AFTERMATH …

At the play's conclusion, there was a standing ovation, some cheering. I remember wanting that part of it to last forever. There were reviews. The Jewish press, with its unerring ability to reflect the prevailing mood of the community, particularly in all matters concerning feminism – condescending and somewhat disapproving – had sent a reviewer, who knew little about theatre and less about Judaism, to write up the show. She damned us with faint praise. The following week, the paper had the good grace to publish several protesting responses. Ameliorating, though never quite erasing the slight, our city's only morning newspaper, The Age (secular, disinterested), published a review that warmed the cockles of twelve exhausted hearts.

Most difficult to swallow was the show trial, or what the Jewish Museum called a 'panel discussion' which followed some weeks after the fact. A goodly number of the Museum's patrons come, as it happens, from the Orthodox side of town and had been more than somewhat put out by my interpretation of the way I felt women in Judaism should be celebrated. They – and by they, I mean the Orthodox women, the wives who humbly bend their heads and pale at the Sabbath lights – wanted a right of reply, wanted to put their side of the story. It would have been less absurd, I suppose, if any of them had even attended the show. As it was, I was obliged to lend at least one of them my DVD of the event in order to assist her in mounting her attack. I drew the line at acceding to her demand for a copy of my working script.

The panel was presided over by a noted lawyer and community leader. 'What we will see here tonight,' she began by remarking, 'is what I like to call "civilised Judaism" – a singularity whereby everybody is permitted to express her opinion and everyone else is obliged to listen politely." And thus indeed it appeared to proceed. The apologists even claimed later that only women could be broad-minded enough to sit at the same table altogether – the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Orthodox – and discuss such issues in harmony; but they were, as I said, the apologists.

[page 265] I will always feel that in that night of the panel discussion lay the true profanity. With a limitless sense of fascination and enchantment, with no little anger, resentment, antipathy and some fury, and also, as it transpired, with a great deal of love, the actors, the director and I had crafted a play which attempted to remove the sacred from its guardians and expose it to the bright lights of stage and the scrutiny of audience. For the first time I felt I had been able to write, and have spoken on my behalf by actors who knew well how to speak, those words closest to and most deeply within my heart. I could say on the stage all that had been silenced, that could never be said in a synagogue and I had indeed said it. It had been honoured by applause and by a full house rising to its feet but, after all was said and done, the same organisation which had facilitated that experience now had me standing before a different audience, justifying my stance to people who would as lief have silenced me then as they would have prevented others – as they had themselves – from attending the play.

With a smile on my face, so that it could pass for "civilised Judaism," I heard myself declare, "None of this is really about religion. It is about the freedom to speak and write our truth. And my truth is that your truth angers me but I have neither ability nor desire to silence you. I do, however, desire most strongly to be left alone by you. You hold your truth, on the other hand, to be absolute and unarguable. And while you do not have the power to silence me, I feel compelled to ask whether you would if you could."

These words were not met by a standing ovation but I said them and I knew they had been heard and understood. I would settle for that.

In the aftermath, the desire to be heard "in my truth" does not, in all truth, wane. I am as confused as ever about matters of the profane, of chaos and of exile. From my ergonomic chair behind my ergonomic desk I can only watch as they are all forced to coexist alongside the phenomena of the cosmos, the in-gathering and the sacred. I cannot know the true dwelling places of these eternal antagonists, just as I cannot know which will gain ultimate ascendency or which, in fact, can lay the greater, more righteous claim to doing so. I do know, however, that taking the scolls out of their arks and opening them to the gaze of women, does not profane them. I know, too, that taking the black fire from the white and placing it in the hands of a [page 266] director and on the tongues of actors so that it may be seen and heard by many more people than would otherwise have even suspected its very existence, also pays it high tribute.

The words and the tradition are strong enough to bear such exposure. They were extant long before my pen sought to play with their many-facetedness, creating from them what I could, and they will survive me by at least as many millennia again.

For now, it is enough to know just that.

Endnotes

1. Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard R Trask (San Diego: Harcourt, 1987)
2. Pritzker Edition of The Zohar, trans. Daniel C. Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004) p. XXXI
3. ibid p. 11
4. "Thus we have learnt that the Torah was written with black fire on white fire." The Zohar, Bemidbar, Book III, Page 154b. But which part of the sacred scroll is constituted of which fire is not self-evident.
5. With thanks to Marcia Falk, its translator, for permission to do so.
6. "I Am Woman" by Malka Heifetz Tussman, translated from the Yiddish by Marcia Falk. Translation copyright (c) 1992 by Marcia Lee Falk. Excerpted from The Book of Blessings by Marcia Falk (Harper, 1996; paperback, Beacon Press, 1999). Also in With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman, translated by Marcia Falk (Wayne State University Press, 1992).
7. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Legislative Council, Fifty-fourth Parliament, First Session (April 19, 2002). Extract from Book 3.
8. It is necessary to note that "the Holy Blessed One" is a feminist revision. Literal translation of this version of the Name (HaKadosh Baruch Hu) is the Holy One, Blessed be He).
9. adapted for the stage by my researcher, Rebecca Forgasz, from "The Letter…and the Word" by Hinde Ena Burstin (Generation Vol 1 & 2, October 1996)
10. Mit meyr mazl vie farshtandt
11. rabbinic tales and legends explicating both law and morality, held to be as sacred as the text they interpret and as divinely inspired.
12. Printed in Frankfort, 1684 and Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim ( first printed in 1875) are works transcribed and developed by Chayim Vital, foremost student of Isaac Luria
13. The final draft of A Celebration of Women was numbered Draft 13.
14. Talmud Bavli: Nedarim (50a)
15. ibid. Ketubot (63a)
16. ibid.
17. Talmud Bavli: Avodah Zarah (20a)
18. Scene II, A Celebration of Women
19. Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters.5 Said Moses, 'Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?'6 He answered, 'There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws'. 'Lord of the Universe', said Moses; 'permit me to see him'. He replied, 'Turn thee round'. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows7 [and listened to the discourses upon the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master 'Whence do you know it?' and the latter replied 'It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai' he was comforted. Thereupon he returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, 'Lord of the Universe, Thou hast such a man and Thou givest the Torah by me!' He replied, 'Be silent, for such is My decree'.8 Then said Moses, 'Lord of the Universe, Thou hast shown me his Torah, show me his reward'. 'Turn thee round', said He; and Moses turned round and saw them weighing out his flesh at the market-stalls.[ R. Akiba died a martyr's death at the hands of the Romans during the Hadrianic persecution]. 'Lord of the Universe', cried Moses, 'such Torah, and such a reward!' He replied, 'Be silent, for such is My decree'. (Menachot 29a)
20. Midrash (pl. Midrashim) is a technique of interpreting biblical narrative. Divided between Aggada (parables, theology, allegory, homily and ethics) and Halakha (law and moral codes), it adds respectively dimension and latitude to the basic account as well as explicating and elaborating upon divine edict.
21. Yalkut Me'am Loez – the Book of Esther: Megillah Chapter 1; Rabbi Elisha Gallico; Maamar Mordechai
22. Ritual bath
23. Scene VII A Celebration of Women
24. prayer shawl
25. In Hebrew, vowel values are not expressed as letters between consonants but as symbols beneath the letters