Jeffrey Goldberg has a very interesting dialogue here with his friend Ari Roth of Theater J in Washington in which he scolds Roth for his plans to mount a production of "Seven Jewish Children," by Caryl Churchill. The Goldberg-Roth dialogue is very long; I've appended my excerpt of the dialogue below.
Why do I find this so interesting? The general tone of the dialogue is not pleasant. It is Ari Roth being on the defensive and Goldberg bullying him effectively. So while Roth completely disses the Caryl Churchill play as "pernicious" under Goldberg's goading, he is never open with his friend about his reason for running the play, because he seems to me intimidated by the glib journalist.
Roth obviously wants to put the play on, and there is a good reason: because Gaza has shocked the Jewish community. You will see that there is an indication of Roth's Gaza upset in this dialogue, but he never does what he should do and confront Goldberg.
He doesn't say: You have been wrong on two very important judgments in the last few years: Tragically wrong on the Iraq war, wrong on Gaza. This is why you cannot be my guide, or my children's guide. You are a victim of the bad Holocaust-influenced teaching that Caryl Churchill is actually examining here.
You will see that at one brief moment Ari Roth, who says he loves Israel, finally says that he is "angry." I think he means he is angry about Gaza. A more worldly person than Goldberg, he knows many Jews are upset and angry. And he is also upset with the Israel lobby, as he hints when he says that organizational Jewish life is not struggling, as he is.
In Goldberg's bullying–and Goldberg is a very smart guy–you can see what I spoke about a couple of weeks ago in a post about My Tribal Minder. He is being Roth's tribal minder. He is reminding Roth about the limits of Jewish identity, and urging him to be loyal to the tribe. He invokes the Holocaust and very much as Gershom Scholem lectured Hannah Arendt about her failure to love the Jewish people, you will see that Goldberg instructs Roth of his obligation to love the Jewish people near the end, or to be accurate–"We
in the Jewish community are motivated to do things because we love
Israel" (which is a truly scary reflection on the Iraq War journalism Goldberg did for the New Yorker).
It is again too bad that Roth did not invoke more universalist principles and say that he sees a permanent war with the Arab world because of Goldberg's militant construction of Jewish identity. He did not say, "Franz Kafka said of you Zionists that you have the Maccabees forever in your mouths! It is too much militarism for me. Please do not tell an agonized artist, Caryl Churchill, to circumscribe her words– when the army you support is not circumscribing its use of white phosphorus on children."
Finally, it intrigues me that Goldberg gives so much room to this dialogue. Someone had to transcribe the tape, that's a lot of work. And why? Because, I believe, Goldberg is secretly fearful. He knows that American Jewish identity is changing, that American Jews are beginning to question Israel's belligerence. Journalist Roger Cohen, shamed by Gaza, is a great threat to Goldberg. Goldberg worries that Ari Roth is straying, and with him is going Jewish identity, and he must collar him now. The abridged dialogue:
AR: We're just trying to understand what she [Caryl Churchill is] saying. Okay?
JG: Why? Why bother?…I'll ask again. Why are you doing this?
AR:
I'm not endorsing it. This is a critical inquiry. And, unlike you, I'm
not saying that I'm not going to deem this play worthy of my attention….you know what our project
is up to in terms of how we love Israel and we wrestle and struggle
with it.
JG: The play's
motivation is to demonize the Jewish people. Or at least the Israeli
branch of the Jewish people. She's basically saying that Israelis are
obtuse to the point of criminality, morally obtuse to the point of
criminality and that they don't care about the lives of other people.
Maybe you'll say, Jeff you're such a tribalist it's
ridiculous, but my general position is that I don't need to listen to
Europeans lecture Jews on morality. I think they have a lot more
repentance to do. Why does Israel exist? Israel exists because Europe
persecuted its Jews! I mean, where's her examination of the British
fault? Where's her examination of European fault? The Jews are a
scapegoat for her…
AR: I wonder whether you're entirely
right about the character of Jews today. And whether we are as
self-flagellating as you think. …Look at how the Jewish community is organized
institutionally here. And look at how we're set up in Israel. Look at
how the Jewish institutions are set up in Britain as well. Do you see a
lot of self-flagellating going on?
JG: Yes.
AR: You do?…It's
not written as a diatribe. And so you have to allow for the art form of
theater to have its way with her text. That is what's going to happen,
that's what's happening in this rehearsal room. I struggle with the
play. God bless me. I'm a struggling Jew. You know?
JG: You
can't decontextualize it. I'm sorry. It comes out of a certain moment
and it comes out of a culture that has demonized Israel….
AR:
I'm saying it's Caryl Churchill's "Guernica." Come and debate this. And
how did Franco feel about "Guernica?" Who knows? He was angry too. I'm
angry….
JG: she wrote a play to
hurt Israel. And to hurt the Jewish cause. Her aim here was to hurt. We
in the Jewish community are motivated to do things because we love
Israel. Even if we criticize Israel, we criticize because we love….
AR: Do you think I'm helping to hurt Israel?
JG: You're the useful Jew. You've made yourself into the useful Jew.
