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

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.

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.

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.

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?”

“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?

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.

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.

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.