Noam:
Coming up, on Wondering Jews…
Noam
…are you basically telling me that Jews don’t run Hollywood, or is that basically your argument or not?
Etai
If they do, we’re doing a sh__y job, right?
Noam
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam. I’m Noam, and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack those really big questions being asked in the world today about Israel, about Judaism, and about the broad Jewish experience. Today, we are exploring the theme of Jewish storytelling. I have often said that the Jewish people have one of the world’s greatest stories, and we need to do a much better job telling the story to ourselves into the broader world.
Noam
And some of the greatest Jewish storytellers are in theater. So today I have with me Jennifer Tepper, a theater historian and Broadway actor, Etai Benson, who’s working on a new show called The Torah of Sondheim. Jennifer, Etai, welcome.
Jennifer
Thank you for having us.
Noam
It’s awesome to have you guys. I’m not with my co-host Mijal again today, but she’s coming back soon. Don’t worry. But the two of you will. You’re going to hold down the fort together with me?
Jennifer
Definitely.
Noam
Okay. You’re stuck. That’s what’s one way to frame it. Okay. So today we are talking about storytelling. We’re talking about theater. I know very little about theater. I like to think that I spend a lot of my time thinking about storytelling. I do think a lot about storytelling. I think that I’ve quoted this often, that Scott Galloway has said that the most important skill set you could be teaching anyone in this generation is the skill of storytelling.
Noam
So I want to just pause there and ask you both this question why? Why do you see? Or how do you see storytelling as essential?
Jennifer
You know, I think that no matter what arrow we’re in and no matter what technology is invented, people are always going to want and need to gather in a room to tell each other about their lives and to reflect on that. I think there’s also you didn’t ask this yet, so maybe I shouldn’t say it, but there’s like this great tradition in Judaism, from the Yiddish theater to today, of taking the Jewish like history and transforming it into narrative to make sense of it, to pass it down to the next generation.
Jennifer
Like the Passover Seder is basically a musical, you know?
Noam
Right. That’s interesting.
Etai
Yeah. I think storytelling is essential to the human experience. You go back to cave people, and they were telling stories on the walls, and you go back to it as simple as sitting around a fire and telling a story unites people in a way that that other things don’t. And as far as Judaism goes, we are we are the storytellers of history.
Etai
I think we are. We’ve been around since the beginning, and we’re still around because we are telling our story constantly. We’re the people of the book and we are storytellers.
Noam
So on that note, I want to ask about to two theater experts. What are the elements of you had to break down elements of good storytelling? What are the elements of you’re telling a good story? What does that look like?
Etai
I think there’s the the basic rules of storytelling as far as a beginning, a middle and an end. I think for me, having characters that, that you care about, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they look like you sound like you are relatable in that sense, but that you care about that can be an antagonist.
Etai
But, characters you care about. And then for me, it’s always about specificity. You know, they always say, you know, the the big rule is the more specific you are, the more universal something becomes. So if you’re trying to talk about the human condition, you’re trying to talk about these grand themes. The more specific you get, I think the wider audience you can actually reach.
Etai
But yeah. And and then lastly, I think for me, what I’ve learned about storytelling is that one event to me must lead to the next event. It can’t just be then this happened, then this happened. It’s this happened, therefore this happened. Therefore this happened, which gives a story a sort of forward motion and a momentum leading to what is hopefully an inevitable conclusion.
Etai
Even if it’s a twist ending, it should feel like it was always going to happen this way.
Jennifer
What you said about specificity reminded me of one of my favorite stories about, like, one of our most important Jewish musicals, which is that when Fiddler on the roof went to Japan, all the Japanese folks who saw it were like, we can’t believe how Japanese this is. This is a story about us. And that’s exactly what you said.
Jennifer
I think it’s authenticity. It’s knowing craft and having knowledge of what came before. So you can either break the rules or you can, you know, go by them. And I think like the authenticity is just the most key part. You know, we all have something unique inside of us. How? What’s the story you want to tell? What’s the story you can tell that nobody else can.
Jennifer
And there’s also a quote I thought of by one of our great Jewish musical theater writers, Adolph Green, which is theater comes from somewhere inside of you, not from being like what someone else did last year. And it’s really that it’s like, what is your story that nobody else could tell?
Etai
Point of view that really is essential to a good story, I think.
Noam
So let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s stick on this specificity thing for a second. The example you just gave is so insightful. The Japanese who, from what I know, don’t have the biggest Jewish community and certainly didn’t have shtetl life the same way that exists in European Jewish communities. So first, tell me a little bit about the Fiddler on the roof.
Noam
Just like I know a lot of people know the Fiddler on the roof, but like for people that might not know someone out there on the roof, what is Fiddler on the roof about and how is that possibly related to the Japanese?
Jennifer
I think one interesting thing about Fiddler on the roof came out in the mid 60s, like a Golden Age musical written by Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock and Joseph Stein, three Jewish creators who went, we want to bring these stories, these, you know, very important stories to a more mainstream audience. And I don’t think they were saying we don’t want the Jewish audience to embrace this, but I think they were thinking, how do we tell this story in a way that shows people what these programs were like, what this time in Jewish history was like, that you don’t need to know anything to come to this story.
Jennifer
So I think when we talk about, you know, Jewish stories and how they’re being told, it’s a landmark moment because it’s going, how do we bring this to a wider audience? And that’s, I think, why when you bring it to Japan, when you bring it to other countries, people can understand it enough to see a window into their own cultural history, their own parallels, their own moments of, you know, racism or like hate crimes or whatever they can relate it to in their own cultural past.
Etai
And, you know, I actually got to do Fiddler on the roof, a couple years in 2020, in the fall of 2023, pretty intense time to do Fiddler on the roof. And basically a lot of it is about the breakdown of tradition and about how these traditions that have been upheld by communities for generations slowly break down or what, you know, you have this relationship with your tradition, with your God.
Etai
What are you willing to give up? You know, it follows Tevye the Dairyman and his three daughters, and each daughter that finds a husband kind of breaks breaks the tradition more and more and more. And Tevye has to grapple with that. And I think that, yes, in Japan, they don’t have a big Jewish population. They don’t necessarily learn what a shtetl was, but they understand tradition.
Etai
And it’s what I was talking about, these these big human questions, these big human themes told through the lens of these shtetl Jews in, in Eastern Europe.
Noam
But meaning, like anyone could relate to a father who wants something from their children and their children aren’t behaving in the way that you are hoping and expecting and anticipating. Is that like.
Etai
Yes. Yes. I think I think most people can see themselves in that story. However, if you just tried to say, well, I want to make sure that this kind of person understands it, this kind of person. So let’s let’s shave the Jewishness away. Let’s make it sort of just a more general family. The the less specific you get, the less powerful the art is going to be, in my opinion.
Etai
So that that is the number one illustration is the fact that they brought Fiddler on the Roof to Japan. It was this massive, massive hit. It’s still their most successful musical ever.
Noam
That’s crazy.
Etai
Yeah. That’s wild. I wouldn’t think it. But again, tradition to them is a huge, huge thing okay. In Japan.
Noam
And and the question is how do you pass on tradition and and and innovate and create a new identity but also have that tradition. Right. So specificity and authenticity, that’s what I’m hearing.
Jennifer
Yeah. And I think it also provides a window into the power of storytelling. Because how many people would not know what mazel tov meant, or what Shabbat was, or what a shtetl was or what a pogrom was without having seen Fiddler on the Roof as their entry point? And you could learn that in a history book. You could learn it from a teacher, but something about a narrative where you’re rooting for Tevye or where you’re like identifying with someone else in the story, makes it stick.
Noam
Okay, so let’s let’s talk about different aspects of theater. Jewish aspects of theater. In theater, I’m going to I’m going to ask a broad question and then I’m going to, to you, Jennifer. And I’m going to go to it. You wrote a book about women in theater who were some of the Jews who had to change their identities or their work to broaden their appeal.
Noam
Talk to me about that. What that looks like in the relationship between do people have to assimilate, integrate? Do they have to change their identities? What’s happened in the course of time here?
Jennifer
I think what’s really incredible about musical theater is the reason it’s one of the great American art forms is it’s combined all of these elements from different cultures. And one of those, like one of the most important ones, is Yiddish theater. If you go to Second Avenue in New York today, you can still see, like the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame.
Jennifer
You know, there’s such a great history of Jewish theater that originated in Europe and then came here and then as Jewish people were working on that, those elements and a lot of that music and some of that storytelling started being combined with the other melting pot things that were happening in New York, from ballet to other forms of music, and became what is now the American musical theater.
Jennifer
So what was interesting about writing women, writing musicals, which, you know, there’s 300 female musical theater writers and that and such a significant number of those were Jewish female writers who at the same time as Irving Berlin and Gershwin and Rodgers and Hammerstein were making a name for themselves and becoming these big like, history book landmark names. There were women who were also Jewish, who were, you know, charting that same path, who might not be as remembered partially because of the obstacles that they had to face to have longevity in their careers.
Jennifer
But some of them, certainly Betty Comden and Bella spoke. There are these Golden Age Jewish female Broadway writers who brought Judaism to the stories that they were writing. But the interesting thing is, they weren’t necessarily writing Jewish stories. Sometimes they were. And I think it’s like such a complicated conversation about like, were they assimilating? Were there more Jewish stories they wanted to write that didn’t get on?
Jennifer
But I think it’s all part of that great American 20th century story of, you know, how is your culture part of your identity? And then how is the fact that you’re working with a lot of people of different cultures part of it? And sometimes I look at like, Betty Comden is a great example. There’s these great Comden and Green musicals that I think.
Etai
Oh.
Jennifer
Sorry, slow down.
Noam
Those like, like people out there who are.
Jennifer
Yeah. You’re like, what are you talking about? Sure.
Etai
Did you just tell them?
Jennifer
No, I’m so sorry. I was like, let me pick a non obscure one. No. Of course. Yes. And I brought up her writing partner, Adolph Green earlier, Comden and Green, the longest running musical theater writing team, basically of all time. They wrote on the town, they wrote Peter Pan, they wrote Wonderful Town, you know, New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town.
Jennifer
The Bronx is up in the battery town. I’m not going to sing. I’m not tired. But, you know, she many, many musicals over the course of the 20th century. And I think there, you know, there are elements of Jewish humor, there’s elements of Jewish culture. But she wasn’t, again, like adapting a story from the Torah. So there’s a certain question of, you know, what is assimilation and how are you bringing elements of your culture and representing that, but also maybe balancing that with other things.
Jennifer
But there were so many. I mean, it was fascinating to look at the trajectory of female Jewish writers in the book from people in the early 20th century that started writing like her to, you know, Shaina Taub, who’s one of our great, like, Jewish writers in the current day, people like Marta Kauffman, who went on to write friends, and Winnie Holzman, who wrote wicked and also wrote amazing television shows.
Jennifer
So there’s elements of Jewish humor and other things that come into it. And at the same time you’re going, are they telling Jewish stories? And like, questioning? That was definitely part of what I thought of as I was writing about them.
Noam
I think you know more about theater than I know about anything in the world. Is that true?
Jennifer
I don’t know about anything else. Trust me.
Noam
No.
Etai
But you don’t need, like.
Noam
Do you know everything she just said? For real?
Etai
Not everything. You threw out a couple names that that.
Jennifer
He’s pretty good.
Etai
But the recall. But the recall. Also, like a deep nerd.
Jennifer
He is.
Noam
Okay, so. But I.
Etai
Want to say.
Noam
I want to say, I want to say with you on this a little bit.
Noam
You use the word assimilate and maybe I use it. Do you view the word assimilate as a negative? Like what’s the word to me? I heard it and, and, and I heard a little bit of an undertone of like, maybe this is my reaction to it, maybe like a defensiveness around the term assimilate or like maybe it’s maybe it’s not.
Noam
There’s nothing wrong with assimilating. What’s your when you use the word assimilate, what’s going through your mind?
Jennifer
That’s a great question. I think there’s obviously like this negative stigma. But when it comes to the, I think, cultural contributions of the 20th century, I do think of it having a lot of positive connotations to and it’s I mean, it’s worth interrogating because I think that one of the great things about musical theater is this you get a bunch of people in a room who don’t look like each other, who don’t come from the same background, and you’re each bringing your unique stories and cultural, you know, components.
Jennifer
And that’s what makes it interesting. And that’s what, like kind of lets us communicate with each other. And so when I think about it as like, oh, Leonard Bernstein, you know, Jewish creator and like, what parts of his identity were Jewish that led to how he wrote, but how was he inspired by seeing something that had nothing to do with Judaism and bringing that to it?
Jennifer
And he’s also a New Yorker, and he’s also like, got this element of his identity. So I think there’s a negative stigma, but there’s something beautiful about maybe there should be another word for it, assimilation, because there’s something just about listening to each other that I think is also part of that word. I think about. There’s this Jewish writer and performer, Nora Bayes, who she was like, really?
Jennifer
Like there’s an article, recent article about her. They called her the Rihanna of her time. But like, I don’t know, she was the Ziegfeld Follies girl who was.
Noam
Very I don’t think, for the record, I don’t think she was the Rihanna of her time.
Jennifer
Just wait.
Jennifer
It originally smash was not about a Marilyn Monroe musical it’s about Nora Bayes. And so she was like the star of her time. But it’s a great question about storytelling, right? Because there were no movies of her. Like when you’re before the time where you can chronicle things the way we chronicle them now, how do you remember people like, how do you remember their stories?
Jennifer
And she was such a star of her time, and she was someone who really brought her Judaism to her humor. Like she made jokes about her Jewish cultural identity, but she also, you know, changed her name and like, chose to make these decisions that were about her as an American. As you know, people have a complex set of circumstances and like nuance to them that I think everyone could kind of speak with complexity about assimilation.
Noam
So, yeah, speaking of assimilation.
Etai
Oh, yeah. I don’t think about it.
Noam
You said you didn’t feel so Israeli. You don’t feel so American. You feel not sure if you’re American, Israeli, Israeli, American. Kind of like swimming between both of those identities, sometimes assimilating both of those identities into your own new identity. But your name’s also not E-Type. Benson. Your name is Ben Shlomo. So Ben Shlomo is a is almost as Jewish of a name, if not more than Weissman.
Noam
So no, it’s more Jewish. No, but it’s like Ben Shlomo is like, that’s the son of Shlomo.
Etai
That is, son of Solomon.
Noam
The son of. Right. So. So tell me about the now that I just judged you, tell me about the process of of why you chose to go from Itai Ben Shlomo to E-Type Benson. Yeah, just let’s start. Let’s start there.
Etai
The art formerly known, is that right? It’s the title I used. So it was always something I thought about when I, when I decided I wanted to pursue this. I mean, Hollywood and and theater has a long history of Jews changing their names.
Noam
What are some examples? Well, Jon Stewart’s the most classic one. John. You know his name, actually. Liebowitz.
Etai
Liebowitz. That makes sense. Bob Zimmerman is Bob Dylan, right? Oh, really? And but Natalie Schilling, which is Natalie Portman.
Noam
Oh, my God, that’s amazing.
Etai
Yeah, there’s a lot of there’s a there’s a big history.
Noam
She went with Portman.
Etai
Portman.
Noam
Yeah. I’m saying like.
Etai
I say that’s her mom’s name. Okay. I want to say that.
Noam
Is that what happened?
Etai
Okay, I think so.
Noam
I’m just saying I’d go with Benson.
Etai
Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, well, I’ll go with Weisman then. No. So essentially the name Benjamin Ben Shlomo in America. Yeah, it it doesn’t it doesn’t go very far in my family. It’s not like a name that goes back generations. Generations. My grandfather was Turkish, and he was above and changed it. He has, like an insane life story that is basically a Hollywood screenplay, which I won’t get into now, but due to reasons and circumstances, he changed it to Benji as his father’s name was Roman.
Etai
Oh wow. So it doesn’t go back that far. There isn’t this long historical attachment to it. And secondly, just the you know, I had enough people sort of suggest to me that, like Ben Shlomo might, you know, not be great on a marquee. It’s just the way it is and the way it has been for Jews for many years.
Etai
It’s like we are we often kind of lead with with what we are and our heritage in some ways, but we also hide from it. And sometimes we can only reach a measure of success if we had from a historically at least that hopefully is changing.
Etai
In our business, you know, I wish people were a little more open minded. But the industry isn’t always very open minded. They look at a name and you get a connotation from that name. Casting director sees Ben Shlomo. They think one thing, they’re.
Noam
Like, what do.
Etai
They think? They think like the most stereotyped Jew that you can imagine or the most, like, Woody Allen esque or the most, you know, whatever, like Judah think of.
Noam
So, so is it that this is so are you basically telling me that Jews don’t run Hollywood, or is that basically your.
Etai
Argument or not? If they do, we’re doing a sh___y job, right? No. I mean, like, look, there is a reason that there are a lot of Jews in the entertainment industry. A lot of those reasons are that we were not allowed in other industries. And so we had to build something and, you know, theater as we know it.
Etai
Here in New York, the musical theater built by Jews originally from the Yiddish, the Yiddish theater, Hollywood built by Jews. And it’s something that I am proud of and I’m proud to be part of that legacy.
Jennifer
I think also, what you brought up is so interesting because for years it’s Judaism. Definitely. It’s people changing their names because of that. But I’ve interviewed so many people who are like, I’m LGBTQ plus, and I was told to like, you know, not wear my wedding ring because then they would think I was married to a woman and ask questions like, there are so many ways that actors have had to change their names, change their identities, because you would only be seen as one thing, right?
Jennifer
Like you’re a gay actor, you can only play a gay actor, you’re a Jewish actor, you can only play Jewish actor. But now we’re having these conversations about authenticity and telling stories where people are going. I want queer voices to tell this story. I want Jewish voices to tell this Jewish story. And it’s illegal to ask people in an audition situation or a hiring situation about their identity.
Jennifer
So there’s this funny thing that happens where, oh, like, this is a story about Japanese people. We want Japanese people to sell the story. This person’s changed their name. I don’t know if they’re Japanese anymore. And now we’re all, like, struggling to figure out what the right balance of that is.
Noam
There’s there’s a really interesting tension that within this industry.
Etai
Big time.
Noam
We’re almost it seems like you’re acting even before you start acting,
Noam
And from a historical perspective. Do you see. Do you see this challenge that Benson is having?
Jennifer
I know him as well because he was award winning high school actor Shlomo. We grew.
Noam
Question about acting in a second. We’ll get to that in a second. But but is that is this like this to to to spell this out historically for me.
Noam
There what is in addition to all the identities is is there or is there also an element of anti-Semitism or, or discomfort with Jews in some way and maybe Jews? I’m making this up. Maybe Jews are allowed to be behind the scenes and being in, in writing or engaged in producing. But in terms of acting, is it different, like you don’t like you want to have a sort of a different sort of identity that’s the most generic identity, which doesn’t stand for anything specific.
Noam
I think what you were going for, Benson, is like, this is a generic identity. Jon Stewart it’s a generic identity. Jon Lebowitz boom, right now I know, I know what you’re I know and I’m going to make assumptions about you. Is that is that what is that?
Jennifer
I think that the current obsession with identity is partially tied to the advent of social media, because how could it not be like the way that we’re all presenting ourselves and have to, and the way that that intersects with hiring and promoting shows and promoting TV and all of that that didn’t exist however many years ago, even 20 years ago.
Jennifer
I’m always taken with the fact that so many Broadway first, like the first woman to write a Broadway score, the first, you know, black man to be like award winning for directing. So often when these like, landmarks happened that intersected with identity and achievement in the past, it wasn’t like even talked about. You don’t even read an article about it from 1930 or from 1950, because we didn’t quite have the same.
Jennifer
And it’s a positive in some ways and a negative in others. We didn’t quite have that same identity obsession of like, who are you? And how does that intersect with your art? It was mostly just about the thing itself. And so they’re really good conversations happening now about this is a story that is about this group of people or this sect of the population.
Jennifer
How do we tell that by including those people and telling the story like cats, the Jellicoe Ball is a great example of how, you know, queer and trans people helping to create something that’s about the history of ballroom culture like that makes it so much more vital and authentic and important, and also bringing other people into the room.
Jennifer
And how do you like frame those perspectives and make them prioritized and then, you know, bring a lot of people in on it. But I think that to go back to your question about anti-Semitism, there’s a degree of it always, right, like George Gershwin, you go, oh, it was a given that someone was going to change their name because of anti-Semitism.
Jennifer
But it wasn’t, I think, just anti-Semitism. It was like, oh, I want people to be able to pronounce it. And it was like, oh, you know, we’re moving to America, and now we want an American name, and this is our Hebrew name. Like, there was a lot there were a lot of parts of trying to bring that together.
Noam
Other cultures do that. Did other people change their names?
Jennifer
Yeah. I think there is like a great history of changing names, especially when it wasn’t seen as like American and like what that means. We could also, you know, talk.
Noam
Trying to think. I would be interested to know if there are other examples besides Jewish, of changing your name in order to fit in. It’s a it’s a yeah. I’m just I’m very interested in that. But I want to I want to go back. I want to talk to you about acting a little bit.
Noam
I want to ask you about something called The Torah of Sondheim before I ask you a question about time, I’m still going to ask. I’m going to drill down on your identity more and more. Okay, so one of the things that you said to us, my producer beforehand is that you identify as like a thoroughly secular Jew, right.
Noam
Or something like that. Yeah.
Etai
That’s that’s always evolving.
Etai
I grew up again identifying more more with my Israeli ness than with my Jewishness. It took me a while to sort of understand how tied those two are. I also grew up mostly in the States, even though we’d go to Israel every summer. I grew up mostly in the States, which is we have a very different view of what religion means here.
Etai
And, you know, people said, oh, are you Christian or are you Jewish? Meaning, like those are very similar. They’re both just religions. They’re both just beliefs. I’ve since learned it’s very it’s much deeper and much more complex than that. Correct. So to me, you know, my dad was like like kibbutz Nick Israeli like from that idealistic, like, 70s hippie, Israeli generation.
Noam
Socialist, secular.
Etai
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he fought in Yom Kippur like he was.
Noam
1973.
Etai
If you’d ask me about a Jewish identity, I’d be like, well, I’m Israeli, and to me, Jewish food wasn’t like brisket and kugel.
Etai
I never tried that at all. It was like falafel and like, schwarma?
Noam
That’s how you that’s what. That’s what you associated with it.
Etai
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Noam
And so they’re both true.
Etai
We try. Yeah. Exactly. So we tried I think my mom who who was American, she maybe tried to take us to a synagogue once and within ten minutes my dad was like, we’re.
Noam
Going, yeah.
Etai
This is not for us. Even though he ended up he taught at a Jewish day school in Boca for many years. But, But.
Noam
Yeah. What did he teach?
Etai
He taught Hebrew language. Oh, wow. Yeah, for many, many years.
Noam
And you know why? Because Judaism is a people. We are all the Jewish people. We are not. We are. We have a religion, but we are not a religion, which confuses the heck out of people. But that explains why somebody who could, why they’re more atheist Jews than there are atheists. And the other thing because to Christian, to be a Christian means that you believe in something to to be a muslim believe.
Noam
It means that you have to believe in something. To be a Jew means that you are part of something.
Etai
What is it that Dara Horn says? We’re a tribe that is tied together through language, culture and land. And that was very common back then. Thousands and thousands.
Noam
Called myself.
Etai
It’s just.
Noam
Two letters.
Etai
Two letters. But it took me many years to understand that I’m still working on it. But um I don’t know, I started to explore, I guess, Judaism. It came through my work. And at first the first time it really came through was in 20 would have been 2013. I did a production in Miami, actually, of a play called My Name Is Asher Lev, which is based on the book By computer, which is about a a leibovich acidic boy growing up in Brooklyn who discovers that he’s this has this incredible artistic talent, and he starts becoming obsessed with painting Jesus on the cross because he’s just he’s just obsessed with art and art history, and he has to grapple with his family.
Etai
And is he going to have to leave the faith? I spent a weekend in Brooklyn and did Shabbat with a Lubavitch family there, just to feel what it was like. And you know, that world is not for me, but but it cracked something open, very, very small that I had to see where I vehemently disagreed with the lifestyle.
Etai
But I had I had to find the beauty and I had to to really find the commonality and what this character feels in this world. And the conversation you’re referring to is, I got to perform in Company on Broadway by the late, great Stephen Sondheim, who many of us basically look at as a as a god, as a deity.
Etai
And he’s the greatest to me, the greatest composer, a very, very atheist, Jew, agnostic, Jew, secular Jew. And, I got to perform in the last show before he passed away that he worked on. And Rabbi that my wife was working with on converting at the time she came to see the show and we had become good pals, and we were chatting after I made sort of an offhand joke that was like, well, you know, I don’t consider myself really observant, religious, whatever.
Etai
But if I had to choose a religion, it would probably be Sondheim. And, you know, I just wanted to make her laugh. But she didn’t laugh. She just kind of like, looked at me and was like, That’s interesting. Tell me more about that as a great rabbi would do. Right. And, and I started talking and I just started kind of talking.
Etai
I was like, you know, I truly think there’s as much wisdom in this man’s work as there is in, in the great Jewish text. And I think we can learn a lot from his work and pore over it the way Jews have been poring over text for for a long time. And we developed this thing called the Torah of Sondheim, which was a class at the 92nd Street Y where she brought in Torah.
Etai
I brought in Sondheim. We saw where the two intersected. We compared them. We did performances, we analyzed lyrics. We looked at Torah, we. You know, I realized that this practice of what I do in the theater is not so different than what Jews do. With Torah and with Talmud is because basically, I’m in the business of text analysis.
Etai
I’m in the business of looking at a scene, looking at text, looking at a play, and trying to find meaning beneath the words and trying to find, like, truth and wrestling with it. Yeah. And that’s what Jews do. And that that really changed something for me.
Noam
Yeah. If you have a spiritual reading of a text, the whole concept is that what you’re able to do is it’s you bring yourself to the text and you’re able to look at the text and the text. You could read the same text at five, 15 and 25. The text doesn’t change what you change. And then when you and and then therefore the relationship to the text totally changes.
Noam
And Judaism, we absolutely are obsessed. Use the word obsessed. You use the word test. We are obsessed with the study of text, with deconstructing ideas, creating ideas from previous ideas, creating stories, analyzing the legality of certain aspects. And another aspect of Judaism that people ignore is is exploring the folklore, which is also an equal part of the Talmud.
Noam
There’s aggadah, which is the stories, and this is the Jewish law. People tend to only focus on the Jewish law aspect of the Talmud. But there’s also the aggadah, which is the folklore of the Jewish people, and they’re both part of the Jewish story. One more speaks to the head, one more speaks to the heart. But they’re both part of the Jewish story.
Noam
And when we emphasize one over the other, that’s when there’s a problem.
Etai
And look, Jen, you talked about like, memorizing, you know, entire scores and librettos of shows and listening to cast albums like that. That, to me is similar to the Jewish practice of people sitting in front of these books and parsing over every syllable. How does it work? Why does it work? Why do.
Etai
And yeah.
Jennifer
I’m so excited to see this show. Like, I really, really can’t.
Etai
Wait because we’re developing it into a into a performance, my wife and I, and it’s now called The Book of Steve.
Jennifer
Oh my God, I love that. It’s also what you just said about interrogating something when you’re 30, 40, 50. Immediately I’m like, oh, Follies. Oh, company like that speaks to Sondheim shows. And even though he.
Noam
I want you to say, who could you give me a little bit about?
Jennifer
No, not.
Jennifer
Not at all. Widely believed to be the greatest musical theater writer of the 20th century. And, you know, not to pit people against each other, but his influence, his kind of just the way he transformed the art form. He wrote the lyrics to Gypsy and West Side Story. Those were two early career moments.
Noam
Then wrote.
Jennifer
Those lyrics. Yes. And then.
Jennifer
And then he we got you. And then he went on to write both music and lyrics to like, a number of shows that really changed the trajectory of musical theater company Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, passion to name a few. I’m just kidding.
Jennifer
No, really. But he he was like the bard of our, you know, people. And people do refer to him as a god. And the way that it’s so interesting to me hearing you talk about it, because even though Sondheim would have described himself as, you know, an atheist Jew and he was not religious, there are all of these, like, Jewish priorities that pop out when you’re looking at company, looking into the woods, that I’m so excited to see your take on in the show, because you’re thinking about, like, guilt and how we pass things on to the next generation and just these very Jewish conversations that Sondheim, I feel like he always was surrounded by
Jennifer
Jews. A lot of his collaborators were Jews. And you’re just thinking about how that leaks into his work, even though he wasn’t explicitly trying to be telling a Jewish story.
Etai
That he he said, like, well, I’m not observant. I’m not really that Jewish. But he grew up in the Upper West Side in the 1940s, and 50s parents were in the fabric industry. He was always surrounded by Jews. And when when someone asked him in an interview like, what is your Judaism mean to you? And he paused and then said, well, it’s very deep.
Etai
It’s the fact that most of the artists that I admire are Jewish, and art is as close to religion as I have. And that spoke to me so deeply. And I think we look at him as a God. But what he really is is our greatest rabbi of the theater. And I think he is like the Jewish theater voice of, of maybe ever, while not ever explicitly writing about Jews and Judaism.
Jennifer
Yeah, totally.
Noam
Okay, so I just want to end with one last question for the two of you. And it’s a big question. I love to talk about how every good story needs to be told with what I call goosebumps with complexity, I meaning that there should be an emotional aspect of it. I want people to feel something, and I also want people to be able to critically analyze something at the same point in time.
Noam
goosebumps with complexity, goosebumps with complexity.
Noam
It’s a hard thing to accomplish. What is your advice for how to do this? Well when telling stories? Goosebumps with complexity.
Etai
And complexity…
Jennifer
I really, you know, I don’t think that there’s just good theater and bad theater. I feel like there’s theater that you love, theater that someone else loves, theater that’s not for you today, but you might love in ten years. And so I think that when you’re creating anything, a story like a piece of theater, you have to think about what speaks to you.
Jennifer
Like that’s the only thing you can do and you can’t be thinking about. Is that person going to like it? Is this going to sell a million tickets? Like, you’re really not to say you’re making it in a vacuum and that you should be. It should all be for you. But you have to make something that aligns with your heart and what you’re excited about, what’s going to give you goosebumps to share.
Jennifer
And so I think that like from the Greatest Hits, you’re talking about like Hamilton rent, like these shows we’re talking about, they did that for the creators. And it might there are people who don’t like the biggest hits and there are people. Their favorite show is something that not everybody loves as much or didn’t run for as long.
Jennifer
So I feel like the key to all of it is just like making something you deeply believe in, and the right people will find it, even if it’s not right away. And even if they didn’t, you were true to yourself in making it. You give yourself goosebumps. And like the, you know, maybe only 40 people, but it was really meant something to to them.
Etai
I think a writer once told me that every great story comes from a question. And I think to your point, I think a storyteller needs to interrogate and examine what is the big questions that they are dealing with the deepest, deepest questions, and use that as the the root of their story. And that’s a very Jewish thing, because we are always questioning and we are always grappling and we don’t always have answers.
Etai
And I don’t think a great story needs an answer. That being said, I think it’s important for storytellers to to understand and respect what came before them and to understand and respect the, the fundamentals and, and rules. I’d say of storytelling, if you want to break them, great. But you need to know them like the back of your hand in order to break them.
Etai
So that’s where the the complexity comes in is the structure underneath has to be so tight. And then the goosebumps is that question. Love it.
Noam
Well, if I can call you Jen.
Jennifer
You can.
Noam
Jen, thank you so much for joining me on Wondering Jews. We miss Mijal, but you both have taught me so much about theater, about storytelling, about the Jewish experience and storytelling. Thank you for exploring with me in a, in a in a real and authentic way. So thanks for joining.
Jennifer
Thank you for having us.
Etai
Awesome.