This is a guest post by David Adler.
An anonymous reader has suggested parodic verses along the lines of Caryl Churchill’s short play Seven Jewish Children:
don’t tell them we sent a salami to our boy in the army
no - don’t tell them that
don’t tell them we gave their trust fund to bernie
- no; don’t tell them that
I love it, and I hope this inspired work will see completion in the near future. See also Norm Geras’s more serious version.
I’m laughing to keep sane because I’ve just heard the podcast of Sunday’s Beyond the Pale broadcast, and it’s as I feared - Seven Jewish Children received rapt, fawning treatment from the show’s hosts, my erstwhile colleagues from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ).
Under a post at the NYT blog The Lede some weeks ago, a commenter named Jumanne Langston scribbled: “Given the amount of Jewish money behind many of the non-profit arts organizations in New York City I doubt [Churchill’s] piece will ever see the light of day this side of the Atlantic.” What a laugh. Seven Jewish Children is breaking out all over. It’s being staged by Ari Roth of Washington’s Theater J; Jeffrey Goldberg, a friend of Roth’s, has published their heated argument on the topic. Goldberg: “[Churchill is] trying to close a circle. ‘Once the Jews were oppressed, now they are the oppressors.’ That’s her story of Jewish people. Oh, what a tragedy. It’s easy, it’s smug, it’s fetid.”
I agree. To those who would accuse me of trying to stifle criticism of Israel, or shield the Israeli military from charges of war crimes: Nice try.
No, that’s not the issue. The issue is Churchill’s standard-issue anti-Zionist propaganda dressed up as literary exploration, deep thought. The Jews in Churchill’s play are moral idiots at best, brutes at worst, and the Palestinians are - well, absent from the narrative, except as passive victims, certainly not as militants in organizations that slaughter Israeli teenagers at dance clubs, or fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns and refer to the people in those towns, well within Israel’s ‘67 borders, as “settlers.” Again, this does not excuse the Israeli occupation, or the brutality of Israel’s latest Gaza incursion, or the horrendous toll all of it has had on Palestinian civilians. But Churchill’s account, supposedly searing and complex, sidesteps every complexity. It does nothing but play to the Chomskyite left.
Progressive Jews, legitimately angry over Israeli human rights abuses, and dissenting from the pro-Israel line of mainstream Jewish organizations, are misguidedly lapping up Churchill’s work as a tonic and a pushback, now more than ever with an emerging Netanyahu-Lieberman government. But if the hosts of Beyond the Pale hear the play a certain way, as a devastating inquiry into injustice and communal denial, how does someone like our Jumanne Langston, quoted above on the subject of “Jewish money,” hear it? Why is it that a play like Churchill’s attracts a person of such views, and what might that say about the politics guiding the work? This is the kind of scrutiny that Seven Jewish Children deserves, and did not even remotely get, on Beyond the Pale.
Actor Una Ayo Osato speaks up toward the end of the broadcast, saying: “So often, Jews - I’m Jewish - I see Jewish people around me don’t want to talk about Israel, or the history, or look at what our role is as Jews - I don’t even live in Israel, but what my role in that occupation is. And I think that this play brings about discussions and conversations that need to be happening.” Striving to make the right moral calls in politics is a good thing. Wallowing in guilt is not so good; falling for Caryl Churchill’s guilt trip is the least good, and painful to listen to.
We mustn’t forget what Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas said during Operation Cast Lead: “The Zionists have legitimised the killing of their children by killing our children. They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.” Maybe Ms. Osato wants to believe that he really means “Zionists.” But as for her role in the occupation - even though she doesn’t live in Israel - it would be instructive to hear Mr. Zahar’s view on the matter.
shalom Lappin’s even more biting spin on 7 Jewish Children, courtesy of Norm Geras:
Five British Children: A Play for Britain (by Shalom Lappin)
1
It is half term and he is restless.
Take him to Liverpool for a trip.
Show him where the Beatles lived.
Show him all the new buildings and the concert hall.
Take him to the docks at the port.
Don’t mention the market where they sold people,
or the ships that took them to America.
He won’t understand.
It is too complicated.
Don’t tell him where the money for the city came from.
If he hears about these things in school or on television,
tell him that the Americans had slaves.
We never did.
Tell him that we freed slaves.
We gave them sanctuary when they ran away from their masters.
Tell him that we are fair,
that we are just, and
that we are good.
2
It is term break and she wants to go somewhere.
Take her to Derry for a few days.
It is lovely there now.
Show her the countryside, the green rolling hills.
Don’t mention the troubles.
Don’t talk to her about the shootings on
that Sunday so long ago.
Don’t say anything about the 800 years that we
have been there.
The land clearances, the famine, the black and tans?
Don’t be silly.
It will ruin the trip.
She can’t possibly understand any of this.
Not now, not ever.
It is far too complicated even for us.
She can worry about that later,
maybe in university, for a history seminar.
Anyway, they are a difficult, unruly people.
We gave them law.
We gave them stability.
We gave them our language.
They drink.
They are terrorists.
They have never appreciated what we did for them.
Remember to tell her
that we are fair,
that we are just, and
that we are good.
3
You have to take the kid somewhere for a summer holiday.
What about visiting your aunt in Sydney?
He will love the harbour.
Go on a trip through the outback.
It will be brilliant.
When he asks about the other people he sees there?
You can mention that they have always been there.
Why do they live so badly?
Tell him they drink, and they are lazy.
How did our people get there?
In ships of course.
What happened to the other people when ours came?
Don’t go into that.
It is far too complicated.
He can’t understand.
No wait.
Tell him the Australians did it.
It had nothing to do with us.
He has to recognize
that we are fair,
that we are just, and
that we are good.
4
She’s driving us nuts.
It is the weekend.
We have to find something for her to do.
Take her to the East End.
Show her the old tenement houses there.
Tell her that some of her friends’ grandparents
used to live there when they first arrived.
Tell her about whom?
The ones we didn’t let in when they
were running away?
And the others who we kept out
before the war,
when the soldiers were rounding them
up from their homes?
No, of course not.
She can’t possibly understand.
It is far too complicated.
There was a depression.
There was no work.
What were we supposed to do?
What about the ones in the camps after the war?
Tell her that we wanted them to go back to the
places that killed their families?
Don’t be ridiculous.
She will be upset and confused.
You need to explain to her that they are difficult people.
They have trouble fitting in wherever they go.
It is best to have small numbers of them.
If too many are allowed in,
other people, bad people, will hate them.
We want to protect them from that.
Tell her that we have nothing against them.
We just want them to fit in properly.
We want them to be like everyone else.
Talk to her about the blitz.
Tell her about the RAF and the Battle of Britain.
Tell her that we stood alone.
Tell her that we liberated them,
but they are ungrateful.
She has to understand
that we are fair,
that we are just, and
that we are good.
5
He wants to go with his friend on a swimming trip to Eilat?
Definitely not.
Tell him that we don’t go to that country.
The people there are not good.
They took that country by force from other people who lived there first.
They came as conquerors and threw them out.
Now they oppress them with soldiers, guns, tanks, and walls.
What about their parents and grandparents, who
came from the camps?
The others who were running away from the soldiers?
The ones who we would not let in here?
Don’t go into that.
It is too complicated, and you will confuse him.
What about those who ran away from
countries near that one?
That was the fault of that country.
They made them leave.
The bombs and the wars?
Tell him that it is all very sad,
but it is that country’s fault.
Tell him if only they would go away,
it would be peaceful and quiet again.
What are you saying?
Both sides are right,
and both peoples should be there?
That is absurd.
I can’t tell him that.
If one side is right, then the other is wrong, right?
Tell him that both sides have done terrible things,
and neither is innocent?
Maybe, but that country is responsible.
That country is at fault.
That country is evil.
That country must go.
He needs to understand this.
Excuse me?
Talk to him about what we did there?
What did we do?
Promised the country to both sides?
Oh that.
It was long ago.
We were fighting a war.
We had no choice.
It is too complicated.
It is important for him to see
that country is at fault,
that country is evil, and
that country must go.
He must understand
that, we are fair,
that we are just, and
that we are good.
(Shalom Lappin)
“I’m laughing to keep sane because I’ve just heard the podcast of Sunday’s Beyond the Pale broadcast, and it’s as I feared - Seven Jewish Children received rapt, fawning treatment from the show’s hosts, my erstwhile colleagues from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ).”
David, the real problem it seems to me isn’t the play; it’s the Jewish radicals who have made its creation and distribution possible.
Caryl Churchill’s work which is mediocre at best wouldn’t have been able to put it on if it weren’t for such individuals who are defending her from charges of antisemitism.
Jacqueline Rose who helped with its writing is one such radical. Her anti-Zionism is well known. What is less well known or at least people choose not to focus on is her anti-Judaism. She has said that her favorite Jews are Marranos. These of course were not Jews but people who came from families that had been Jews and were forced to convert to Catholicism in the Iberian Peninsula.
(The same is true btw for Norman Finkelstein who keeps saying that he knows nothing about Judaism and doesn’t consider himself a Jew.)
I don’t know the specific biography of “Jews for Racial and Economic Justice” but there seems to be a contest among Jewish radicals to see who can defame the Jewish State more. They are motivated by the ideal of internationalism and see Jewish life as parochial and exclusionary. These are charges that used to be hurled at us by Christian antisemites as well as Marxist ideologues. Names like Noam Chomsky and Eric Hobsbawm come to mind: the first defender a Holocaust denier and the second one defended Stalinism in all its horrors.
These are the people who clamor for “justice.” While Norman Finkelstein defended Swiss Bankers from the claims of Holocaust survivors to the delight of Holocaust deniers world wide.
The problem then goes well beyond one historically inaccurate and libelous play; it encompasses a way of thinking about Jewishness which is antisemitic.
This is what needs to be stressed again and again. Ideally we should be writing plays (and yes comedies) about these people that show how ridiculous they are. They make characters like stock Uncle Tom seem absolutely progressive in the real meaning of the term.
Finally the play itself is a failure on many levels, dramatically and historically. History even accurate history doesn’t translate very well into drama, and when it’s confused with ethnic stereotypes it becomes propaganda and in this case antisemitic propaganda.
I just read the discussion about the play between Jeff Goldberg and Ari Roth.
Roth’s merely justified throughout the conversation his decision to stage the play.
He kept repeating the same lines about the need for self criticism and to engage with this play as if this play were the only vehicle to be self critical.
Suppose someone decided to write a play about “Jewish capitalists” that was antisemitic and insisted that it were staged because it’s good for Jews to be self critical. This is basically what Ari is arguing.
The fact that it would be well written is irrelevant.
His whole premise is wrong: self criticism comes from within. When someone is criticizing you it’s an attack it’s not self criticism. That Ari confuses genuine self criticism with antisemitic attacks tells me that he is not someone we should be listening to.
Ari also supposes that it’s ok to stage antisemitic plays because the Jews are “safe.” Here too his logic is faulty: Jews are safe in part because the have been able to mobilize against antisemitism. This may not be true in the future and plays like Churchill’s will surely add to already growing literature of Jew hatred in the world.
“He kept repeating the same lines about the need for self criticism and to engage with this play as if this play were the only vehicle to be self critical.”
Good I’ll be self critical. I’ll be self critical of that part of the Jewish community that embraces an antisemitic view of Israel.
Ari Roth sounds in his conversation with Goldberg like a college instructor who is used to approving and compliant responses from his students.
He is also kidding himself if he thinks that anyone who already doesn’t think as he does about Israel will want to be exposed to hours of propaganda.
David,
I just read the Churchill play and found it to be an abhorrent piece of antisemitic propaganda without any artistic merit whatsoever. Fans of the play might try to portray it as otherwise by suggesting that the raging rant in the final act (”tell her their animals…”) is somehow supposed to capture the views of just one Israeli and thus not meant to insinuate the blood libel or reflect the immorality of all Jews.
But this defense simply will not stand. The play is formally structured such that that rant is its logical conclusion. The anaphoric “tell her” statements at first seem counterpointal, but the closing rant is clearly meant to show the Jews’ obscene feelings finally gushing out - thereby “closing the circle” of Churchill’s simplistic sense of historical irony, as Jeffrey Goldberg put it.
The dialogue between Ari Roth and Jeffrey Goldberg is probably one of the most interesting discussions of the relationship between politics and aesthetics I’ve ever come across: when does political art devolve into pure politics? when do “investigation” and “interrogation” of political art turn into aiding and abetting political enmity?
Thanks for sharing.
Foom the interview between Goldberg and Roth:
“JG: I read the play five times. It reads like anti-Jewish agitprop to me. I see it as a short polemic directed against one party in a complicated conflict. Take the line, “The world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.” I mean, I think she moves from the traditional smug, self-righteous European morally superior stance –
AR: When you say she starts, she doesn’t start there –
JG: No, no, no, let me finish my sentence. I think she moves into an area that she has to know has this very, very terrible historic resonance. It’s associating Jews with the spilling of innocent blood. She knows what that means and I think it kind of feeds into, obviously, the very worst and most dangerous stereotypes about Jews. How they revel in non-Jewish blood.
AR: I totally agree with you. I mean, I’m on the watch for this as well –
JG: Then why are you putting it on?
AR: I wrote in the Washington Post and the Washington Jewish Week when the Royal Shakespeare company came over with their Canterbury Tales two years ago and included The Prioress’s Tale and they brought, in order to make it pungent and fresh again, they did this re-enactment of essentially a blood libel, a young boy was slaughtered by Jews and buried under the floorboards, and all the Jews wore hook-noses. This was very primitive and I blasted it. They wanted to make it fresh, they wanted to elicit outrage, they didn’t contextualize, they didn’t — they wanted to surprise the shit out of people and surprise they did.
JG: Let’s start at the beginning –”
Notice how Roth avoided answering Goldberg’s question, “why are you putting it on?”
Instead we get a recitation about this ‘other play” which was really, really antisemitic. By opposing these two plays he can then say well at least it’s not as bad as the Prioress Tale.
Roth is arguing in bad faith since he knows he will put Churchill’s vile play on and isn’t willing to listen to any counter argument.
Then he has the Chutzpah to say that he wishes people to be “self critical.”
Self criticism, Mr. Roth starts at home. And what about Churchill being self critical has anyone demanded this of her?
Ari Roth also kept appealing to Churchill’s authority: she’s a great playwright, she will be long remembered…
I thought Goldberg’s response was HILARIOUS: Czar Alexander III is going to be remembered for longer than I’m remembered, but what do I care?”
“Ari Roth also kept appealing to Churchill’s authority: she’s a great playwright, she will be long remembered…”
He did, didn’t he.
I for one, and I am a student of literature never heard of her till this contoversy arose.
I looked into her other plays and they didn’t impress me.
She specializes in gothic effects and her drama will not survive her lifetime much less mine.
Roth must be hard up for material with shock value.
The title says it all: “7 Jewish children”
My Question: if it is a play about Israel why isn’t it titled “7 Israeli children” or at least “7 Israeli Jewish children”
Churchill’s title betrays Churhill’s obsession.
Also, by attacking jews world wide, where do you think they are going to move to?
How does that help the Palestinian cause? It doesn’t.
“I for one, and I am a student of literature never heard of her till this contoversy arose.”
You’re a student of literature and you’ve never heard of Caryl Churchill? Seriously? I think you should look into getting your tuition reimbursed.
As for Roth appealing to her authority: well, she did write the play. If you’re offended by it and tend to argue against its content, maybe you should read it again. If you still don’t get it, maybe you should read her comments on it. I think you’ve find “Seven Jewish Children” to be a lot more intriguing than this straw man you insist on fighting.
Mr. Adler
It’s easy to create a portrait of someone when you pull their words out of context. If you read the entire quote you’d see that I was commenting on the bias in New York theatre when it comes to producing work connected to the Israel-Palestine Diaspora.
“Jewish money” was an extremely poor choice of words…..but NY productions of pieces sympathetic to Palestine have indeed been cancelled at the insistence of Jewish donors (the Rachel Corrie piece at NYTW).
By the way this “klansman” and “Neo-Nazi” is black; do consider that some of the push-back to the Zionist movement might be due to the fact that anyone who questions it is branded with these labels.
Here’s my entire comment from the NYT:
I don’t recall such outrage when Dai, a play sympathetic to Israel, opened in New York…..it’s about time the west actually did see both sides of the conflict. I have a number of Jewish friends and I would be lying if I said I haven’t heard the various lines quoted from Chruchill’s play come from their mouths on many occasions.
Given the amount of Jewish money behind many of the non-profit arts organizations in New York City I doubt this piece will ever see the light of day this side of the Atlantic….and it’s not fair to label anyone who is sympathetic to the Muslim community as an anti-semite!
— Jumanne Langston