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‘King of the Jews’ called anti-Semitic
by Lisa Traiger
Arts Correspondent
On the heels of the heated debate over the 10-minute play Seven Jewish Children at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's Theater J, Olney Theatre Center is facing a similar cohort of unhappy theatergoers. The Maryland theater's world premiere, King of the Jews, has raised hackles in the Jewish community and among longtime subscribers to the theater.
Conservative B'nai Shalom of Olney used its Shabbat sermon time last weekend to address issues the play raised, among them the moral ambiguities Jewish leaders - especially the Nazi-appointed Judenrat - in the Lodz and other ghettos faced in complying with Nazi demands.
The larger issue, though, centers around whether the depictions of these Lodz ghetto characters are accurate or anti-Semitic stereotypes. Author Leslie Epstein adapted the play from his 1979 novel of the same name, which caused its own furor as one of the first fictional treatments of the Holocaust to use humor and absurd situations.
Both play and novel draw elements from historic figures in the Lodz and other ghettos, among them notorious Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a businessman and director of the city orphanage, whom the Nazis appointed elder in charge of Lodz ghetto in 1939. While Rumkowski was responsible for many Jewish deportations, he was also, according to historic accounts, the ghetto leader who kept his charges alive the longest.
Still, said Marsha Rozenblit, the Harvey M. Meyerhoff professor of Jewish History at the University of Maryland, "People in Lodz hated him because he was the agent of the Nazis, taking their children and old people. He was probably killed by Jews before he got to the gas chambers. He was not a buffoon, he was a little weird and nutty. He saw himself as king of the Jews, and thought he would save Jews."
In the Olney Theatre's program, the author Epstein writes, "these events are as real, as rooted in exact history, in the drama as they were in the novel from which it has been adapted."
Rockville's Herman Taube, 91, was born in Lodz and joined the Polish army as a medic mere weeks before the Germans attacked Poland in 1939, instigating World War II. Physically sickened by the lascivious and slapstick depictions of Jewish characters from his hometown, Taube called King of the Jews "a disgrace and an insult. It was such a negative, repulsive thing for me; I never knew this type of Jew. Maybe there were some Jews like that, [but] I don't know them."
His daughter, Judy Hines of Olney, echoed her father's concerns and wrote letters to both this paper and the theater. "We didn't really get a sense of moral anguish," Hines said. "We got a sense of clowning and basically anti-Semitic stereotyping ... I was offended in the first minutes."
Another Olney resident and 18-year subscriber to the theater, Marsha Kudlick, is concerned by the impression the play could leave its audience. "I don't think that anyone who studied the Holocaust would believe any of that," she said, "but people who haven't studied the Holocaust might think that's how [Jews] acted. It was ridiculous and insulting."
Epstein heard similar complaints when the book was first published. "The two chief objections to this work, novel and play, are the tone, the humor [surrounding] this sacred subject ... and, of course, that this is a moral examination of what would you do," he said in an interview.
For his novel, he spent a year researching firsthand material at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, which included many direct accounts and diaries from Lodz and other ghettos. He said that the jokes he gave to the character of the nightclub comic came directly from the Warsaw Ghetto's Ringelblum Archives, which had been stored in milk cans until after the war.
"I'm just dealing with human beings, for good and evil," Epstein said. "All the people in this play have moments of terrible behavior, but they also have moments where they rise and deepen their knowledge of life and come to tremendous insights. Even the worst of them have those moments."
Epstein has tired of pointing out that his play - and novel - are fiction and the characters are not exact replicas, but he also notes that he has been approached by some familiar with life in Lodz who have commended his work. The speech given by ghetto elder Trumpelman, the Rumkowski character, is, according to the writer, taken from Jacob Gens, who headed the Vilna Ghetto Judenrat. It exacts the moral quandary of who should live and who should die: "With ten, I save 100, with 100 I save 1,000, with 1,000 ten thousand and more ... ."
Olney Theatre artistic director Jim Petosa is not surprised that some in his audience have taken offense. "We're talking about a moral dilemma that is inherent in that circumstance: There is no way a circumstance like that can produce a positive result," he said. "It is classic in classic Greek terms."
He recognizes that his theater has a large number of Jewish patrons and audience members, intentionally choosing such a play as King of the Jews. "I want to feed that audience work that actually generates not offense, but frank, open and topical discussions and dialogue that makes these issues live," he said. "That's what the theater is supposed to do."
Yet Petosa is sensitive to audience members who can't stomach the satiric depictions. "Usually the people who express reservations with the play are those who either have close relatives or they themselves lived through" the Holocaust, he said. "I do not ask them to look at this play and applaud it. They have to do what they need to, to survive their memories."
Lawrence Mintz, professor emeritus of American studies at University of Maryland, College Park, and a humor expert, acknowledges the difficulty of using humor in relation to the Holocaust. "Inevitably people are going to be offended, whether it's Mel Brooks, Roberto Benigni or someone else, just by the very idea of using humor in such a situation," he said. "Yet one might argue that humor can reverse the horrible to make it bearable."
B'nai Shalom's program committee had purchased a block of 25 tickets for congregants to attend as a group. "We were aware of basic plot line of the play," said Rabbi Ari Sunshine. "We didn't discuss beforehand whether there might be any controversy in buying or selling these tickets to the congregation."
Later alerted to some congregants' concerns, Sunshine attended the play with heightened awareness of the issues. "The play raised the questions I thought should have been raised when you're talking about the controversial role of the Judenrat, especially in Lodz," Sunshine said. While he, too, found some of the depictions, especially rabbis as beggars and buffoons, coarse, he said: "On balance, even though it wasn't a particularly good play - I didn't think the acting was all that great - it did raise the issues of the angst and that impossible dilemma that these people found themselves in."
Hines' husband, Bob - a Holocaust educator and high school history teacher - fears that the stereotypes engendered in the play could perpetuate anti-Semitic feelings, particularly in young people. "From a teacher's perspective, I was just so horrified that this was being played and for those who don't know Judenrats and ghetto life and don't have the opportunity for a follow-up discussion like we did" in synagogue, the play can contribute to anti-Semitic attitudes.
Stuart Markowitz, another B'nai Shalom member and Olney resident, remarked, "If you weren't anti-Semitic when you went in, you would surely be anti-Semitic when you left."
Taube also expressed concern and consternation that a great many of the supporters listed in the theater program were Jewish. (Washington Jewish Week was a media sponsor, providing a modest amount of in-kind advertising, as it does for many local nonprofits.)
"All I say is if you sponsor something like that, read the script first," Taube said. "Don't give so easily your money or your name in endorsing it just because it has Jew in it. That's what I object to."
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