E

velyn Orbach, who was 
at the helm of founding 
and developing the pro-
fessional theater company that 
has staged more productions of 
The Diary of Anne Frank than any 
other theater in the world, died 
Dec. 4, 2020, from COVID-19. 
She was 88.
Orbach, longtime artistic 
director of the 31-year-old 
Jewish Ensemble Theatre (JET), 
spent decades spotlighting sea-
soned and new dramatizations 
exploring ethnic aspects of 
issues, joys, history and assim-
ilation. 
Based in the Aaron 
DeRoy Theatre at the Jewish 
Community Center in West 
Bloomfield, she attracted audi-
ences beyond the religious des-
ignation of the company name 
by scheduling performances 
in schools and satellite venues 
years before JET established 
permanent headquarters in 
Walled Lake.
Orbach’s devotion to theater 
was instrumental in leading JET 
to become the longest contin-
uously running Jewish theater 

company in North America, 
and she often used the stage as a 
platform to oppose discrimina-
tion and bullying. 
Long-running initiatives for 
young people include Mean Girls
by Maddee Sommers and I Was 
Just Kidding by Marshall Zweig. 
An updated version of Romeo 
and Juliet was planned after 
9-11 to promote understanding 
between Jewish and Muslim 
communities. 
“I didn’t have a mother-
in-law; I had a theater-in-
law,
” asserted son-in-law Ed 
Fernandez, who learned about 
real dramatic issues brought 
into the home. When farm-
workers were striking, for 
instance, Orbach joined the 
protest by not serving grapes 
to family or guests and letting 
them know why.
Sometimes, Orbach played 
out her own talents first demon-
strated in New York, where she 
grew up honing her skills at 
the High School of Performing 
Arts and Brooklyn College. 
Multiple stage experiences were 
rekindled as she directed a run 

of Arthur Miller’s The Price and 
cast herself in Fiddler on the Roof.
“We ask audiences to think 
about identifying with the char-
acters, finding elements that are 
redundant, offering something 
that was missing, deciding the 
way the whole play works and 
just reacting to what they have 
seen,
” she told the JN in 2001. 

TREASURED MEMORIES
After being memorialized at 
private religious services con-
fined to immediate family on 
the Friday of her death, Orbach 
was remembered the next eve-
ning during a Zoom meeting 
hosted by her four children: 
Lila Lazarus, Sharon Quarters, 
Judy Chamberlin and Richard 
Orbach. 
Members of her extended 
family, friends and colleagues — 
some 90 people — voiced their 
love and admiration for the 
woman so important to their 
lives offstage. Laughter and tears 
punctuated remembrances from 
as far away as Germany and 
France. 
Rabbi Harold Loss of Temple 
Israel introduced the discussion 
and spoke of personal recol-
lections shared with his wife, 
Susan, who often had enjoyed 
gatherings at the Orbach home.
“My mother had a great ener-
gy like no other and an ability to 

multi-task,
” said Lazarus, who 
followed in her mother’s pro-
fessional direction with a public 
career as a broadcast journalist 
and corporate spokesperson. 
“Both my mom and dad (the 
late Cantor Harold Orbach) 
taught us that God was the 
Creator, and to follow that, peo-
ple should be creative as well. 
My mom also showed us how 
to [enact the Jewish values of 
being] forgiving and resilient.
”
Creativity was every day for 
Evelyn Orbach and those whose 
careers she encouraged. Part of 
that was bringing a variety of 
presentations to audiences, such 
as Ira Levin’s Cantorial, Diane 
Samuel’s Kindertransport and Side 
by Side by Sondheim. Her boost 
of locally based playwrights 
featured scripts by Kitty Dubin, 
a theater lecturer at Oakland 
University.
“I met Evelyn in 1985, when 
she acted in my first-produced 
play, Mirrors, at the State Fair 
Theatre in Detroit,
” Dubin 
said. “
At that time, she shared 
a dream she had with me — to 
start a Jewish theater. Four years 
later, she did just that.
“In 1989, I had a play, The 
Last Resort, produced in Texas. 
The Detroit News reviewed it, and 
Evelyn included that play in 
JET’s first full season in 1990. 
She went on to produce other 

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Evelyn Orbach

The founder of JET lived for theater.

Evelyn Orbach
Evelyn Orbach, right, performing in Fiddler on the Roof

COURTESY OF JET

SOUL

OF BLESSED MEMORY

48 | DECEMBER 17 • 2020 

