Nadene Goldfoot
For a long time, Jews have been asking themselves questions like Where are we safe? Are we really accepted? How do we feel about our Judaism?
Tom Stoppard wrote a play, a critically-acclaimed play about a Jewish family in Vienna taking place in the early 1900s and what they were asking themselves. Joshua Malina, Jewish himself, is playing the main part. He was an actor in The West Wing and Sports Night.
His Leopoldstadt character, though, converts to Catholicism. “You can sit in the audience and go ‘I know where this is headed, I know my history, and this guy is foolish,’” Malina said. “But I think it also makes you think as you’re sitting there, having probably paid a fair amount of money to watch this piece of theater, how complacent am I feeling?”
Joshua doesn't have a Jewish-sounding surname. Malina sounds more Hispanic, so he may not have experienced all the anti-Semitic sentiments others have experienced. However, Malina was born in New York City. His parents, Fran and Robert Malina, were founding members of Young Israel of Scarsdale in New Rochelle, where he grew up. His father was an attorney, investment banker and Broadway producer.
Malina attended middle school at Westchester Day School and high school at the Horace Mann School. He earned a B.A. in Theater from Yale University. At Yale, he was a member of The Spizzwinks, an a cappella group, together with fellow actor Noah Emmerich.
He's an American film and stage actor known for playing Will Bailey on the NBC drama The West Wing, Jeremy Goodwin on Sports Night, US Attorney General David Rosen on Scandal, and Caltech President Siebert on The Big Bang Theory.
In 2004, Malina was a participant in the first-ever national television advertising campaign supporting donations to Jewish federations. The program featured "film and television personalities celebrating their Jewish heritage and promoting charitable giving to the Jewish community" and included Greg Grunberg, Marlee Matlin, Kevin Weisman, and Jonathan Silverman.
"In 1992, Malina met costume designer Melissa Merwin through his friendship with her sister Jennifer, and Jennifer's then-husband actor Timothy Busfield. Merwin converted to Judaism under Conservative auspices. They married in 1996 and have two children, Isabel and Avi". Now, this was a very couragous act on the part of Melissa. People don't usually convert these days because they marry a Jew. First, it had to be important to Joshua to have an all-Jewish family and second, Melissa had to be interested enough in Judaism to withstand the frowns her parents might have about the conversion. Joshua's real life turns out to be the opposite of his play-character, a man who converted to Catholicism.
Getting back to Tom Stoppard, the author of the play, Tom is the son of Martha Becková and Eugen Sträussler, a doctor employed by the Bata shoe company. His parents were non-observant Jews. Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the town's patron, Jan Antonín Baťa, transferred his Jewish employees, mostly physicians, to branches of his firm outside Europe. On 15 March 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, the Sträussler family fled to Singapore, where Bata had a factory.
Stoppard's mother died in 1996. The family had not talked about their history and neither brother knew what had happened to the family left behind in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1990s, with the fall of communism, Stoppard found out that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had died in Terezin, Auschwitz, and other camps, along with three of his mother's sisters.
The Forward's Benyamin Cohen wrote that Joshua was one of Hollywood's most outspoken Jews and that this was a very Jewish play, and that this was their lead story.
This is a good example of what has been happening in many Jewish American marriages since the 1930s. The sexes have had the occasion to be attracted to each other regardless of religions, and that sex is a strong attraction. Judaism had never had the occasion to come together with other religions like America has provided. You'll notice this in DNA testing which has only been available recently . Founded in 2000, FamilyTreeDNA pioneered the field of genetic genealogy—the use of DNA testing to establish relationships between individuals and determine ancestry.
Here's what can happen in the USA: case A: Jewish man, not religious-minded as too worried about making a living in those days of depression, etc, marries gentile woman in 1930s and she converts, mikva and conversation about Judaism. They have 2 children. Each child marries a gentile that doesn't convert. Their children have no religious faith. They in turn marry a gentile. The faith is lost. The faith has faded away and not even known about, not even in their memory.
At the time of WWII, rabbis were active personally with Jews in their area, even making home visits, but after that with congregations growing and all, lose that personal touch. It had in the 30s kept Jews together to know that they did indeed have a rabbi. Often it was a visit to sell a particular bible set, but that's all right. It was a personal touch.
It's because that at this time, Jews were breaking away from the Jewish neighborhood that may have existed and moved out into a non-Jewish upscale neighborhood. Then they lost touch with their common culture which also held Jews together. Freedom caused the meltdown of Jewishness.
No other time or place has given Jews such freedom. Everywhere else, such anti-Semitism kept people apart. Jews were not even afforded citizenship in Europe. They were the wandering Jews, the 2nd class ones.
I believe its written somewhere that a Jew is to walk to synagogue each week, so the neighborhood must be provided with a synagogue, a place of congregation as 10 male Jews make a much needed minion. In moving away, all that was forgotten. Cars replaced walking. Walking had its very deep purpose. Who knew?
Interesting as the youth of today are breaking their necks in finding time to hike. People immersed in their health practice walking every day. Even their watches can count how many steps they take every day, and they have a number in mind they want to reach. They must walk. Walking preceeds all activity. It's almost become a religion. "How many steps have you walked today?" is the new question asked.
I'm not advocating anti-Semitism, G-d forbid! I'm exposing our facts of life. It could be a good reason to live in Israel where this wouldn't happen. It's a place where everyone walks a lot, too, and here, because they need to.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppard
No comments:
Post a Comment