Indecent

“NAKHMEN. Wait. Wait. Am I still a woman here? Saying this to another woman? I am not reading this garbage.”

Nakhmen’s disgust at the love between Manke and Rifkele is typical of anti-gay attitudes in the 20th century. The tension between what is acceptable and what is true and authentic converges here; Sholem is representing on stage that which men like Nakhmen think is inadmissible, shameful, and indecent.

“PERETZ. Asch. Asch. Who is your audience?

ASCH. I want to write for everyone.

LEMML (To himself). Yes—

ASCH. —You told me we need plays in Yiddish which are universal.

PERETZ. Plays that represent our people as valiant, heroic—

ASCH. —Why must every Jew onstage be a paragon?!!

NAKHMEN. You are representing our people as prostitutes and pimps!

ASCH. Some of our people are!

PERETZ. You are pouring petrol on the flames of anti-Semitism. This is not the time.

ASCH. When! When will be the right time?”

Sholem points out the hypocrisy of calling for universal Yiddish plays that only depict Jewish people as virtuous. Peretz wants Yiddish literature to fight against the persecution and dehumanization that Jewish people are facing. Sholem, on the other hand, envisions a future where Jewish stories can depict the true range of human experiences.

“ASCH. Mr. Peretz—it is because of you that we are creating a Yiddish renaissance—

PERETZ. Come, come—Yiddish is our mother tongue. The language of our myths, our songs . . .

ASCH. Our streets. Our gutters. Our desire.”

Yiddish is a fundamental part of Jewish Identity and Language. Sholem argues that Yiddish can be used to talk about the more difficult and controversial parts of life, not just the good.

“FREIDA. But on one thing I am completely lost at sea: How do I play a Jew?

(Elsa blinks at Freida.)

Or is the proper word Jewess?

ELSA. Mrs. Freida, I am Jewish.

FREIDA. That is very brave of you.

ELSA. Very, very secular, very…

FREIDA. I consider us, first and foremost, German.”

Frieda feels more comfortable erasing Elsa’s Jewish identity and thinking of her as exclusively German instead. Her discomfort is connected to 20th-century German antisemitism, which relied on a perceived tension between being Jewish and being German. When Freida tries to assure Elsa that she sees her as German, rather than Jewish, she is implying that she cannot be both—and that being Jewish is somehow lesser.

“DOROTHEE. Reina! We are the first generation that gets the chance our parents never got. To tell our stories. On American stages. We are moving uptown to the Village and I want you to go with me! Please speak English with me!”

Dorothee and Reina both feel the burden and responsibility of assimilation to American culture. Their Jewish Identity and Language are at odds with the desire to share their stories with a wider American audience. The cruel irony is that if they are to take advantage of the sacrifices their parents made in coming to America, they must in turn sacrifice the very parts of their identity that they want to represent onstage.

“SCHILDKRAUT. But when people hear Rifkele they got to hear a pure girl onstage. No shtetl, no girl off the boat. They got to see their own American daughter. We have to let you go.”

The problem of Antisemitism, Representation, and Decency here is that an American audience is only interested in the story of a Jewish girl if that girl sounds American. Reina, an actual Jewish lesbian, is not palatable for an American audience, so she has to be replaced with an actress who has no personal connection to Rifkele’s experiences.

“REINA. This will be the only role in my lifetime where I could tell someone I love that I love her onstage.”

Reina is devastated to lose the chance to play Rifkele. She wanted a chance to portray Lesbianism, Freedom, and Hope for the Future on stage; as a Jewish lesbian, such an opportunity to play a character so similar to her lived experience is unlikely to come up again.

“VIRGINIA. Did I misread the play? I thought we were lesbians.

DOROTHEE. I—I—

VIRGINIA. Did I say something wrong?

DOROTHEE. I like to think all the layers of love—sister, mother, daughter—”

Dorothee wants to hide her sexuality from Virginia, so she tries to downplay the relationship between Rifkele and Manke. In a society where her identity is considered indecent, Dorothee has to be careful about openly discussing lesbianism. She pretends that she sees it as a more universal love story to avoid suspicion.

“LEMML. Maybe how your Rifkele feels for Manke is a sin in your Church. In this play, how you feel for her and she for you—to me—after the Messiah comes. No hate. No beating. No sin.”

To Lemml, the relationship between Manke and Rifkele is not sinful, but rather a beautiful representation of a better future. After the Messiah comes, there will be no sin in their love, and they will not face hate or persecution. He tries to communicate this idea to Virginia by appealing to what he understands of her religious beliefs.

“LEMML. God forbid the goyim think ladies who work the street are human beings! God forbid the goyim think that Jewish ladies love each other as human beings! A shanda fur die goy! We could let the original script speak for us.”

“A shanda fur die goy” is a Yiddish phrase that translates to “a disgrace in front of the gentiles.” It is used to insult Jewish people who are perceived by outsiders to the community to align with antisemitic stereotypes. Lemml rejects this notion, wanting the audience to see many kinds of complex Jewish characters, even if such characters challenge audience assumptions.

“ASCH (Angry). Ask her if there’s anything in her charts that can map the disintegration of the Jewish psyche due to centuries of persecution?!”

When Sholem returns from his trip to Europe documenting the pogroms against Jewish people, he is haunted by what he has seen and unable to talk about it with anyone. The doctor’s advice is trite and ineffective; she is ill-equipped to help him manage intergenerational trauma or his feelings of powerlessness.

“SILVERMAN. I lift my face to the heavens and I pray, please, oh Lord, please do not let them be Jewish! This is what it means to be Jewish in America.”

Rabbi Silverman touches on the constant struggle that Jewish people face in America. He knows that, because of antisemitic prejudices, a single Jewish criminal could change the public’s perception of all Jewish people for the worse.

“ESTHER. Lou, in my head, I can hear those English words so good…But then when I open my mouth, it’s like the dust of Poland is in my throat.”

Esther’s accent marks her as different. Dust, as a symbol of her Jewish Identity and Language, stretches across time, connecting her to her past in Poland and to the future, when the Nazis attempt to exterminate Jewish people across Europe. Though she finds her accent frustrating, it is an essential part of her heritage.

“DOROTHEE. You said the truth. I would not be ashamed to be arrested for acting in the play I believed in. I am ashamed I acted in this sham I don’t believe in.”

Dorothee admits that she should not have agreed to perform in the censored version of the play. She bowed to the pressures of Antisemitism, Representation, and Decency instead of standing up for the play’s original themes of Lesbianism, Freedom, and Hope for the Future.

“MADJE. You just have to make an appearance in the courtroom.

ASCH. There are massacres right now all over Europe!! And I’m supposed to care about what I wrote when I was in short pants?”

Sholem cannot bring himself to care about a play he wrote years ago when confronted with the knowledge that Jewish people across Europe are being murdered. Questions of Antisemitism, Representation, and Decency now seem meaningless when applied to theater. He fails to see any good that his play could do in the face of such hatred and violence.

“ASCH. I have to write something to change the way gentiles see us—that make them see that we are one people with one common root—or they will rip us out, root by root, from the earth until we are no more.

It’s coming. It’s coming here.

MADJE. No. It won’t happen here. We’re safe here.”

Sholem has always wanted to depict Jewish people authentically in his writing, allowing them to be complex and flawed human beings. Now, he recognizes that his writing is not enough to stop the rising tide of antisemitism; he believes that the violence spreading across Europe will come to America, too.

“ASCH. The truth is—I never checked the cuts. I can barely read English. I can barely speak! A writer of world literature—

I couldn’t walk into that court, I couldn’t walk into that court—in front of all those American reporters—they would laugh at me! Can you imagine if I opened my mouth? I would sound just like you.”

Sholem knows that he will not be taken seriously as a writer if people know that he cannot read or speak English well. Because he has been unable to completely hide his Jewish Identity and Language, he has to deal with the consequences of not fully assimilating to anglophone American culture.

“AN IMPOSSIBLY LONG 

LINE

THE SMELL OF SMOKE

AND ASH IS THICK

IN THE AIR.”

The motif of the impossibly long line appears one last time, now representing the line of Jewish people about to die in the Holocaust. This painful motif echoes the other times throughout the play that Jewish characters have been forced to wait: in a line to immigrate to America or in a line to plead for a visa, endlessly waiting to be heard, accepted, and seen as human.

“LEMML CLOSES HIS

EYES.

HE MAKES A WISH.

LEMML (Softly): Please don’t let this be the ending…

IN HIS MIND, ONLY HE CAN SEE…

RIFKELE AND MANKE BURST OUT OF THE LINE.

THEY ESCAPE.”

Lemml imagines Manke and Rifkele escaping, not himself. His own story has a tragic ending, but he believes in the power of Rifkele and Manke’s love. His final wish is that their love, and the hope for the future that it represents, lives beyond the horrors of the Holocaust.

“ASCH. Rome is burning and you want to put on a play!

MADJE. Rome is always burning!”

Madje reminds Sholem that there is always tragedy and pain and loss in the world, but the play represents the potential for a better future. If Sholem abandons his play, he will be abandoning his own hopes and dreams for a better world.

“ROSEN. John Rosen. John. My grandparents speak Yiddish, but my parents—

ASCH. Your parents wanted you to grow up American. This story I have heard.”

Here, Jewish Identity and Language are once again in conflict. While Yiddish is still spoken in America, it has declined because of the pressure to assimilate. By the 1950s, few people were writing in Yiddish; Rosen’s life story reflects this change.

“A little invite from the Congress. The House of the Un-American Activities. In 1905 I was attracted by socialists. We are all brothers! Ale brider!”

Sholem is being questioned for his interest in the political system of socialism. Socialism attracted many Jewish people in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as it emphasized equality and solidarity; it was actively repressed by the Nazis, who sent communists to concentration camps alongside Jewish people. Ironically, Sholem is now seen as “Un-American” for his connection to a political ideology that was explicitly anti-Nazi and anti-fascist.

“ASCH. Mr. John—have you ever lost audience members? Did you watch them walk up the aisle in the middle of your play?

ROSEN. Yes! That’s happened to me all the time at Yale. Townspeople fleeing up the aisles!

ASCH. Ach. I too have lost audience members. Six million have left the theater.”

Sholem makes reference to the deaths of six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. His belief in the power of literature and subversive writing has evaporated because of the trauma of the Holocaust, but as a young man, Rosen’s perspective is more hopeful. The play, itself part of a cyclical performance, here implies a generational cycle of young people whose idealism is still intact enough to attempt to fight against oppressive systems.