When Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, times were different. To combat a plague, the Shtetl folk would pay for an unusual marriage. Held in a cemetery at night, the Schwarze Hupa (Black Wedding) – normally between two poor orphans – would be an attempt to perform a great mitzvah (grace) to please God and end the community’s suffering.A klezmer (musician) and his band would be sent for, and paid handsomely. This is the background to a joke made on stage by Stempenyu, the violinist protagonist of the same-titled play now showing at Beit Lessin – noting that he prefers to play at Black Weddings because the audience “digs” the music. He means the dead.
This revival of the 2012 play by the late Edna Mazia, itself adapted from the 1888 Yiddish novel by Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovich,) employs several artistic strategies to cope with the challenge of performing something the audience thinks it knows about – Yiddish speaking Jewish life – but rarely does.
Comedy is one way to bridge this gap. Keren Mor-Mishori, who performs the role of Fraydel, a strong-willed Cossack-like woman who is an ill-match for the artistic, childish, Stempenyu (Asaf Jonas) delivers a fantastic, comical role. After Stempenyu is done playing at a wedding, a musician enters the stage to inform him Gefilte fish is being served and the two depart to feast. A tiny comedic shtick meant to raise a chuckle, it works.
Stempenyu is playing at this wedding because he was invited by a fan. Haim Yosef (Ophir Weil,) a wealthy man, celebrates his son Menashe Mendel (Yaniv Shavit) marrying Rachel (Daniel Gal.) Loyal to the Jewish value of sponsoring those who are brilliant Torah scholars, Yosef is delighted to financially support his son’s studies and is elated by Rachel’s good character and looks. The trees on set are barren, so it’s winter, but Yosef can afford heating his house during a lavish party (back then, the poor would marry in summer.)
Peering outside this Jewish life is Binyamin (Yedidya Vital,) who wants to adopt the manners of the goyim: to assimilate. His plan is to modernize his name to Ben and move to America. Listening to all his talk is Chaya Etel (May Keshet,) who loves Binyamin so much that she will agree to anything. The dialog between them, in which she asks whether Zionism will solve the woes of Jewish life in the Pale, is met with scorn. This is a sly nod to please the audience. Chaya Etel is right, but would never know.
The core of this play is not politics, however, but love.
Stempenyu is married to Fraydel, a practical woman who looks after him, but it is a loveless marriage. Rachel is married to Mendel: She respects him, but he is a detached scholar and unable to meet her needs. When she meets the dashing Stempenyu, a poor Klezmer at the bottom of Jewish society – their hearts catch fire. Only her shrewd mother-in-law (Zohar Meida) sees this and attempts to fix things – by buying Rachel jewels. Will love triumph? If so, at what cost?
Those already familiar with “Fiddler on the Roof,” the better known – and highly Americanized – adaptation of another one of Sholem Aleichem’s various works, will appreciate this psychological study of the human heart.
All the men are childish and blind
All the men in this play are childish and blind; it is up to the women to see, think, and do. Stempenyu needs to be looked after, Binyamin doesn’t see how much he is loved, and Yosef doesn’t see what is going on in his own house. The only one who understands these destructive dynamics, of docile men who turn their partners into unhappy spouses and bitter mothers, is Mendel.
Set designer Shani Tur and costume designer Shira Weiss gift us with a precise fantasy-like stage version of Jewish life and gently guide our emotions with visual road signs. When Chaya Etel first speaks with Binyamin, they share a bench and she sews. When he informs her he loves another woman, the bench has a gap between them. In a powerful, painful scene, she attends his wedding in what she was sewing – meant to be her bridal dress – shredded to ribbons. During her last scene, she is on a hospital bed, the same bench we saw, now broken beyond repair.
The historical Stempenyu, Yosele Druker, was born in Berdychiv in 1822. He was a master violinist just before Jews began to play the clarinet. This was because of the new Russian policy of enlisting Jews to the Czarist army, exposing them to brass instruments. This exposure gave rise to Jewish clarinet masters like Naftule Brandwein and, later, Benny Goodman.
Druker died in 1879, long before the Holocaust shattered much of the Jewish world. Brandwein played in a US klezmer band under Joseph Cherniavsky, Druker’s grandson.
Director Ronnie Brodetzky has gifted us with a wonderful re-telling of Stempenyu, rich with insights, and sure to enrich anyone who yearns for a bit of Jewish soul during trying times.
As Shalom Aleichem wrote in Afn fidal (On the Fiddle), “the first fiddler in the world was Tubal Cain.” When Jonas plays the missing violin on stage, we are transported to the very origins of Hebrew myth and faith.
‘Stempenyu’ at Beit Liessin will be offered with English subtitles on Wednesday, June 26, at 8:30 p.m. NIS 220 per ticket. 101 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv. 90 minutes long, no intermission. To book, call (03) 725-5333.
