me and we will marry.

(The stage goes to dark except for The Lady who, spot-lit, falls to her knees)(18)

[page 253] Using the device of two women who have been acting as a sort of Jewish chorus commenting on the action, the audience is reminded of Rachel, whom the succeeding drama was intended to make them forget.

2nd Woman: What's your point?

1st Woman: What's my – What about "the exalted Rachel" the one who lit the way so the great Rabbi Akiva could become so great? What happened to her?

2nd Woman: She died.

1st Woman: She died? That was her reward for all her sacrifice?

2nd Woman: That was her reward.

In this, the closing vignette of the scene, my intention was clear: to provide an echo of the fate that ultimately befell the great rabbi himself, recounted in yet another Talmudic tale. With his death, following the death of Rachel (an event which earned no words of record) and after his having consummated his love for Rufina, the sparks may truly have been said to have returned to their original souls.(19)

[page 254] A final note regarding this scene concerns the actor who played the part of Rabbi Akiva. She is an artist much respected in her professional capacity on the Australian stage as well as being highly regarded within the Jewish community. It is fair to say that these tales were as strange and unfamiliar to her as they were to the rest of the cast, but for all that, her eye for dramatic verity was as unfailing as it was unflinching. When she finally rehearsed the scene after much workshopping, she portrayed Rabbi Akiva as a man present in and aware of his physicality and his sexuality. Just writing the words recalls for me the fear – there is no other word – I experienced when I realised that she would play him in this light: as a charismatic man and teacher whose power to enthral women was an essential element of his temperament and makeup. It was clear in her characterisation that he was as much beguiled by as beguiling to women and, when I finally caught my breath, I realised her interpretation had a great deal of merit. I felt that with it she had added another layer of Midrash(20) to the ancient story and I am very much mistaken if I cannot claim that by doing so, she had blurred the boundaries between the sacred and the profane so effectively as to render an understanding of their divergence immaterial.

ii

I am the rabbi's daughter
who offered her chaste body to save a Jewish town
and afterwards set fire to herself.

From the outset, this verse troubled me for a number of reasons, not least of which was a visceral rejection of female martyrdom, especially as espoused in narratives whose origin was [page 255] clearly the male imagination. The only comparable tale – but possibly from a parallel universe – that came to mind as I attempted to counter its force was the story of Queen Esther who had also offered her chaste body as a pledge for Jewish lives, but whose fate was far different.

My first task, as I saw it, was to source this anecdote. Neither Bar-Ilan Project, nor Soncino Classic Collection could help. No rabbi of my acquaintance, neither in Melbourne nor overseas, could do likewise. I emailed around the world and the closest I came was my own rabbi's intuition that this tale probably had its source in a Hassidic tale of the 16th or 17th century. He also wrote of rabbinic debate over the centuries, questioning the morality of Queen Esther's actions, that brought to mind this very tale whose authors, he suspected, felt death an apposite finale for one who had been so defiled, albeit in an honourable cause.

I finally decided to set the scene as a court-case presided over by a less-than-impartial judge. By Draft 13, her character had become The Prosecutor, who is more mystified by the proceedings than judgemental of them, switching from melancholy contemplation to condemnation as she tries both Queen Esther and the nameless woman who came to a fiery end.

Prosecutor: Sister, I have searched everywhere for your story. I have asked scholars and rabbis, sent letters and posted requests. I have searched Talmud and Midrash and found only the echo of an echo, a whisper that shivered on the wind and trembled. Yes, it is true. It happened. Where? When? It is not known. Just that it happened. It was a brave and noble thing, your surrender for the lives of others, but you should have lived in honour thereafter, not burned in flames as a sacrifice to modesty that was never more false.

Woman: You do not understand. They came and they took me and they had me. Thereafter I did not want to live.

[page 256] Narrator: It could have been another way. Listen to the story of a woman in Persia, centuries ago, when the king made it a crime for the virgins of Shushan to hide themselves from the royal search for a suitable queen.

The scene played itself out, how the woman came to offer herself; how Esther, adopted by Mordechai, her uncle, at a very early age, grew up with him, studied Torah with him and learned from him the habits of obedience and love gently.

But then my research took me to strange, heretofore unvisited realms. I came across several opinions as to Esther's marital status, footnotes to footnotes, arguments among the rabbis. I read that she was a perfect saint and Mordechai wanted to marry her. Some say he refrained because he knew God would bring about a miracle through her which would require her to marry the king. Others say that Mordechai intended to marry her, but she was taken to King Ahasuerus before he had a chance. According to a third opinion, Mordechai actually did marry Esther, hoping that since she would no longer be a virgin, she would not be taken to the king.(21) These were hardly the tales I had learned at school.

Thus, when Mordechai directed her to the palace of the king, and subsequently to an audience with him for reasons totally unambiguous, I have her say:

Esther: Mordechai told me I had no choice…he was my love and my husband, but he sent me to the king's palace, to the king's bed. I did my duty. I was accustomed to obeying him.

Woman (to Esther): You cannot understand. You were a queen. Mordechai himself was a prince. All your life, Esther, you dealt only with royalty. I was the daughter of a rabbi. I was destined to marry the son of the rabbi from a neighbouring town. I was quiet, obedient. I [page 257] bent my knee to God, it is true, but it is also true that every man in my family had dominion over me.

Prosecutor: How did we go from that to this? How is the power of the feminine squandered?

This recurring prosecutorial reflection leads the audience down a (garden) path intended to demonstrate the superiority of Esther's approach and outcome. It is true – within the canon, not necessarily within authenticated history – that the queen manages to convince the rabbis to include her saga in the canon. It is a late inclusion indeed, to say nothing of an unheard of course of action for a female to attempt successfully. Nevertheless, when the nameless woman pleads not to be forgotten in the glory of Esther's story and the prosecutor again contemplates the power of the feminine being so squandered, the drama takes an disquieting turn. I propel it in this particular direction based on my unearthing of two more Midrashim, provocative in the extreme, almost surreal. It was a case of now knowing where to look and finally understanding, with both triumph and profound regret, the difference between Hidden and hidden Torah as this latter pertained and still pertains specifically to women. The two Midrashim I translate as follows:

• She [Esther] would rise from the bosom of her [lawful husband] Ahasuerus, immerse herself [in the waters of the mikveh],(22) and sit in the bosom of [her true husband] Mordechai (Megillah 13b)

and

• She behaved modestly in the house of Mordechai for 75 years and did not look upon the features of any man except Mordechai (Targum Esther 2:7)

When I came across the above two commentaries, I was overcome by the both the risk, the bravery and the sheer sexuality asserted by the first, and made uneasy by the use of the [page 258] words 'behaved modestly' (haiytah tznuah) in the second. It was almost as if these were duelling Midrashim, the latter intended to cancel out the chutzpah of the former. Under Jewish law, modesty has multitudinous meanings, most of them repressive, to my mind, in the context of women. It is the abstract noun that justifies the covering of married women's hair, the silencing of their voices in song before men. It swathes them in unbecoming garments meant to conceal all suggestion of femininity and it is vaunted as one of the highest qualities to which a virtuous Jewish woman can aspire. My intuition, now honed on the study of other texts, went on high alert. The word tznuah had been elected neither arbitrarily nor lightly. Used in this context, it demanded I dig deeper still. Emails flew back and forth between rabbi and student. We discussed the laws of marriage, rape and infidelity; we engaged in conjecture and speculation as to the myriad shades and nuances modesty could comprise and all the while, a theory – born of this chance juxtaposition of Midrashim -was flowering within my brain. Finally I thought I understood what was supposed to be elucidated for me and consequently, I concluded the scene this way:

[page 259] Esther: Do not speak to me of the power of the feminine. It is true. I would rise from the bosom of the king to go to the mikveh and then lie in the bosom of my husband, Mordechai, whenever I could. It was not a desecration of the marriage laws. The Torah says that a woman who is raped, who is forced into relations with a man, is not forbidden to her husband. The rabbis decreed that this so-called marriage to Achashverosh was, in fact, a condition of perpetual rape. Thus it was no crime for me to return to my husband.

Prosecutor: But the day Esther chose to go to the king at the behest of Mordechai – albeit to save her people, and not out of desire – but she chose to do so nevertheless – the rules changed. It was no longer considered rape.

Esther: Do not speak to me of the power of the feminine. The Sages have written of me that I behaved modestly in the house of Mordechai for seventy-five years. Do you know what that means? Eventually I returned to him, to my husband, my first and only love. But I had been known, by my own consent, to the king while I was still married. Never again would we – Mordechai and I – be allowed to one another. That is the law. For seventy-five years I desired my mate and I was forbidden to him and he to me.
I behaved modestly in his house.
Each day was a burning.

Prosecutor: So a queen burns and lives (down-light on Esther is extinguished), the daughter of a rabbi burns and dies (down-light on Woman is extinguished. Now only the spotlight remains on the Prosecutor): For the sake of their people, it can be said that both forfeited life. About one, there is a scroll, about the other there is but a whisper that shivers on the wind and trembles when women try to remember.

[page 260]

iii

I am the mother
who, in great hardship,
raised sons to be righteous men.

Before discussing this scene, first a word about stage and set design. To begin, chairs were strategically placed around and across the stage. After the first scene, the players moved constantly to different positions, utilising different chairs when required. They were in continuous flow around the stage, moving backwards and forwards in time and space just by the use of this device. The stage directions will perhaps give a clearer picture.

Chairs are set before curtain rises. Each actor, except Evelyn, enters carrying a plastic washing basket containing her props & costumes. All place their baskets beside their chaisr, do some warm-ups, chat to the other women. At back of stage, a washing line is strung with miscellaneous items including a tallit,(24) a challah cloth and sundry items of underwear. Once props are finished with, they will either be placed back in relevant baskets or hung on the line.

The actors robed and disrobed in front of the audience, always retaining a basic black combination of leggings and T-shirt beneath whatever other costume requirements were designated. This act of dressing and undressing was in itself provocative, as was the hanging of a prayer shawl on a washing line, particularly in close proximity to under-garments. These were decisions taken by the director. When I first heard about, and again, when I finally saw them made real, I once more experienced fear. I was not sure if it was more or less intense than when the actor explained to me her vision of Rabbi Akiva's male physicality, but it was certainly [page 261] acute. I gave myself no choice but to let go, watching in a combination of dread and restless exhilaration as the sacred and profane jostled for primacy.

If memory serves, it was the researcher's notion to illustrate the verse about 'mothers raising their sons in great hardship to be righteous men' with the story of Glückel of Hameln. Glückel was a German diarist in the latter part of the 17th century, a time when literacy of such calibre among Jewish women was a rarity. She began to write following her husband's death, when she also assumed sole responsibility for the family's financial matters. A mother of thirteen, she was, moreover, a successful businesswoman and merchant. Hers is the only complete memoir written by a Jewish woman prior to the nineteenth century.

Radical though she was by the standards of the time, her ideas about Judaism, prayer, the study of Torah and religious comportment were firmly in the Orthodox camp. Ethical business practice was a primary concern of hers as was her belief in the sanctity and value of marriage. She spent a great deal of time arranging appropriate matches for her children.

But it was her high regard for literacy that allowed an idea, which had haunted me to include it from the start, to be created and placed in a scene I had been looking everywhere to anchor.

Perhaps one of the longest strides Orthodox women have made in recent decades is learning to read from the Torah scroll and then actually doing so in public. More recently, women have also been reading in mixed congregations, not in women-only settings: another stride. The difficulty (with the actual reading – not the be confused with rabbinical obstructionism and the multitudinous sanctions effectively banning women from such an act) lies in that the scroll itself contains only the letters of the words – no vowel markings and certainly no indication as to the musical note required for each syllable. Reading, therefore, requires an ability not only to decipher and learn by heart the musical values of the cantillation [page 262] marks (found above the letters in various editions of prayer books and printed Bibles) but also necessitates the reader to be able to recognise each individual word without its vowels.(25)

I gave Glückel the following words to say:

But the fact that I could read and I could write gave me an edge – which I passed on to my children. I did not want a single one of them – male or female – to be strangers to the words of our God.

after which, one of her children climbed the stairs to the platform, above which the washing line was suspended, to illustrate the matter. The point was this: whether the child was male or female, the entire cast was female, playing male roles when necessary. When it came time for Glückel's child to demonstrate his/her literacy, it was inevitable that the most effective method would be to have him/her read a passage from the Torah, within the appropriate musical constructs. It would require a woman from the cast to perform the passage. There was no other way. And this time I felt no fear. It was precisely the point I wanted to make – ideologically and theatrically.

We hit an obstacle when we discovered that the only woman in the cast who knew the technique was our musical director and pianist. She was indispensable in that role and, although she did leave her post to articulate the odd line every now and again, a whole scene was out of the question. This was especially so as a song requiring her accompaniment followed this scene and would entail her performing an undignified sprint back to her grand piano after having solemnly read from the holy scroll. It is true that we had some remarkable singers in the troupe, all of whom could probably have mastered the art, learning it by ear, but all were strangely unwilling. Something rankled in each of them, making them increasingly resistant, progressively more reluctant. Neither the director nor I could convince them. In the wings, I was sure I heard a sighing and a rustling as the sacred and the profane again jostled for ascendancy.

[page 263] I would not delete the scene, let alone change my vision of how it needed to be staged. Neither would any of the actors alter her stance. We had reached an impasse.

Until the director looked at me and said simply, 'You know how to do it. And you can sing. You want the scene? You do the scene.' And before I could object, the clamour of assent and relief from all the other actors rose in unruly delight and above it I could hear the director meditating aloud that I could climb the stairs to the platform, take the prayer shawl from the washing line, wrap myself in it and recite the lines. I shuddered at the thought of such public appropriation of male sancta in a public, albeit profane space and I drew a line in the sand. We settled on having the character – yes, of course it was Rabbi Akiva – who used the shawl in an earlier scene, hang it back on the line, wide and spread out. With a down-light focussing on the tallit and me, the rest of the stage in darkness, I would stand in front of its black stripe-bordered bright whiteness and pray.

And that is how it was. With the help of the musical director, I found a voice I had never sung with before. Instead of its emanating, high and pretty, from my head and throat, it emerged in a deep melodiousness from somewhere beyond my solar plexus. She called it belly. Wherever it came from, as I heard myself soar through the notes, I knew that I was the first woman in my survivor family – Hassidim on both sides before Auschwitz – who had ever raised her voice in public to sing to the glory of God. I had done so in a synagogue and now I had done so upon a stage before nearly one thousand people. To this day, I am unsure which occasion held the greater sacredness. Our sages teach us that our foremost concern must always be our intention. That brings me some measure of solace.