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Ukrainian Jewish life has always taken place in Russian. Now a race to translate is underway.
LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) – The rabbis sat around a breakfast table, discussing Russia’s war on the country where they work in a mixture of Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. They named their hometowns as Lugansk, Lvov and Dnepr, the Russian names for Ukrainian cities that have vaulted into international headlines since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Although they were focused on Ukraine’s progress in the fighting, the rabbis uttered not a single word in Ukrainian. How could they? Like the vast majority of Jews in Ukraine, none of them speaks the country’s official language.
Russian has long been the first language for a wide swath of Ukrainians, including the majority of the country’s Jews. But after the Russian invasion, many Ukrainians decided they wanted to speak less Russian and more Ukrainian. Many Jews, similarly horrified by the sight of thousands of Russian soldiers pouring over Ukraine’s borders and wishing to demonstrate their Ukrainian bonafides, have made the same choice — even as it means disrupting a long linguistic tradition.
So when the rabbis’ successors meet for pancakes and sour cream, they will be far more likely to introduce themselves as the rabbis of Luhansk, Lviv and Dnipro, the Ukrainian names for their hometowns that have become the standard in English. They will also likely be able to hand their students and congregants Ukrainian-language versions of central Jewish texts that simply do not exist now.
“Many of my friends say that they are embarrassed to use Russian as a language. They say that we are Ukrainian Jews, and that Russia is a terrorist country fighting us and that we shouldn’t use their language,” said Rabbi Meir Stambler, from Dnipro. “Others say that [Russian president Vladimir] Putin doesn’t own the Russian language. It is an issue.”
He added, “This is something that people are discussing all the time.”
A decade ago, half of Ukrainians said they spoke Russian as their native language. That number has declined to 20%, fueled in part by resentment over Russia’s aggressions in Crimea, a contested region that it annexed by force in 2014. But Jews have remained predominantly Russian-speaking, even in parts of western Ukraine where Ukrainian has long been the dominant language. (Russian and Ukrainian are related linguistically, but their speakers cannot understand each other.)
Russia’s war on Ukraine has Ukrainian Jews playing catchup. Stambler, who heads the Federation of Jewish Communities, a body affiliated with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement that operates a network of 36 synagogues around Ukraine, offers a stark prediction: “Within 10 years, every Jew in Ukraine will speak Ukrainian.”
The dominance of Russian among Ukraine’s Jews, who numbered in the tens of thousands before the war, has deep roots.
“The historical trajectory of Jews in what is now Ukraine led them in the 19th century to adopt Russian rather than Ukrainian,” says historian Natan Meir, a professor of Judaic studies at Portland State University. “That was because Ukrainian was perceived as a peasant language that did not have any high culture associated with it, and because there were no economic advantages to adopting Ukrainian at the time.”
Now, the upside of switching to Ukrainian — demonstrating a national allegiance during a time of war — couldn’t be clearer.
“Jews feel quite integrated into Ukrainian society, but a shift, even if it is a gradual shift, to Ukrainian is going to make that more tangible than ever,” Meir said, calling the Russian invasion “absolutely game-changing” for Ukrainian Jews. “They will be perceived even more strongly than they have been as being wholly Ukrainian and part of the fabric of Ukrainian society.”
Most Ukrainian Jews, especially those educated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, can now speak some Ukrainian. But their ability often depends on where they grew up: Many Jews in traditionally Russophone cities such as Odesa, Dnipro or Kharkiv can struggle with the language, while their grandparents often cannot speak it at all.
Books in both Hebrew and Russian sit on a bookshelf at Medzhybizh. (Jacob Judah)
“Not more than 20% were Ukrainian-speaking at home,” says Stambler. “Take President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. He knew Ukrainian, but he didn’t speak it at home, and he had to polish it up when he became president.”
It will not be simple for the Jewish community to suddenly switch to Ukrainian, the most widely spoken European language without a standardized translation of the Torah.
Two years ago, a team of translators working in Israel, Austria and Hungary began working to produce Ukrainian-language Jewish texts. But before the Russian invasion, the effort had so far produced only a Ukrainian book of psalms, or tehillim.
In May, two months into the war, a decision was made to accelerate work on a daily prayer book. A Torah could follow.
“The chumash is difficult,” said Stambler, who oversees the half-dozen-strong team of translators from his base in Dnipro, using the Hebrew word for the printed form of the Torah. “We are working on it.”
While translating sacred texts can take years, other changes have come faster. The leaflets, brochures and calendars that are a fixture at any Jewish center in Ukraine were quickly swapped out Russian for Ukrainian, at least at the federation’s headquarters. Before February, these had often been produced and printed by Russian Jewish communities and shared with those in Ukraine, for simplicity’s sake.
“This differentiation from Russian Jewry is going to be huge,” said Meir, the historian. “Up until this point they have essentially formed one linguistic and cultural space that all Jews, whether they were in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus could move freely between.”
Now, the ties between those communities are both logistically complicated to maintain — trade routes have been ruptured — and also potentially a liability at a time when anyone in either Russia or Ukraine showing an affinity for the other country can face suspicion or penalties.
“This shift, if it actually happens, is going to be marking out a totally new cultural space for Ukrainian Jews and almost a declaration of independence,” Meir said “Or at least that is the aspiration, because there is so much of their heritage which is still based in the Russian language that it is going to be a long time before they can fully separate.”
That separation process, which began to take shape most clearly after 2014, has quickened. “We started doing things ourselves,” said Stambler. “We used to do about 20% in Ukrainian for the Jews in western towns like Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Uzhhorod, but we are making a much stronger push now.”
He estimates that some 75% of material being distributed to Ukrainian Jewish communities by the Federation of Jewish Communities was in Ukrainian by September, up from 20% to 35% in January.
Young rabbis who come from the United States or Israel to serve small Jewish communities across Ukraine now say that they have had to add Ukrainian alongside their Russian classes.
“I began with Russian,” said one of those rabbis who works in Vinnitsya, until he decided over the summer that he had to learn Ukrainian. “I realized that I had to learn Ukrainian because I needed it on the street. I needed it to speak with the government and with the media.”
Signs in a synagogue in Ukraine are written in both Ukrainian and Russian. (Jacob Judah)
Some Ukrainian Jews are voting with their voices.
“My whole life, I spoke only Russian,” said Olha Peresunko, who before the war lived in Mikolaiv in southern Ukraine. “But after the 24th of February I am speaking only Ukrainian.”
Peresunko was speaking outside a Lviv synagogue this fall, where she and other refugees were waiting for food parcels. She had fled Mikolaiv, which has sustained repeated assault by Russian troops, for Lviv with her mother and two children while her husband is on the frontlines.
Her children are finding it hard to adjust to the exclusive Ukrainian environment in Lviv, but she is confident that they will make the shift. “They will speak Ukrainian as their first language,” Peresunko said.
Exactly how much the shift to Ukrainian will change local Jewish communities is a matter of debate. Rabbi Shalom Gopin, who fled to Kyiv in 2014 from his home community in Luhansk, an overwhelmingly Russophone city seized by Russia-backed separatists at that time, said he, too, believes that Ukrainian will displace Russian as the lingua franca of Ukrainian Jewry.
A Ukrainian woman displays her Ukrainian-language Jewish calendar as a source of pride, September 2022. (Jacob Judah)
“They are starting to slowly speak Ukrainian,” he said. “It is no problem. There are lots of Jews in America who speak English. We live here, and we speak the languages of the places that we live. It is normal.”
But Gopin said the linguistic shift “means nothing” amid other issues facing Jews in Ukraine, where Russia’s war is threatening to undo 30 years of Jewish community building, largely though not exclusively led by Chabad, Gopin’s Orthodox movement.
“The problem for the Jews of Ukraine is not language,” he said. “It is about how much they are going to synagogue, or how many children are going to Jewish schools, not about what they are speaking.”
Natalia Kozachuk, 45, a Jewish businesswoman in Lviv, sees only upside to shedding Russian, her native language. She has started to speak to her children only in Ukrainian.
“It will be hugely positive if Jews speak more Ukrainian,” Kozachuk said. This is the only way that Jews can truly “learn more about the Ukrainian people,” she said, “about their history and the positive qualities and strengths of Ukraine.”
“Only good can come of it,” she added. “We will understand each other better.”
—
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People accusing El-Sayed of Muslim Brotherhood ties will accuse Jews of dual loyalty too
Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, has said that he has no ties to, and disavows, the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not matter how many times he is asked about this, or how many times he answers, because there will be those who insist that it is a real concern. Their position relies not on reality, but on a deep-rooted idea Jews should recognize: that people who are “other” hold dual loyalties, and that those dual loyalties are a danger to America.
El-Sayed has had ample reason and opportunity to assert his distance from the group, as he has been asked about it over and over again. (The connection to the Muslim Brotherhood specifically seems to be a tweet from El-Sayed’s half-sister saying their mother was once involved with the organization.) He was asked at a town hall earlier this month to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood; he was asked about the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this month on Meet the Press; he was asked about it by Fox News; and he was accused without evidence by his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, of being “bought” by the Muslim Brotherhood and of being a national security risk in their debate last week. Other Democrats were also asked to weigh in: CNN, for example, asked Sen. Chris Murphy if Democrats were “concerned about this with El-Sayed.”
American Jews should object to this cynical, baseless fearmongering because it is wrong and destructive in and of itself to charge that a person who is Muslim is a threat to national security. American Jews should also recognize it for what it is: a charge of dual loyalty, and one they should speak up against if they do not want similar charges leveled against Jewish politicians. This is true even if they disagree with El-Sayed or do not want to see him win in next week’s midterm elections.
For American Jews, dual loyalty is an old and familiar antisemitic trope. It’s a suspicion and accusation that has followed us around the globe and across decades and says that we can never really be loyal to the country or society in which we find ourselves because we are secretly loyal only to each other or, more recently, to Israel.
American Jews — understandably, given the history of this trope — are attuned to politics that smack of dual loyalty. For example, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro wrote in his book that, when he was being vetted as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, he was asked if he had ever been an Israeli agent and felt that that was inappropriate. In fact, being asked about loyalty to other countries is a regular occurrence in obtaining a security clearance.
Nevertheless, Shapiro’s alertness to it speaks to the sensitivity American Jews, and particularly politicians, feel around being accused of dual loyalty, especially as Israel becomes a “litmus test” in Democratic party politics. For example, was congressional candidate Scott Weiner chased from a rally for trans rights solely because he had declined to say that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza (before he said they did days later), or was it because he’s Jewish?
And this past weekend, a RebellionPac ad in which a couple can’t buy eggs because, they say, the United States sends money to Israel, concludes with “Mike Rogers is for they/them” — cutting to photos of Israeli politicians — “Abdul El-Sayed is for you,” suggesting that being supportive of Israel is at odds with being supportive of Michigan, which some Jews feel creates a permission structure for antisemitism and suspicion toward Jews.
U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, once again put forth his specific version of the dual loyalty trope, in which to be a true American Jew is to vote for him because he supports Israel, by saying American Jews should be “ashamed of themselves” if they voted for El-Sayed.
It is not enough for American Jews to be against dual loyalty when it is leveled against us. We just need to be against it. Because if you do not want it to be acceptable to cast aspersions regarding a candidate’s race, religion, or ethnicity, and if you do not want there to be different, special, higher bars that candidates need to meet because of their culture or where they pray, then you need to be against that for anyone. Otherwise, you’re accepting it for everyone.
I am not equating Israel with the Muslim Brotherhood, nor am I defending the Muslim Brotherhood. What I am saying is this: If you are offended by the idea that Jews need to prove that we are not first and foremost loyal to Israel, or by the notion that Jews should be punished for perceived connections to Israel, then you should also be offended by what politicians and pundits are demanding of El-Sayed. You should do this not only because not doing so is hypocritical (though we, as a nation, seem long past the point of hypocrisy mattering), but because the more comfortable we are having charges of dual loyalty in our politics, the more comfortable we are having charges of dual loyalty in our politics for everyone, including Jewish candidates.
I made a similar point last week on X (formerly Twitter) and was promptly accused of hating myself and Jews, loving the Muslim Brotherhood, and having my priorities wrong. In one response to my post, which read, “You don’t get a more tolerant, accepting, pluralistic, liberal country by accusing people of another religion of inherently hating and being disloyal to it and you, it is simply not going to work,” someone wrote, “I don’t want a more tolerant society you stupid twat, I want my kids to be safe at Jewish day school and I don’t want 24/7 security at shul.”
What I found most fascinating about this person’s reply was the idea that Jewish institutions could be safe in the United States, where we are a small minority, without ours being a tolerant society. That struck me as almost as fanciful as thinking that we could allow charges of dual loyalty for Muslim candidates and then turn around and ask that Jewish candidates not have to face dual loyalty accusations or special extra litmus tests.
Much as a society in which antisemitic conspiracy theories are allowed to flourish is ultimately a more conspiratorial, paranoid, and less trusting place for everyone, a polity where candidates are regularly charged with dual loyalty or disloyalty on the basis of their religion or ethnicity is just that — a political discourse where charges of dual loyalty are leveled against ethnic and religious minorities. We don’t get to choose against whom dual loyalty cards are played. We only get to choose whether we think it’s acceptable to play them at all.
The post People accusing El-Sayed of Muslim Brotherhood ties will accuse Jews of dual loyalty too appeared first on The Forward.
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Eight years after Tree of Life shooting, a Jewish burial society’s ranks have nearly doubled
After preparing five victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre for burial, members of Pittsburgh’s New Community Chevra Kadisha stood in a circle and held hands.
They had gathered like this before, taking a moment after their work to process what they had done. This time, they were caring for people murdered in their own community.
Volunteers from outside Pittsburgh had come to help. David Zimmer, a longtime member, remembered one visitor bringing a custom from another chevra kadisha.
“He passed around a piece of chocolate,” Zimmer recalled, “so that there should be something sweet.”
Eight years later, NCCK has nearly doubled in size. Before the attack, it had about 38 members, according to records reviewed by Patricia Cluss, one of its founders. Within four months, 11 people had joined. Today, it has 70.
The growth has brought more volunteers into some of the least visible work in Jewish communal life. A chevra kadisha, traditionally translated as a “holy society,” washes and prepares the dead for burial, dresses them in plain white shrouds and helps ensure they are treated with dignity. The work is considered a chesed shel emet, or true kindness, because the dead cannot repay those who care for them.
For NCCK, the aftermath of the attack also revealed another dimension of that care: The people accustomed to supporting others through loss needed support themselves.
Caring for their own
Pittsburgh’s NCCK was founded in 2004 to encourage greater participation in the Jewish tradition of caring for the dead. An Orthodox chevra kadisha already existed, and NCCK’s founders hoped to involve more Jews in the practice, regardless of their level of religious observance.
Cluss was among them. She had encountered an article about Reform Jews reviving Jewish burial practices that had fallen away in some communities. Until then, she had never heard of a chevra kadisha.
“I gotta do that,” she remembered thinking.
Deane Root joined early, too, drawn by an idea: What if Pittsburgh had a chevra kadisha open to anyone in the Jewish community? Root remembered a small group gathering, often in a member’s living room, to figure out the logistics of working with funeral homes and training volunteers.
Then came Oct. 27, 2018.
Root and his wife, Rabbi Doris Dyen, were approaching the Tree of Life synagogue building that Saturday morning when they heard a series of loud noises. They pulled into the parking lot and saw shattered glass.
Two NCCK members had been inside the synagogue, and the dead and wounded included people its members knew. At the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh after the shooting, where families and friends gathered and waited for news, Root recalled that “not everybody knew for sure” what had happened to their loved ones.
When the victims were released for burial, NCCK began the work for which it had trained. Members also kept shmira, remaining with the dead and reciting Psalms until burial.
Allen Baum, who coordinates the NCCK men’s members, remembered that by the end, nearly every man in the group had participated in shifts. After the final tahara, the ritual preparation of a body for Jewish burial, they stood in a large circle, joined by women from NCCK as well.
Later, members gathered in a home, bringing food, reading poems and speaking about the people they had lost.Root was carrying the trauma of what he experienced that morning. He described a “video playing in my head constantly.”
Being together helped. “Let the community carry some of that burden,” Root remembered, “rather than keeping it all inside our own emotions and our own minds.”
A growing circle
Following the attack, younger Jews contacted NCCK after reading about its work. Some described joining as something they felt they needed to do as Jews. Others spoke of it as a form of social action.
Elana Glick, who joined NCCK around 2014 after her grandfather died, remembered that the group sometimes struggled to find enough volunteers before the massacre. Afterward, she said, the work became more public, even as members sought to preserve the privacy of the rituals.
At its annual dinner, Glick has watched the group grow. There have been “more and more tables added year after year because of people who have found this and wanted to be a part of this work,” she said.
“Being part of the chevra is one of the ways I feel most attached to my Judaism,” Glick said.
Sarit Wishnevski, executive director of Kavod v’Nichum, a national organization supporting chevrot kadisha and Jewish burial practices, has watched the movement become increasingly multigenerational. At the organization’s November 2025 gathering in Ojai, California, participants ranged from their 20s to their 80s, with one in their 90s.
The Jewish phrase l’dor v’dor is usually understood as passing something “from generation to generation.” Wishnevski suggested it can also mean practicing a tradition with generations alongside one another.
NCCK has also become a resource for other communities. Wishnevski called it a “really strong model,” citing materials its members have shared and their help with questions ranging from starting a group to making the work more inclusive of gender diversity.
The possibility of mass-casualty events has prompted other questions, too. “How will we be prepared?” Wishnevski said. “How will we show up if God forbid this happens here?”
Kavod v’Nichum is developing an emergency preparedness pilot effort. Wishnevski said the goal is not for a chevra kadisha to respond “in a silo,” but to build relationships with first responders, government agencies and other Jewish organizations.
Earlier this month, three NCCK members traveled to Chicago to teach other volunteers about something none would ever want to need: developing tahara liturgy for young children.
But most of the chevra kadisha’s work remains unseen, and the calls come without warning. “The only predictable thing is the unpredictability,” Baum said.
One summer, the men’s group went 11 weeks without a tahara. More recently, Cluss said, the women’s group performed 11 in two weeks. Sometimes volunteers arrive at a funeral home for one person and are asked whether they can stay for another. In recent years, NCCK has performed roughly 90 taharot annually.
For Cluss, the work had long been meaningful. After Tree of Life, she struggled to explain how that meaning had changed. Her daughter noticed something she hadn’t.
“Mom, do you ever notice when you’re talking about the chevra you always put your hand on your heart?”
Cluss hadn’t noticed.
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When a black hat and a toothbrush take on deeper meanings
דניאל גלאַיס באַנד „דער פֿאָיע און אַנדערע פּיעסעס“ (ה. לײוויק־פֿאַרלאַג, תּל־אָבֿיבֿ, 2026), נעמט אַרײַן צוועלף דראַמאַטישע ווערק אין פֿאַרשײדענע זשאַנערס: מעלאָדראַמעס, מאָנאָדראַמעס, משפּחה־דראַמעס און פּאָליטישע סאַטירעס.
די ווערק זײַנען פֿאַרשיידענע, אָבער זײ װערן צונױפֿגעקניפּט דורך אַ בשותּפֿותדיקן מאָטיװ פֿון זכּרון און זײַן כּוח פֿון תּיקון.
גלאַי איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין 1945 אין בוענאָס־אײַרעס, בײַ אַ משפּחה פֿון ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן. אין שטוב, אויף משפּחה־שׂימחות און אױף דער גאַס האָט ער געהערט ייִדיש, העברעיִש און שפּאַניש, װי אױך די קלאַסישע מוזיק, כּלי־זמר און טאַנגאָ.
זײַן טאַטע, זישע גאָלדוואַסער, איז געווען אַ שנײַדער און אַן אַמאַטאָרישער ייִדישער אַקטיאָר. דורך אים האָט דער יונגער דניאל אײַנגעזאַפּט די קלאַנגען, עמאָציעס און אינטאָנאַציעס פֿונעם ייִדישן טעאַטער.
צו פֿינף יאָר האָט גלאַי אָנגעהויבן זיך לערנען מוזיק, לכתּחילה אין בוענאָס־אײַרעס און דערנאָך אין תּל־אָבֿיבֿ. שפּעטער האָט ער באַקומען אַ מאַגיסטער אין קאָמפּאָזיציע פֿונעם שיקאַגע־אוניווערסיטעט.
דער ביאָגראַפֿישער הינטערגרונט העלפֿט פֿאַרשטיין די טיטל־פּיעסע „דער פֿאָיע“. דעם הױפּטהעלד פֿישעלעס פֿאָטער איז — ווי גלאַיס אייגענער טאַטע איז געווען — אַ שנײַדער, װאָס איז פֿאַרליבט אינעם טעאַטער.
דער טעאַטער, און בפֿרט דער פֿאָיע, װערט פֿאַרװאַנדלט אין אַ זכּרון־קאַמער, װוּ עס װערט אױסגעשפּילט די דראַמאַטישע ליבע־געשיכטע פֿון פֿישעלע און זײַן געליבטער רײזעלע. זײ באַװײַזן זיך אױף דער בינע אין דרײַ געשטאַלטן — װי קינדער, יונגע לײַט און דערװאַקסענע.
דער פֿאָיע איז מער ווי אַ טייל פֿונעם טעאַטער־בנין. דאָס אין אַ פּונקט װוּ דער זכּרון טרעפֿט זיך מיט דער ווירקלעכקייט. דער דערוואַקסענער פֿישל עקשטיין שטייט דאָ ווי אַ רואה ואינו נראה, אַן אומזעעוודיקער אָבסערוואַטאָר װאָס פּרוּווט צו פֿאַרבינדן „צוויי פּונקטן אין דער צײַט“.
בײַ גלאַין איז די קינדהײט ניט קײן אַלטע מעשׂה־שהיה, נאָר זי פֿאַרמאָגט אַ שליסל צום הײַנט: „דער סוד פֿון וואָס איך בין הײַנט, מײַנע טרוימען, ליבע און פּײַן, שטעקט אין אָט די נאָענטע קינדעריאָרן“, זאָגט פֿישל אינעם פֿאָיע.
ווען דער קליינער פֿישעלע קען ניט ענטפֿערן אויף אַ פֿראַגע פֿונעם כּפֿל־טאַבעלע, שרײַט ער אויס: „דרײַצן טויזנט מיליאַרד!“ דער קלאַס לאַכט אים אױס, אָבער פֿאַר אים שטעקט אין דער דאָזיקער צאָל אַ סוד, אַן „עניגמע“.
שפּעטער ווערט ער אַ באַרימטער פֿיזיקער. עס גײט דאָ ניט סתּם וועגן אַ שלעכטן תּלמיד, וואָס איז געקומען צום שׂכל. די עניגמאַטישע ריזיקע צאָל איז אַ סימן פֿון אַ שטאַרקן כּוח־הדמיון. די שול קען ניט דערקענען זײַן טאַלאַנט, אָבער דװקא אָט דער כּוח דערמעגלעכט זײַן אױפֿטו אין װיסנשאַפֿט.
אַן ענלעכע דינאַמיק שטעקט הינטער רייזעלעס דערפֿאָלג װי אַ טעאַטער־שטערן. פֿישעלע טרעפֿט זי אױפֿן מאַרק װוּ זי זינגט שטײענדיק אויף אַ פֿרוכטן־קעסטל. זי זאָגט צו אים: „זאָלסט װיסן…קונסט שטייט העכער פֿון אַלץ!“
דאָס קעסטל איז איינער פֿון גלאַיס בינע־חפֿצים מיט אַ סימבאָלישן באַטײַט. אַ פּשוטער טאָגטעגלעכער אָביעקט איז אַ מין זכּרון־פּושקע װאָס פֿאַרבאַהאַלט דעם חלום פֿון די קינדעריאָרן. דאָס קעסטל באַװײַזט זיך װידער אינעם פֿאָיע, װען די דערװאַקסענע רײזל זעצט זיך אַנידער כּדי אָפּצוגעבן זיך אַ דין־וחשבון פֿון איר לעבן.
אַזאַ מין פֿונקציע האָבן די בינע־חפֿצים אויך אין אַנדערע פּיעסעס. אין „באַכס פּאַרטיטע אין רע מאַזשאָר“ איז דאָס דער שוואַרצער הוט, װאָס די מאַמע טראָגט װען זי קומט צו איר טאָכטערס פּיאַנע־קאָנצערט.
אײן בליק אױף דעם הוט ברענגט די טאָכטער פֿון די כּלים אַרױס און מאַכט קאַליע דעם קאָנצערט. דער הוט איז דאָ אַ סימן פֿון דער מוטערס קאָנטראָל איבער דער טאָכטערס פּערזענלעכקײט — אַ פּראָבלעם, װאָס זײ בײדע מוזן לײזן.
אַ פּשוטער חפֿץ איז אָפֿט מאָל חשובֿער אײדער אַ בכּבֿודיקער. „דאָס ציינבערשטל און די כּתובֿה“ איז אַ פּיעסע װעגן אַ משפּחה־ברוגז. דער מאַן װאַרפֿט מיט כּעס זײַן טעלעפֿאָן אין דער װאַנט אַרײַן און צעברעכט על־פּי־צופֿאַל די כּתובֿה. דאָס צעבראָכענע גלאָז איז אַן אָנזאָגער פֿונעם משפּחה־קריזיס.
דער מאַן ציט זיך אַריבער אין אַן אַנדער דירה, אָבער קען ניט געפֿינען זײַן ציינבערשטל. אין צװישן געפֿינט די פֿרױ אָט דעם צײנבערשטל און דאָס גיט איר אַ תּירוץ צו טעלעפֿאָנירן דעם מאַן. דער סוף איז גוט; שלום־בית װערט אױפֿגעשטעלט.
גלאַי האָט געשריבן מוזיק צו די לידער פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע ייִדישע און העברעיִשע דיכטער. אין זײַן טעאַטער איז מוזיק ניט קיין באַפּוצונג, נאָר אַן אייגנאַרטיקע בינע־שפּראַך. אױך טאַנץ איז פֿאַר גלאַי, ווי ער האָט געזאָגט אין אַן אינטערוויו, „די שפּראַך פֿונעם גוף“, װאָס איז וויזועל, דינאַמיש און פֿאַרשטענדלעך פֿאַר אַלעמען.
אַ סינטעז צװישן װאָרט, קלאַנג און באַװעגונג קומט פֿאָר אין „אַ פֿריילעכס פֿאַר איסאַ“. אין דער פּיעסע, װאָס איז געװידמעט דער באַרימטער זינגערין איסאַ קרעמער, װערן איבערגעפֿלאָכטן לידער, טענץ, ביאָגראַפֿישע פּרטים, אַרכיוואַלע דאָקומענטן און חלומות.
אַ װיכטיקער זשאַנער אין גלאַיס דראַמאַטורגיע איז די גראָטעסקע סאַטירע. „ווי מאַכט מען חרובֿ אַ פֿאָלק“ איז אַ בינע־עקספּערימענט: חיים װיל װײַזן זײַן חבֿר יאַנקל װי אַזױ צו „צערײַסן אױף שטיקער“ גוטע אָרנטלעכע מענטשן דורך דעמאַגאָגיע און געװאַלט.
חיימס װערטער „מען האָט אַ מאָל גרינטלעך מתקן געװען דאָס פֿאָלק. איצט קומט די ריכטיקע שעה מאַכן פֿון אים אַש און פּאָרעך“ קלינגען ספּעציעל אַקטועל אין דער הײַנטיקער געשפּאַנטער פּאָליטישער אַטמאָספֿער סײַ אין אַמעריקע סײַ אין ישׂראל.
אין אַן אינטערוויו האָט גלאַי געזאָגט, אַז אַ קינסטלער דאַרף ניט בלויז שילדערן די װירקלעכקײט, נאָר אויך אָנווײַזן אויף אַ בעסערער וועלט מיט מער יושר און ליבע. זײַנע פּיעסעס זאָגן אָבער ניט צו, אַז קונסט קען ברענגען אַ תּיקון־עולם. צװישן זײַנע פּערסאָנאַזשן זײַנען ניטאָ קײן אידעאַלע העלדן. זײַן טעאַטער איז אַ פֿאָיע, װוּ מען טרעפֿט זיך פּנים־אל־פּנים מיט זיך אַלײן, מיט אַלע זײַנע שװאַכקײטן און חסרונות.
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