Becoming Eve – 05 April 2025

The degree to which I saw myself in Becoming Eve was overwhelming. The powerful weight of Jewish tradition that seemingly hindered Chava (Tommy Dorfman)’s ability to transition into her most authentic self simultaneously gave Chava a foundation in asking questions, avidly studying, and finding answers in a mix of herself and a higher power. One of the distinctions between Judaism and some of the later religions built on its monotheistic foundation is a culture of questions as opposed to blind belief. Jews are commanded to study all day, but also to debate. It’s not a religion of recitation. It’s a religion of teaching and learning. Along the way, differences are confronted. Some people change and often splinter off into a community in agreement with what is newly learned. Others, like Chava’s Tati (Richard Schiff) stay behind and strengthen their resolute belief that their way of living has the moral high ground.

New York Theatre Workshop’s production of Becoming Eve was thematically rich with an attention to detail that was nothing short of masterful. In Chava’s flashbacks to her childhood, she was played by a puppet—a shell of a person, propped up by other people (Justin Otaki Perkins, Emma Wiseman), unable to truly embody the full substance of the milestones she was going through except in brief moments where Tommy Dorfman stepped in to play Chava for a kiss or a touch or a look. In these moments, childhood Chava glimpsed the possibility of who she could be, just for a moment. The collective nature of these moments gave Chava a paralyzing fear that kept her trapped in the body of Orthodox tradition as well as able to free herself from it. The contradictions and interpretations of the production itself are similar to the religious textual arguments that are the lifeblood of queer Jews, like myself, who cannot turn our backs on the beliefs of our upbringings but also can’t bring ourselves to modify them in ways that don’t feel kosher. We have to find ourselves in the texts and argue that we have always been there.

Chava’s argument stems from the Torah; there’s a time where our forefather, Abraham is asked by Hashem to sacrifice his only child, Isaac, and he does so, but is stopped by an angel. Chava finds a rabbinical argument that Isaac was born with a female soul, and that rather than sacrificing Isaac, the angel replaced Isaac’s soul with a male one that was more congruent with his body. Chava later contradicts this moment as she tries to come out to her Tati, stating that Abraham wasn’t supposed to sacrifice his child, he was supposed to fight for the son that he loved, and that this is why Hashem waited generations to give the Torah to Moses instead. Abraham had proven that he could not be counted on to look after his descendants—the chosen people. In the final moment of Becoming Eve, Jonah (Brandon Uranowitz), a liberal rabbi who helps Chava in her desire to remain Jewish and remain a part of her family, chants this part of the Torah aloud while Tati has a monologue putting on his tefillin and Chava dances at a club. The last word uttered by Jonah is, “hineni.” This Hebrew word means, “here I am.” It is the last thing Abraham says as he gets ready to sacrifice Isaac—before the appearance of the angel, which Chava has been arguing is a transformation. It implies that, in this ending, no transformation is needed. We are seeing everyone exactly as they are: full of prayer, full of thoughts, full of joy. Through knowing each other, they have all rediscovered a little piece of themselves, and in all three cases it’s a piece that is more devout. A piece that is more hopeful that, through Hashem and through the practice of traditions, their lives can be meaningful. It is a truly beautiful moment.

Becoming Eve is not a story of transformation, but a story of justification. Everybody has to justify their suffering. Everybody has to look back to decide what they bring to the table. Everybody has to live a contradiction and decide how to mold and shape what they see to fit scripture just as much as they are molding and shaping scripture to fit what they see. They are also in a process of molding and shaping themselves, under the guise of molding and shaping each other. In Jewish tradition, many of our sacred texts are books of writings of rabbis arguing about how to interpret the prior texts and build on each other’s ideas and impressions.  Somewhere in the interpretations, we latch on to what we feel is right. Is that not our own way of playing God, in a sense? Deciding whose words we agree with and don’t? Or are we playing man/human, as it were—trusting the divine spark in ourselves to guide us to interpretations that justify how we want to live and who we see ourselves as being?

Becoming Eve simultaneously shows the value in Jewish tradition while also offering some critiques—which I interpreted as questions; questions I have, at times, personally struggled with, debated, made peace with, and been at odds with. It fed the fire in my heart and also the sadness in my soul. More than anything, I was moved by Tati not fully coming around but wanting to leave a door open to contact his child. In some ways, this seems like a victory—Chava has not been shunned for life. But in other ways, it seems a terrible curse. Chava will be tormented until he calls wondering when he will. Chava will be waiting, potentially for a call that never comes. Though Tati mistakes Chava as having picked her name as the Hebrew version of Eve, I think it comes from Chavaleh from Fiddler on the Roof—the child that Tevye couldn’t make sense of whose loss hurt him the most. In my interpretation, the titular character would be named not for the first woman, but for the daughter who dances off into the life she has chosen, just as Becoming Eve’s Chava dances her way to the end of the show. Supported by incredible sound (UptownWorks), lighting (Ben Stanton), costuming (Enver Chakartash), puppet (Amanda Villalobos), and scenic (Arnulfo Maldonado) design, Becoming Eve is a powerful example of respectfully challenging how traditions can be terrifying, just as much as transformations.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.