Prayer for the French Republic, 18 January 2024

In the last year, there have been lots of plays and musicals in New York City broadly touching on themes of antisemitism: among the ones I saw were Parade, Leopoldstadt, Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof (in Yiddish), Amid Falling Walls, Just for Us, and, in some subtle respects, The Connector. Leaving each show, I felt a sense of kinship but also a twinge of disappointment. Even in the world of theatre—the art form I cherish for pushing boundaries and moving people toward social change—so many of these themes were downplayed details, shrouded in personal conversations between characters examining issues from other angles, other potential reasons for pain and suffering to humanize the characters, and the desire to tread lightly around the kinds of issues that would spark real controversy: Zionism, gatekeeping around who is really part of the Jewish community, and speculation about why Jews are persecuted—not just the agreement that we are.

Prayer for the French Republic fulfilled the need I had to see a piece of theatre unapologetically assert that, even in a tumultuous world where we, at the time of my writing, are still knee deep in the aftermath of the October 7^th Massacre, everyone deserves a sense of safety and the right to decide for themselves what constitutes their own self preservation. People should not have to live in fear—praying not to be prey in a world where they have no place. A world where they have been persecuted—a world where within their lifetime they have already fled a home to a new country that cannot and will not protect them. A world where there are huge gaps in their family history because so much of their family was murdered en masse in horrific ways that no one wants to talk about what they’ve seen, what they’ve lived, and what they’ve lost.

The intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust was incredibly well expressed. While some found the show preachy, particularly the scene in the bar where Elodie was expressing her beliefs to Molly regarding who the formation of the state of Israel was really intended to help, and the persecution that European Jews face. Israel’s very existence, in addition to being the home of the Mizrahi/Arab Jews who have always been in the region and those who fled persecution centuries ago during the Crusades and the Inquisition and have had deep roots in the land for centuries, provides a safe space for millions fleeing persecution right now—not only Europeans post Holocaust, but also Ethiopians, Eritreans, and, more recently, Ukrainians.

There are huge generational differences in how people express their opinions on these ideas, and that preachy scene in the bar is exactly how millennials talk politics. We monologue and express the same ideas repeatedly in slightly different words. We don’t let anyone else talk. We pontificate from a perceived moral high ground. We are not open to each other’s ideas, and we are not really having a dialogue or discourse. We are screaming into the void because we are not genuinely interested in anything that challenges the vibe, if you will, of what we believe to be true.

The other familial perspectives were equally resonant; parents who believe Israel’s existence is a good thing but go in and out of practicing Judaism and how public they want to be about their Judaism—because their parents survived unspeakably horrific consequences for their Jewish blood. Many of those parents lost their voices. As pointed out in Prayer for the French Republic, what happened in the Holocaust was literally unspeakable. Lucien didn’t know how to speak it, couldn’t speak it to his own mother.

Pierre’s silence and inability to interact was a powerful force in the room—though he had very few lines, actor Ethan Haberfield gave a standout performance. In a show full of dramatic moments and characters like Elodie, Marcelle, and Daniel, the way that Young Pierre was so silent, so unnatural, so uncomfortable spoke volumes to the difference between the way experiencing antisemitic atrocities first hand makes a person passive and wary of making decisions that draw attention to their Judaism, while being descended from survivors and those who fled religious persecution splits the next generation between those who learn to hide, like Patrick; those who learn to fight, like Daniel; and those who learn to flee, like Charles. This in and of itself was an incredibly powerful juxtaposition.

I do not believe that anybody’s mind was changed in the course of this show. There were no character arcs—just an amalgamation of different opinions on what constitutes safety and what constitutes home. My big takeaway was from the ending—even though the characters did not change, they clung to each other and stopped trying to assert their viewpoints, be the voice of reason, and be the loudest person in the room. Pierre talked about how the piano store was not what stayed in the family for five generations—it was the love and the closeness and sense of safety. I don’t think Molly became a Zionist; I think Daniel humanized Zionists for her and she gave him permission to do what felt right to him for his own safety, even if she still harbored valid critiques of Israeli government and politics. I don’t think Marcelle and Charles were less uncertain and I don’t think Patrick acquired any real belief in a Jewish higher power.

I think they all accepted each other. They humanized these opposing viewpoints, and they accepted each other. And that kind of safety, that kind of trust—that’s what has kept Jews alive through thousands of years. While home is not necessarily a physical place (like the piano shop) but a feeling (surrounded by family), as expressed is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is impossible to have a feeling of emotional safety while physical safety is threatened. I was proud of the way Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic portrayed this issue and the profound validity and relief of knowing that there is one tiny country somewhere in the world where you can run as the cycles of history repeat and replay. The next step of this is extending that humanization and trust to those outside the Jewish community so that we can continue to build a better world and strive for a world where your place of residence can be based on where you want to be and what you want to do, not a carefully calculated decision on where you might be safest.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.