There are several features that distinguish Israeli theatre from most other na-tional theatre traditions. First, it is a young tradition. The Habima Theatre, the
Boy Dreams, focusing on the narrative structure of threats as well as their characteristics as speech acts; see Rokem,Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contem-porary Theatre, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 2000. In Philosophers and Thespians, I attempted to theorize the relations between wishes, promises and threats; see Rokem, Philoso-phers and Thespians: Thinking Performance, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2010. In this article, I return to several of the ideas presented in my previous publications on the Hebrew and Israeli theatre as well as the work of Hanoch Levin; here I contextualize them from a much wider perspective, mainly trying to define an aspect of modern tragedy which, as I argue, has previously not received due attention. The general framework for the analysis of tragedy that I propose was first presented at the Drama and Philosophy conference at the New University of Lisbon in January 2013; an earlier version of this particular analysis ofThe Torments of Job was presented at the symposium “The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics and Hermeneutics,” held at Princeton University in October 2012. Parts of the present version have previously been published as “The Logic of/in Tragedy: Hanoch Levin’s DramaThe Torments of Job,” in: Mod-ern Drama56.4 (Winter 2013): 521–539. I wish to thank the participants at these conferences for their valuable comments and the editors ofModern Dramafor their permission to publish the article here. For additional articles in English on Levin’sThe Torments of Job, see Sharon Aronson-Lehavi,“Transformations of Religious Performativity: Sacrificial Figures in Modern Experimental Theatre,” in:Performance and Spirituality3.1 (2012): 57–70, http://www.utdl.edu/
ojs/index.php/pas/article/view/43 last accessed Nov 23, 2013; Yael Feldman, “Deconstructing the Biblical Sources in Israeli Theater:Yisurei Iyovby Hanoch Levin,”AJS Review12.2 (1987):
251–77, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4497552;
and Matthias Naumann,Dramaturgie der Drohung. Das Theater des israelischen Dramatikers und Regisseurs Hanoch Levin, Terctum, Marburg 2006.
2 The Book of Job, trans. Stephen Mitchell, Harper Perennial, New York 1986, 13; all passages quoted are from this translation.
The Bible on the Hebrew/Israeli Stage 187 first professional Hebrew theatre – meaning that the people who founded it considered the art of the stage to be their major profession as well as a spiritual vocation – was founded in 1917, in Moscow, in the wake of the Bolshevik Rev-olution and the Spring of Nations, reinforcing the initial multi-cultural and multi-national ideals of these events. Only in the mid-1930s, however, after the Habima Theatre collective had settled in the steadily growing city of Tel Aviv, and after several other theatres had been established among the Jewish set-tlers, did the Hebrew theatre – which, in 1948, became the Israeli theatre, fol-lowing the declaration of the independence of the state of Israel – begin to have a somewhat more significant influence on the cultural life of the Jewish population of what was, from 1917 to 1948, British Mandatory Palestine. To-day – 66 years later – the Israeli theatre has developed into a complex system of established theatres and includes a broad range of more avant-garde fringe groups, including other live performing arts, including ballet/dance and opera.
The Habima Theatre, founded in Moscow as an avant-garde theatre collective, was declared the Israeli national theatre in the mid 1950’s.
Owing to its relatively young age, the Israeli theatre lacks an indigenous tradition of classical plays which could be regularly included in the repertoire.
Beginning with the establishment of the state, but particularly since the 1960’s, a remarkable number of Israeli plays have been written and performed; in most cases, however, these have been performed only once, in a single production, after which most have become more or less forgotten. No more than a handful of plays written in Hebrew have been performed more than once and become
“canonized” within this young tradition.3Theatre traditions with longer history usually have a significant reservoir of “classical” plays, to which young theatre makers feel a need to return and reinterpret in new contexts. And although many plays had been written in Hebrew before the revival of Hebrew as a spo-ken language at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century – a project in which Habima and the other theatres played an important role – they were as a rule not suited for staging. These were
“literary” plays, written in a literary language, whereas the theatres served as a model for how Hebrew sounds and communicates when spoken.
Most of the classics that were performed on the Hebrew stages were trans-lations of foreign plays, from other dramatic and theatrical traditions. Such
“foreign” classics are, of course, performed in all countries, albeit usually in combination with productions of “local” or “native” works. Besides presenting
3See Yael Zarhi-Levo and Freddie Rokem, “Criteria for Canonization in Israeli Theatre: Re/
evaluating the Identity of Hebrew Drama,” in:Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories, ed. Steve Wilmer, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 2004, 174–200.
some of these foreign classics the Hebrew theatres also staged plays written in Yiddish, where the characters and their fictional world as a rule stemmed from various Jewish sources familiar to the Jewish audiences. S. Ansky’s The Dyb-buk, composed first in Russian and later translated into Yiddish (or re-com-posed in Yiddish with some additions, as in the fictional world depicted the characters would have spoken Yiddish), was, following Constantin Stanislav-ski’s recommendation, performed by the Habima Theatre, after being translat-ed into Hebrew by the national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik. The Dybbuk, di-rected by the Armenian director Evgeny Vakhtangov, premiered at the Habima Theatre in January 1922, after it had been performed (in Yiddish) by the Jewish avant-garde theatreDie Vilnaer Truppe, in 1920. The Habima Theatre’s produc-tion ofThe Dybbukcan be regarded as the paradoxical point where an indige-nous theatre tradition in Hebrew was created.
It is of course possible to ask why such a classical tradition in the indige-nous language is at all necessary. Is it not more productive for a new theatre tradition to develop without the burden of a classical heritage? Certainly, one of the reasons for the extraordinarily creative development of the Israeli theatre is that it did not carry the “burden” of a “classical” tradition. Yet an existing tradition can also become an element of resistance, that is, an already existing theatrical tradition usually serves as a kind of mental or cultural space, a hori-zon of expectations or a system of norms on the basis of which – following the theories of the Russian Formalists – innovations can take place. For many Isra-eli theatregoers (and I am referring to the period after the Second World War), as well as for the Israeli theatrical establishment itself, these norms were, for a long time – and to some extent still are – the London West End theatres and even Broadway.
One way to compensate for this lack of a playwriting tradition was by turn-ing to the Bible, both as a general source of inspiration and as a reservoir for concrete narrative materials. When Habima was founded in Moscow, it was mainly through the initiative of Nachum Zemach, who contacted the famous Russian director Constantin Stanislavski to support the establishment of a He-brew theatre; it was suggested that the new “Studio” (as the theatre groups working under Stanislavski’s leadership were called) should be named the
“Biblical Studio,” thereby drawing attention to this classical tradition. And on many of the early posters of the newly founded theatre this is the name that appears. Besides drawing inspiration from the Hebrew Bible, the founders of Habima also considered the actors to be a new form of prophet, who obviously would speak in the language of their ancient predecessors.
This biblical trajectory was also reinforced by the choice of the more offi-cial name of the theatre: “Habima.” The Hebrew word for “stage” isbima
(Ha-The Bible on the Hebrew/Israeli Stage 189 Bimameans “the stage”), with the stress on the first syllable. However, and also in daily speech, by stressing the second syllable –bima – one usually refers to the elevated, canopied platform situated in the center or at the front of the synagogue, where the weekly portions of theTora – the five books of Moses – are recited every Sabbath as part of the prayer rituals. The Habima Theatre transformed this elevated “stage” in the synagogue – where the Bible, the classical Hebrew textpar excellance, is read –into an artistic space where the language itself is “biblical” and the stories presented draw inspiration from biblical themes.
The Bible holds a central position in the 1922 Habima production of The Dybbuk. The first act, when the two lovers meet, takes place in a synagogue, with the Tora shrine situated as the focal point of the stage’s one-point per-spective. (The stage designer was the painter Natan Altman.) In front of the shrine the canopied stage for reading theTorais clearly visible. A short biblical quote is hanging over the stage in each of the three acts. This obviously reinfor-ces the role of the Bible within the theatrical world created on stage, indirectly implying that the art of the theatre is an act of revelation in which the words of God are literally materialized on stage, hanging overhead.
On the one hand this aesthetic transformation of the Bible into theatre no doubt replaced the dramatic canon which I noted above. Instead of plays writ-ten during the Renaissance, the budding Hebrew theatre drew on an even more ancient text. This transformation also accorded with the basic notion that the Bible was a major source of inspiration for the ideology of the Zionist move-ment. These ancient texts, written in a Hebrew language that could be under-stood by contemporary speakers and readers, were even considered as a proof for the ancient biblical land having been promised to the Jewish people. Of course, in 1922, in the post-revolutionary context of Moscow, such an aesthetic and ideological agenda could hardly be taken for granted. Therefore, at the same time as the Zionist/Jewish subtexts were transmitted through use of the Bible, the Habima production ofThe Dybbukhad also developed a clear revolu-tionary, Communist agenda, for example by using a red canopy for the wed-ding ceremony where Leah – the young bride who is refused permission to marry her true lover, Hanan – revolts against the groom that her rich father has chosen for her. This is the moment when the Dybbuk of Hanan (who, at the end of the first act, had died before the Tora shrine upon hearing about the match) enters her body and speaks, quoting from the Song of Songs and addressing Leah through her own mouth. This act of revolt and subversion, prepared by the beggars even before the wedding itself, constitutes the prole-tariat protesting against the Capitalist system to which Leah has been subject-ed by her father.
This performance ofThe Dybbukcombined Bolshevik/Revolutionary mes-sages with Jewish ones, relating to Jewish customs and religious beliefs as well as the ongoing cultural changes signaled by Zionism. Such combinations in-cluded performing in Hebrew, but in the Sephardic accent which was gradually becoming the accent of everyday Hebrew speech among the Jews who had settled in Mandatory Palestine. There is no doubt that the performance’s simul-taneous multiple coding (or “radical ambivalence”), its presenting ideological positions which in fact contradict each other – even if for a short period the Spring of Nations and Zionism were considered compatible – eventually made it impossible for the Habima Theatre to remain in Moscow, especially with the ideological unification of the Soviet Union becoming more stringent under the leadership of Stalin. The theatre departed Moscow, in 1926, but their perform-ances at the time were also not warmly received in Tel Aviv. The ending ofThe Dybbuk– Leah dies, during an attempt to exorcise the Dybbuk from her body, and is united with her dead lover in the next world – is an expression of this complexity. Where can the two (now dead) lovers become unified as their so-cial world disintegrates? From the Zionist perspective this is the Igra Rama, the mystical high abode to which their souls ascend (makingaliah) in an after-life that is at the same time a homecoming to the land of the Bible. ThisIgra Ramahas not yet been given any specific qualities, however, and – at least at that point in time – it remained an abstraction. These forms of Jewish mysti-cism on which The Dybbukrelies were not easily accepted among the Jewish settlers in Mandatory Palestine, and acceptance of this production after the Habima Theatre had made Tel Aviv its home was gradual.
Yet, despite these problems, the contradictory perspectives of traditional Jewish culture presented byThe Dybbukand its simultaneous multiple coding have remained an important source of inspiration for avant-garde experimenta-tion and ideological radicalism in the arts in Israel. Such a contradictory sce-nario must be kept in mind while analyzing Levin’s The Torments of Job, as well as much of his writing both before and after this play. There have also been various other performances of works based on biblical materials. These works have been, for different reasons, avant-garde in this sense, and include Nissim Aloni’sCruelest of all the King,which premiered, at the Habima Theatre, in 19534 and was directed by Shraga Friedman; Jehu, by Gilead Evron, and directed by Hanan Snir at the Habima National Theatre in 1992; and Rina Yeru-shalmi’s renowned Bible Project in two parts, withVa-Yomer/Va-Yelech(“And He said and He walked,” 1996) andVa-Yishtahu/Va-Yera(“And they Bowed and
4 For a discussion of the canonization process of this play see Zarhi-Levo and Rokem, “Criteria for Canonization in Israeli Theatre.”
The Bible on the Hebrew/Israeli Stage 191 he Feared,” 1998).5Throughout the short history of the Hebrew and the Israeli theatre there have been more than thirty-five productions based on biblical themes or biblical texts. This category of plays has been far more frequent in the Israeli theatre than in any other national theatre tradition of which I am familiar. But only a handful of these productions can be considered to have been avant-garde in the sense that I am discussing here, that is, in drawing attention to the subversive ideological potentials of the biblical text, which itself is hegemonic.
Before focusing more directly on Levin’sThe Torments of Jobit is important to refer to another context in which the Bible and the theatrical stage intersect, namely, the holiday of Purim. Even in the most traditional Jewish orthodox contexts, in which theatre is banned, there is exception for Purim. Indeed, according to orthodox Jewish faith, theatre as an art form is actually forbidden, yet there is an existing Jewish tradition and practice which had afforded room for such a transformation, namely, performing biblical narrative in a parodic manner. Purim celebrates the miraculous rescue of the Jews from the Persian ruler Ahasver, as commemorated in the short biblical novellaEsther. During this holiday, it is the custom (begun in the sixteenth century) to dramatize biblical stories in a humorous or even subversive manner. Since Purim was a carnivalesque holiday, it was the only day during the year that, according to Jewish religious laws, it was permissible to play theatre. The Israeli theatre has, in a way, adopted this carnival spirit as a yearlong phenomenon, while at the same time frequently engaging in ideological debates over the significance of these canonical texts.