Why the new play ‘The Gospel According to Chaim’ is a big deal
Playwright Mikhl Yashinsky proves you don’t need a Yiddish-speaking milieu to create high-quality works of drama in the language
From left: Gabe (Joshua Horowitz), Sadie (Melissa Weisz) and Chaim (Mikhl Yashinsky) in a scene of The Gospel According to Chaim. Photo by Qixin Zhang
By Rukhl Schaechter January 23, 2024
Last month, a new Yiddish drama, The Gospel According to Chaim (“Di psure loyt khayim”), ran for just two-and-a-half weeks in a small theater in lower Manhattan. But to paraphrase astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the surface of the moon in 1969, this modest three-character play was actually a giant leap for contemporary Yiddish culture.
The play, written by 34-year-old actor, Yiddish instructor and Forverts contributor Mikhl Yashinsky, is based on the true story of a Galician-born Jew, Chaim Einspruch (played by Yashinsky himself), who immigrated to the United States in 1913 and became a Christian missionary. Desperate to “save” Jewish souls, Einspruch translated the New Testament into Yiddish.
In the play, produced by The New Yiddish Rep and accompanied by English supertitles, we meet Einspruch in the city of Baltimore at the beginning of the 1940s. His mission to convince Jews to accept Jesus has become even more impassioned, now that he knows that the Nazis have been deporting eastern European Jews en masse to death camps. Quoting the prophet Daniel, he asserts that “the Anointed One will come precisely in times of great trouble like this, when the city and the sanctuary are destroyed! Just in such a time did He come before, and just in such a time will He come now! Let us be ready for Him!”
The play revolves around Einspruch’s attempts to convince a professional Jewish printer, Gabe (played alternately by Joshua Horowitz and Sruli Rosenberg), to print his controversial manuscript. The third character, Sadie (played by Melissa Weisz), is an anti-Fascist organizer who does all she can to convince the easygoing Gabe not to take the job.
What’s fascinating about Einspruch’s character is that although he believes in Jesus, he’s fluent in the mame-loshn, loves quoting Yiddish literature and is comfortable discussing concepts of the Torah. Watching him, you almost get the feeling that “this Christianity thing” is just a phase he’s going through, and that by the end of the play he’ll return to the Jewish faith.
Although there’s not much action in the play, the thought-provoking dialogue and the way that the characters play off each other keeps your attention focused throughout. At stake is not only a difference of opinion but rather (for most Jews) two starkly incompatible philosophies of life.
It reminded me of My Dinner with Andre, the 1981 film about two old friends who reunite in a cafe and converse about ideas and life itself. As the evening progresses, it becomes clear that they’ve each taken starkly different paths. One is eager to share his new spiritual discoveries, while the other remains stoic and pragmatic. You feel like you’re watching a tennis match of the minds.
What makes The Gospel According to Chaim‘ so remarkable is not just its rich content, but the fact that it was written at all. It’s been decades since any theater company has staged an original, full-length drama in Yiddish — perhaps because audiences are more drawn to Yiddish comedies and musical productions.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some wonderful Yiddish drama productions over the years. In the 1970s, the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene staged Jacob Gordin’s Faustian work God, Man and the Devil (Got, mentsh un tayvl), as well as S. Y. Abramovitch’s romantic, expressionist Fishke the Lame (Fishke der Krumer).
But as good as they were, these were remakes. God, Man and the Devil was first performed in Vilna in 1916, while Fishke was released as a film, called The Light Ahead, in 1939.
As for more recent Yiddish dramas, there have been several excellent productions in the 21st century — most notably, the 2013 Yiddish production of Waiting for Godot and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 2015. But these were world theater classics translated into Yiddish, rather than original Yiddish plays themselves.
It’s not difficult to understand why there haven’t been any original Yiddish productions for several decades. Until the Holocaust, Yiddish was the vernacular for eastern European Jews for close to a thousand years. People of all ages spoke it every day at home, in the cheder, at the synagogue and in the marketplace. Much of their vocabulary, expressions and proverbs were peppered with references to Jewish ritual and belief, while words borrowed from other languages were routinely Yiddishized. As a result, talented Jewish writers had no problem writing plays in the language.
Today, the only communities where Yiddish is spoken daily inside and outside the home are the Hasidic neighborhoods of New York, London and Jerusalem. But contemporary playwriting is a secular art form, eschewed by Hasidic rabbis for its often irreverent content.
Which brings us to Gospel — a brand new play written by an American-born Harvard alum in his 30s. Although Yashinsky wasn’t raised in Yiddish, his mastery of the language is excellent, the topic is original and the play itself reveals a keen understanding of modern drama, character development and subtle plot twists.
Since recent Yiddish musical productions like the Folksbiene’s Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof began bringing in mainstream audiences and celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld and Bette Midler, the time seems ripe for serious dramas as well. I sincerely hope that Gospel will be staged once again, either for a much longer run in New York City, or as part of a world tour.
The American Jewish community ought to encourage Yashinsky and other Yiddish-speaking playwrights to continue writing thought-provoking dramas in Yiddish. Yashinsky has proven that you don’t need to live in a Yiddish-speaking milieu to do so. What it does take are good Yiddish writing skills, creativity and generous grants to make it feasible. Jewish arts foundations should take notice.
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