THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, February 3, 1984 13
Controversial Production Brings Notoriety to Israel Playwright
playwright Joshua Sobol
sat down in the summer of
1981 to write The Jewish
Soul," he could not have
foreseen the controversy
which the play would stir.
The play, which portrays
the life of Otto Weininger, a
turn-of-the-century Vien-
nese philosopher and psy-
chologist, has been per-
formed more than 140 times
in Israel during the past
year, and was
enthusiastically received at
the recent Edinburgh Fes-
tival in Scotland.
It was the uprise of anti-
Semitism in Europe in 1981
which
Sobol to
By HELENA FLUSFEDER
World Zionist Press Service
When leading Israeli
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re-read Weininger's writ-
ings. At first, Sobol wanted
to write a play about anti-
Semitism but he soon
realized that he was not so
interested in anti-Semitism
as in what it has done to the
Jew. Then he took a closer
look at Otto Weininger.
In 1903, with his head
full of twisted theories
about women, Jews and
Judaism, 23-year old Otto
Weininger found an
empty room in Vienna
which he rented for the
sole purpose of commit-
ting suicide. Sobol's
"Jewish Soul" focuses on
this last night of
Weininger.
With the growing threat
of anti-Semitism in Vienna
in the late 1900s, people felt
they were up against the
choice of either converting
to Christianity or becoming
Zionists and emigrating to
Palestine. But Otto
Weininger was unable and
unwilling to compromise.
He was aware of the ram-
pant anti-Semitism and de-
cided to convert to Chris-
tianity-, but his troubles
were far from over.
"After converting, he
(Weininger) found out that
nothing changed for him —
he couldn't get rid of his
Jewish identity," Sobol said
during an interview in Tel
Aviv. "Arid 'it is this fact
that he is unable to come to
terms with."
However, the other
mainly two-dimensional
characters in the play
come to terms with their
Jewishness, or like
Weininger's girlfriend,
Clara, and his friend Be-
rger, become involved in
Zionism. They see the
way to salvation as being
in the land of Palestine.
On the one hand
Weininger believed that
"Zionism is the expreSsion
of everything that is still
noble in the Jewish soul,"
according to Sobol. But be-
cause of the Jewish national
character, which would al-
ways choose the Diaspora,
he believed that Zionism
and Judaism were incom-
,patible. There was simply
no place for a Zionist state
in his view of the world, the
playwright said.
Otto Weininger was a
rebel and a misfit: anti-
Semitic amongst his own
people, an outcast in an
Aryan society and uncom-
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"packaged anti-Semitism
on stage" and said " 'The
Merchant of Venice' is a
mild and innocent pastoral
compared to the vicious
anti-Semitism of 'A Jewish
Soul.' "
Sobol recalled the dis-
cussions between people
in the audiences: "Some
felt that Weininger was
an exception — a story of
the distorted Jew. Others
got into the discussions
about the conflict be-
tween Judaism and
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Zionism. They obviously
felt there was something
of value, something to be
learned from the whole
production."
Now that the play has
been playing in London,
Sobol may have found the
spark to open a dialogue be-
tween Jews and non-Jews.
One thing is certain — that
if Israel's image is to be im-
proved, Sobol and his actors
are making a unique con-
tribution towards promot-
ing the goal.
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fortable with his own sexu-
ality. He was filled with
guilt and self-hatred which
finally led him to take his
own life. And it is with these
feelings of self-hatred and
guilt that the real con-
troversy of the "Jewish
Soul" lies.
The play became controv-
ersial in Israel because of a
brothel scene which was
eventually passed by the
Film and Theater Censor-
ship Board. One syndicated
columnist called the play
/IGGY "
199 Llentrul hen Sretkat
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