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Lorraine Hansberry’s second play had a white Jewish protagonist. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are reviving it.
NEW YORK (JTA) — Sidney Brustein, Jewish Hamlet?
Anne Kauffman thinks so. She made the comparison in a phone interview about the play she’s directing — a buzzy production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” that opened on Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan.
“One artistic director who was thinking of doing this [play] was like, ‘You know, it’s not like he’s Hamlet, but…’ And I thought, well, no, actually I think he is like Hamlet!” she said.
She added another take: “I feel like he’s Cary Grant meets Zero Mostel.”
Hansberry saw just two of her works produced on Broadway before her death from cancer at 34 in January 1965. Her first, “A Raisin in the Sun,” which follows a Black family dealing with housing discrimination in Chicago, is widely considered one of the most significant plays of the 20th century. The other, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” ran for a few months in the fall of 1964 until Hansberry’s death and has only been revived a handful of times since, all outside of New York.
Now, the star power of Isaac and Brosnahan is driving renewed interest in the play, which deals with weighty questions about political activism, self-fulfillment in a capitalist world, and racial and ethnic identity — including mid-century Jewish American identity.
The Brustein character, as Kauffman alluded to, is many things. A resident of Greenwich Village deeply embedded in that historic neighborhood’s 1960s activist and artistic circles, he is somewhat of a creative renaissance man. At the start of the play, his club of sorts (“it was not a nightclub” is a running joke) called “Walden Pond” has just shuttered and he has taken over an alternative newspaper. As the script reads, Brustein is an intellectual “in the truest sense of the word” but “does not wear glasses” — the latter description being a possible jab at his macho tendencies. Formerly an ardent leftist activist, he is now weary of the worth of activism and a bit of a nihilist. He’s in his late 30s and is a musician who often picks up a banjo.
Brustein is also a secular Jew, a fact that he telegraphs at certain key emotional and comedic moments. Others, from friends to his casually antisemitic sister-in-law, frequently reference his identity, too.
At the end of the play’s first half, for example, Brustein brings up the heroes of the Hanukkah story in talking about his existential angst — and his stomach ulcer. He has become belligerent to his wife Iris and to a local politician who wants Brustein’s paper’s endorsement.
“How does one confront the thousand nameless faceless vapors that are the evil of our time? Can a sword pierce it?” Sidney says. “One does not smite evil anymore: one holds one’s gut, thus — and takes a pill. Oh, but to take up the sword of the Maccabees again!”
Hansberry’s decision to center a white Jewish character surprised critics and fans alike in 1964 because many of them expected her to follow “A Raisin in the Sun” with further exploration of issues facing Black Americans, said Joi Gresham, the director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust.
“The major attack, both critically and on a popular basis, in regards to the play and to its central character was that Lorraine was out of her lane,” Gresham said. “That not only did she not know what she’s talking about, but that she had the nerve to even examine that subject matter.”
Hansberry’s closest collaborator was her former husband Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish New Yorker whom she had divorced in 1962 but maintained an artistic partnership with. Nemiroff was a bit Brustein-like in his pursuits: he edited books, produced and promoted Hansberry’s work, and even wrote songs (one of which made the couple enough money to allow Hansberry to focus on writing “A Raisin in the Sun”). But Gresham — who is Nemiroff’s stepdaughter through his second marriage, to professor Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff — emphasized that his personality was nothing like Brustein’s. While Brustein is brash and mean to Iris, Nemiroff was undyingly supportive of Hansberry and her work, said Gresham, who lived with him and her mother at Nemiroff’s Croton-on-Hudson home — the one he had formerly shared for a time with Hansberry — from age 10 onward.
Instead, Gresham argued, the Brustein character was the result of Hansberry’s deep engagement with Jewish intellectual thought, in part influenced by her relationship with Nemiroff. The pair met at a protest and would bond over their passion for fighting for social justice, which included combating antisemitism. The night before their wedding, they protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and they would remain highly involved in the wave of activism that blossomed into the Black-Jewish civil rights alliance.
“Bob and Lorraine met and built a life together at a place where there was a very strong Black-Jewish nexus. There was a very strong interplay and interaction,” Gresham said. “I think Lorraine was very influenced by Bob’s family, the Nemiroffs, who were very radical in their politics. And so there was a way in which she was introduced to the base of Jewish intellectualism and Jewish progressive politics, that she took to heart and she was very passionate about.”
Robert Nemiroff and Lorraine Hansberry were married from 1953-62. They are shown here in 1959. (Ben Martin/Getty Images)
Hansberry didn’t hesitate to criticize Jewish writers who said controversial things about Black Americans, either. When Norman Podhoretz wrote “My Negro Problem — And Ours,” an explosive 1963 article in Commentary magazine now widely seen as racist, Hansberry responded with a scathing rebuke. She also sparred with Norman Mailer, who once wrote an essay titled “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.”
Gresham said Brustein’s nihilism represents what Hansberry saw in a range of Jewish and non-Jewish white writers, whom she hoped could be kickstarted back into activism. But Hansberry also nodded to the reasons why someone like Brustein could feel defeated in the early 1960s, a decade and a half after World War II.
“You mean diddle around with the little things since we can’t do anything about the big ones? Forget about the Holocaust and worry about — reforms in the traffic court or something?” Brustein says at one point in the play to a local politician running as a reformer.
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a Jewish scholar of literature who has written on Hansberry, said the resulting Brustein character is a very accurate depiction of a secular Jew at the time — both keenly attuned to prejudice in society and also lacking some understanding of the experience of being Black.
“I was just intoxicated that Hansberry could conjure that world, both so affectionately, but also so clear-sidedly that it seems like she can see the limitations of all of the characters’ perspectives,” he said. “But she also represents them with sympathy and humor.”
Kauffman, who also helmed a revival of the play in Chicago in 2016, is impressed with how “fully fledged” the Brustein character is.
“Who are the cultural icons who have sort of articulated the Jew in our culture in the last 50 years or 60 years, you know?” she said. “Brustein is not a caricature of a Woody Allen character, he’s not even ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ or a Jerry Seinfeld character. He’s a fully drawn character.”
Isaac, who is of mainly Guatemalan and Cuban heritage, has played Jewish characters before, including a formerly Orthodox man in an Israeli director’s remake of the classic film “Scenes From a Marriage.” In the lead-up to this play, he has largely avoided getting caught in headlines focused on the “Jewface” debate, over whether non-Jewish actors should be allowed to play Jewish characters on stage and screen.
But when asked about the responsibility of playing a Jewish character in a New York Times interview, Isaac referenced the fact that he has some Jewish heritage on his father’s side.
“We could play that game: How Jewish are you?” he said to interviewer Alexis Soloski, who is Jewish. “It is part of my family, part of my life. I feel the responsibility to not feel like a phony. That’s the responsibility, to feel like I can say these things, do these things and feel like I’m doing it honestly and truthfully.”
When Kauffman directed a version of the play at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 2016, her lead actor had “not a single drop of Jewish heritage…in his blood,” and she said she had to convey “what anger looks like” coming from a Jewish perspective. Working with Isaac has been different — instead of starting at a base of no knowledge, she has been pushing for more of an Ashkenazi sensibility than a Sephardic one.
“I believe that his heritage leans, I’m guessing, more towards Sephardic. And mine is pure Ashkenazi,” she said. “We sort of joke: ‘[The part] is a little bit more Ashkenazi than that, you know what I mean?’ Like, ‘the violence is actually turned towards yourself!’”
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The post Lorraine Hansberry’s second play had a white Jewish protagonist. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are reviving it. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US-Israel War Effort Bolstered by Growing Support in Middle East, Europe as Iran Left Isolated
Smoke rises after reported Iranian missile attacks, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, as seen from Doha, Qatar, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
As Iran’s missile and drone attacks widen and prompt outrage, a loose coalition is forming of Middle Eastern and Western powers to act against Tehran, leaving the regime increasingly isolated as the US and Israel continue their military campaign.
On Monday, several Israeli media outlets reported that Qatar launched strikes against Iran over the last 24 hours, following what officials described as a series of Iranian attacks targeting the country and the broader region.
However, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid al-Ansari denied Doha’s involvement in “the campaign targeting Iran,” describing its actions as defensive in nature rather than part of any war effort.
“We exercised our legitimate right to self-defense and to deter Iranian aggression against our territory,” al-Ansari said in a statement.
The Qatari diplomat further confirmed that officials had prevented a planned attack aimed at Hamad International Airport in Doha.
“It is misguided to suggest that pressuring Gulf nations will bring Iran back to the negotiating table,” al-Ansari said.
“We received no advance warning from Iran regarding the missile strikes,” he continued. “The target was not limited to military installations, but extended to the country’s entire territory. Such attacks will not go unanswered.”
Amid escalating regional tensions, Saudi Arabia could also be drawn into the military campaign against the Islamist regime after two Iranian drones struck near the United States Embassy in Riyadh, igniting an explosion in the city. Saudi Arabia is considering a symbolic attack on Iran in response, according to Israeli media reports.
US President Donald Trump strongly condemned the attack, issuing a stark warning to Tehran and saying that Iranian aggression would be met with a forceful US response.
“They will soon learn the price of the attack on the US Embassy in Riyadh and the killing of American service members,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Since the start of the war this past weekend, Iran has reportedly launched 450 missiles and 1,140 drones toward Gulf states, a barrage that has pushed regional governments to distance themselves from Tehran and align more openly with the Israeli and American offensive.
As the conflict widened, Iran extended its attacks beyond Israel, targeting what it described as “US interests” across the region and launching missile and drone strikes that reached several Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Iran “is now in complete isolation in the entire world, including among the Gulf states,” Darar al-Hol al-Falasi, a former member of the UAE’s Federal National Council, told the Israeli broadcaster Kan News. “The attacks were like the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Media reports also indicated Iranian strikes in the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, reportedly to preempt any uprising from Kurdish opposition groups, and an Iranian-made drone, likely launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah from Lebanon, striking a British base in Cyprus.
According to analysts, Iran appeared to believe that expanding the war and targeting Gulf states would push regional governments to press Washington toward de-escalation. However, the move has instead reinforced regional resistance and prompted closer alignment against Tehran.
Meanwhile, both Washington and Jerusalem have indicated that there is no fixed timetable for ending their military operation, stressing that actions will continue as long as necessary to neutralize the threat posed by Iran
“From the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that, we’ll do it,” Trump said in a statement.
“This was our last best chance to strike … and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime,” he continued.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also said there is no set timeline for the joint military effort with Washington against Iran, describing the strikes as a necessary step to weaken Tehran’s leadership and strategic capabilities.
Initially cautious, European Union members are now gradually increasing their involvement, moving to safeguard strategic assets in the region against Iranian drone and missile threats.
On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced an increased French military presence in the region, confirming the deployment of fighter jets to the UAE after an Iranian drone struck a French military installation in Abu Dhabi.
“Discussions are underway with France’s allies in the Middle East regarding the provision of equipment to strengthen their defensive capabilities,” Barrot said.
France will dispatch a warship and anti-missile and anti-drone systems to help protect British facilities in Cyprus after two drones targeting the British air base at RAF Akrotiri were intercepted.
Greece also announced its support for Cyprus, deploying four F-16 fighter jets and two frigates, including one carrying the Centauros anti-drone jamming system, while pledging to defend the island “by all necessary means.”
Britain said it would deploy the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon and two Wildcat helicopters armed with Martlet missiles to strengthen defenses in the Eastern Mediterranean.
European support is expanding beyond Cyprus. French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said France was sending its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Mediterranean and working to build a coalition that would help secure maritime traffic.
“We have economic interests to protect, because oil prices, gas prices, and the international trade situation are being profoundly disrupted by this war,” Macron said in a televised address.
As Iran presses ahead with its regional escalation despite growing opposition, the United States, along with Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, issued a joint statement strongly condemning Tehran’s “indiscriminate and reckless missile and drone attacks” against sovereign territories across the region.
“We stand united in defense of our citizens, sovereignty, and territory, and reaffirm our right to self-defense in the face of these attacks,” the statement read.
Britain, France, and Germany — collectively known as the E3 — have also condemned what they described as “the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks” by Iran on regional countries, saying the strikes pose a broader threat to regional stability.
“Iran’s reckless attacks have targeted our close allies and are threatening our service personnel and our civilians across the region,” the statement said.
“We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source,” it continued. “We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter.”
Meanwhile, China and Russia — despite their close ties to Iran — have so far limited their response to diplomatic statements and calls for de-escalation, echoing their restrained posture during last year’s 12-day war with Israel.
Moscow convened emergency meetings and publicly denounced the attacks but stopped short of offering material assistance to Tehran, despite the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty the two countries signed last year.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that Beijing opposes unilateral military action and supports Iran’s right to defend itself.
“China supports Iran in upholding its sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and national dignity, while safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests,” the Chinese diplomat said in a statement.
“Major powers should not exploit their military superiority to launch arbitrary attacks on other nations, and the world must not return to a law of the jungle,” she continued.
Beijing is even urging Tehran to avoid disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a vital passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and a key route for global energy shipments — as escalating conflict threatens international oil and gas supplies.
Iran has long threatened to close the waterway in the event of war with the US.
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‘Solidarity’: Faculty for Palestine Groups Urge Students to Stand With Jihadists, Remnants of Iranian Regime
A woman holds a photo of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as she takes part in anti-US protest outside the White House. Photo: Matrix Images / Gent Shkullaku via Reuters Connect
Anti-Zionist faculty on college campuses are cajoling students to support Islamism, jihad, and terrorism by recruiting them to participate in demonstrations for the revolutionary government of Iran, a regime which is responsible for killing American soldiers through proxy groups across the Middle East.
“Dear Students, I know it is very short notice, but for those who would like to participate in social protest against the US and Israeli war on Iran, Angelenos are gathering in 2 hours at City Hall,” Elizabeth Ribet, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, wrote on Saturday, signing off the note with “solidarity.”
“This email is a blatant example of a professor abusing her academic authority to politicize the classroom,” Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, higher education expert and executive director of the campus watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner in an exclusive statement. “AMCHA Initiative’s latest report documents hundreds of similar examples and concludes that when faculty blur the line between teaching and anti-Israel political advocacy, antisemitic hostility on campus rises. Recognizing this danger, more than 350 UC [University of California] faculty have recently urged the Regents to act. UC leaders must recommit to academic integrity and ensure classrooms remain places of scholarship and rigorous inquiry, not platforms for political mobilization.”
Ribet’s note is one of many communications that pro-jihadist student and faculty groups have issued since the US and Israel launched military strikes against Iran and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over the weekend.
Since then, The Algemeiner has reviewed over a dozen examples of faculty, specifically the Faculty for Justice in Palestine organization, proclaiming solidarity with Iran’s Islamist, authoritarian regime and lambasting the US and Israel for their joint operation.
“These u.s.-backed attacks are designed to spark a regional war, sacrificing the people of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and beyond to further amerikkkan and zionist domination [sic],” said a post liked by the University of California Ethnic Studies Council, a body of professors who proposed an ethnic studies high school requirement for UC admissions. Critics have noted that the proposal pushed anti-Zionism in the classroom.
“Every drop of their blood spilled ignites our rage, our grief, and our duty,” the post continued. “We must continue to organize in solidarity with the Palestinian people, until the end of zionism [sic] and the liberation of Palestine.”
It added, “RESISTANCE IS GLORIOUS.”
The UC Ethnic Studies Council also shared a post by the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, a far-left group that has defended terrorism against Israel, which said, “We reject imperialist and wear mongering narratives that position Iran as the intruder in the region, rather than US military bases and US interventionism.”
In Bronxville, New York, Sarah Lawrence College’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter posted a volley of messages which called for “de-platforming Zionists” and ending military operations in Iran. The group also shared false claims that the US opened fire on Pakistani civilians.
Just miles away, Saint John’s University FJP group shared agitprop falsely alleging that the US intentionally targeted an Iranian school with an airstrike and has “always … sacrificed” children. The group also called for sabotaging the war effort by refusing to file taxes or to file by paper to delay the government’s receiving revenue. Meanwhile, the post suggested that agents in the government are prepared to participate in the conspiracy.
“The absolute bare minimum those of us in the imperial core should be doing is NOT FUNDING THIS SH—T,” said the post. “For example even just filing your taxes via paper slows down the IRS and makes it easier for other tax registers to make an impact with their actions as well.”
Bowdoin College, New York University, Bryn Mawr College, and Haverford College all have Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups sharing similar social media content.
The posts come after the Iranian regime killed tens of thousands of civilian anti-government protesters last month in a brutal crackdown. Iran for years has also been the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, according to Western intelligence agencies. For example, Iran funded, armed, and trained Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
College faculty not only promote terrorism but also play a singular role in triggering and accelerating the campus antisemitism crisis, according to a recent study by AMCHA Initiative.
Focusing on UC campuses as case studies, the study exposed Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“While students are the most visible actors, faculty and academic departments are key institutional drivers of the hostile environment,” the AMCHA Initiative said following the report’s publication. “Across three campuses, many faculty who promoted anti-Israel activism through university channels had previously endorsed an academic boycott of Israel (academic BDS). The boycott’s guidelines explicitly call on supporters to implement ‘anti-normalization’ in their professional roles. These include excluding Zionist perspectives, speakers, and programs from academic life.”
The report followed previous studies revealing the extent of faculty misconduct in higher education promoting anti-Israel animus and even outright antisemitism.
Just last month, The Algemeiner learned that, according to a lawsuit, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University assigned a Jewish student a project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
Similar incidents have come at a fast clip since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre: a Cornell University praised the terrorist group’s atrocities, which included mass sexual assaults; a Columbia University professor exalted Hamas terrorists who paraglided into a music festival to murder Israeli youth as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance”; and a Harvard University chapter of FJP shared an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Zionists as murderers of Blacks and Arabs.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report stated. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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New opera focuses on Tevye’s tragic daughter, Shprintse
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אין סעפּטעמבער 2025 האָבן אַ סך ניו־יאָרקער ליבהאָבערס פֿון ייִדיש הנאה געהאַט פֿון אַלעקס װײַזערס אָפּערע, „דער גרױסער װערטערבוך פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך“. און איצט אין אַ פּאָר װאָכן אַרום װעלן זײ קענען געניסן פֿון זײַן נײַער אָפּערע, „טבֿיהס טעכטער“. אַפֿילו אין ניו־יאָרק איז די געלעגנהײט צו הערן צװײ ייִדיש־שײכדיקע אָפּערעס במשך פֿון זעקס חדשים אַ זעלטן פֿאַרגעניגן.
די קאָנצערט־פֿאָרשטעלונג פֿון „טבֿיהס טעכטער“ װעט פֿאָרקומען דעם 19טן מאַרץ, 7 אַ זײגער, אינעם מוזײ פֿון דער ייִדישער ירושה — אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל צום חורבן (װוּ מען קען אַגבֿ אויך זען אַן אױסשטעלונג װעגן דעם ייִדיש־רעדנדיקן קינסטלער אַרטור שיק). די אָפּערע איז מערסטנס אױף ענגליש אָבער נעמט אַרײַן אַ סך ייִדישע װערטער און פֿראַזעס.
צװישן די זיבן זינגערס װאָס װעלן אױפֿטרעטן אױף דער בינע װעט זײַן גדעון דאַבי, װאָס איז געװען אַ שטערן פֿון „דער גרױסער װערטערבוך פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך“. דאָס מאָל װעט ער זינגען די ראָלע פֿון טבֿיה דער מילכיקער, דעם באַרימטן פּערסאָנאַזש געשאַפֿן פֿון שלום עליכם.
„טבֿיהס טעכטער“ קאָנצענטרירט זיך בעיקר אױף פֿינף פֿון טבֿיהס װײַבלעכע משפּחה־מיטגלידער: זײַנע טעכטער שפּרינצע, צײטל, חװה און בײלקע (װאָס זענען באַקאַנט פֿון די אָריגינעלע מעשׂיות), און צײטלס אײניקל רױז — װאָס װײַזער און דער אָפּערעס ליברעטאָ־מחברטע סטעפֿאַני פֿלײַשמאַן האָבן אױסגעטראַכט צוזאַמען.
די דראַמע קומט פֿאָר טײלװײַז אין בויבעריק (אוקראַיִנע) אין 1907 און טײלװײַז אין די קאַטסקיל בערג אין 1964. אין 1907 שפּילט זיך אױס די טראַגעדיע פֿון שפּרינצע, װאָס פֿאַרליבט זיך אין אַ רײַכן יונגערמאַן. ער זאָגט צו אַז ער װעט חתונה האָבן מיט איר אָבער דערנאָך פֿאַרלאָזט ער זי, און זי װערט אַזוי פֿאַרייִאושט אַז זי נעמט זיך דאָס לעבן.
אַ טײל פֿונעם סיפּור־המעשׂה קומט אָבער פֿאָר כּמעט 60 יאָר שפּעטער, אין 1964, וועןשפּרינצעס דרײַ עלטערע שװעסטער צײטל, חװה און בײלקע זענען שוין אַלט צװישן 70 און 80 יאָר. זײ האָבן לאַנג צוריק זיך באַזעצט אין ניו־יאָרק, אָבער די זכרונות פֿון שפּרינצעס זעלבסטמאָרד לאָזן זײ נישט רוען. בעת זײ פֿאַרברענגען בײַ חווהס זומערהױז אין די קאַטסקילס קומט צו זײ צו גאַסט צײטלס אײניקל רױז, װאָס ראַנגלט זיך מיט איר אײגענער „פֿאַרװערטער“ ליבע — און װאָס װערט אַ ביסל „צו פֿיל צוגעצױגן“ צו דער סאַזשלקע לעבן דעם הױז. דאָס רופֿט אַוודאי אַרויס די פֿראַגע, צי איז רױז, װאָס ווערט געשפּילט פֿון דער זעלביקער זינגערין װי שפּרינצע, באַשערט דער זעלבער גורל פֿון איר עלטער־מומען?
װײַזער האָט מיר דערקלערט פֿאַר װאָס דער פּאַרשוין שפּרינצע שטימט ספּעציעל גוט מיט דער אָפּערע. לױט אים איז זי אַ פּערסאָנאַזש װעמענס קול איז אָפֿט פֿאַרשטומט. בײַ שלום עליכמען לייענט מען שפּרינצעס מעשׂה בלויז דורך טבֿיהס קוקװינקל. פֿון אָנהײב ביזן סוף זאָגט שפּרינצע אַלײן נאָר אַ פּאָר װערטער. טבֿיה באַמערקט אַז זײַן טאָכטער לײַדט אין דער שטיל, אָבער ער פֿאַרשטייט נישט די סימנים פֿון אירע יסורים.
װײַזער האָט אױך אָנגעװיזן אַז שפּרינצע געפֿינט זיך בכלל נישט אינעם מיוזיקל „פֿידלער אױפֿן דאַך“ צוליב דער שװערער טעמע פֿון איר אַלײנמאָרד. (אַ מײדל אין דער פּיעסע הייסט טאַקע שפּרינצע , אָבער מען דערמאָנט נישט איר מעשׂה). שפּרינצע איז דערפֿאַר כּמעט אומבאַקאַנט בײַם ברײטן עולם, בשעת איר שוועסטער צײטל און חװה זענען גוט באַקאַנט.
„צוליב אַלע די דאָזיקע סיבות װערט שפּרינצע אַ מין סימבאָל פֿון אַ טראַדיציאָנעלער ייִדישער װעלט װאָס איז אונדז אומבאַקאַנט, און װוּ די װײַבערשע קולות זענען אָפֿט פֿאַרשטומט געוואָרן. אונדזער אָפּערע גיט אַ רײַך בליק אין דער דאָזיקער װעלט און גיט שפּרינצען צוריק איר קול, װאָס זי ניצט צו דערצײלן די אײגענע מעשׂה פֿונעם אײגענעם קוקװינקל. עטלעכע מאָל זינגט זי אַז די מעשׂה איז אירע, און אַז דער טאַטע טבֿיה דאַרף נישט דערצײלן אױף איר אָרט“, האָט װײַזער געזאָגט.
כּדי צוריקצוגעבן שפּרינצען איר קול האָבן װײַזער און פֿלײַשמאַן איבערגעלײענט אַ סך ייִדישע ליטעראַטור אָנגעשריבן פֿון פֿרױען. זײ האָבן אױסגעפֿאָרשט די װערק פֿון קאַדיע מאָלאָדאָװסקי, סאַלאָמעאַ פּערל, בעלאַ שאַגאַל און אַנדערע מחברטעס װאָס האָבן פּרעכטיק באַשריבן די דערפֿאַרונגען פֿון פֿרױען. װי טבֿיהס טעכטער, האָבן די דאָזיקע שרײַבערינס זיך אָפֿט געפֿילט צעריסן צװישן דער ייִדישער טראַדיציע און די געלעגנהײטן פֿון דער מאָדערנער װעלט.
ספּעציעל װיכטיק בײַ װײַזערן און פֿלײַשמאַנען איז געװען די טראַדיציע פֿון תּחינות. די דאָזיקע פּערזענלעכע תּפֿילות אױף ייִדיש זענען לאַנג געװען פֿאַרבונדן מיט פֿרױען. אַ מאָל האָבן פֿרױען זײ אָנגעשריבן פֿאַר זיך אַלײן אָדער פֿאַר זייערע מאַמעס, שװעסטער און חבֿרטעס. אַפֿילו װען תּחינות זענען אָנגעשריבן געװאָרן פֿון מענער לטובֿת פֿרױען נעמען זיי אַרײַן וויכטיקע פּרטים װעגן װײַבערשע דאַגות און האָפֿענונגען.
װײַזער און פֿלײַשמאַן האָבן געלײענט אַ סך תּחינות, און צוזאַמען האָבן זײ אָנגעשריבן דרײַ נײַע תּחינות פֿאַר דער אָפּערע — װאָס האָבן צו טאָן מיטן צוגרײטן חלה, מיטן בענטשן שבת־ליכט און מיטן גײן אין דער מיקװה. די דאָזיקע נײַע תּחינות זינגט מען טײלװײַז אױף ייִדיש.
װײַזער האָט צוגעגעבן, אַז זײ האָבן אַרײַנגענומען תּחינות כּדי אָפּצוגעבן כּבֿוד דער װײַבערשער פֿרומקײט, װאָס האָט פֿאַרהײליקט די ייִדישע הײם און דאָס טאָג־טעגלעך לעבן. „אין דער אָפּערע זעט מען די שײנקײט, די װאַרעמקײט און די שׂימחה װאָס פֿרױען האָבן געשאַפֿן אין זײער װעלט“, האָט װײַזער געזאָגט. „איך װיל נישט זאָגן צו פֿיל װעגן דעם סיפּור־המעשׂה, אָבער דער װײַבערשער כּוח — דער כּוח פֿון פֿרויען־טראַדיציעס — איז אַ װיכטיקער טײל פֿון אונדזער אָפּערע“.
דאָ קען מען קױפֿן בילעטן פֿאַר „טבֿיהס טעכטער“.
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