All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [231]
Unfortunately, the chief rabbi of Moscow was exhausted. Having lived—excuse me, survived—so long under Communist rule, he no longer had the strength to raise his voice in protest. At the time and in the weeks that followed, I felt sorry for him, and for his community. I pitied him for being unable to fulfill the mission no one else but he could have undertaken: to overcome submission and fear.
As I pondered the play I now wanted to write, the tormented, resigned countenance of the chief rabbi came to mind. Malraux argued that it is literature’s task to redress injustice. Well, in my play I would seek to correct the injustice done to Rabbi Levin: on stage I would allow him to do what he never dared do. That would be my theme.
Since I always need a madman to enliven my fictional landscape, I confronted the rabbi with a madman, whom I called Zalmen. (In the buried chronicles of the Sonderkommandos I later learned about two astonishing men, both named Zalmen.) His role was to act as a catalyst to the rabbi, urging and inciting him to go mad on the evening of Kippur, to hurl the truth of his suffering into the face of an indifferent, complacent, and complicitous world.
I needed a female presence in the play, and so I gave the rabbi a daughter, Nina, thirty or forty years old. She needed a husband, and I chose for her Alexei, a Communist Jew, more Communist than Jew, who would be the rabbi’s counterpoint. The couple had to have a child, so I gave them a son, Misha, twelve years old. When his grandfather asks whether he is preparing for his bar mitzvah, Misha replies, “What’s a bar mitzvah?” That would be Zalmen’s moment of triumph: “You see, Rabbi?” he would shout. “Your line is disappearing. Go mad, I tell you! Turn your truth into a cry! It’s your only chance—and mine, and your little grandson’s too! Your future and our people’s depend on you and you alone!”
Other themes involved the mystery of Jewish survival, the role of memory, the metaphysical aspect of laughter, the limits of coexistence and collaboration, and the potential impact of one solitary act. What price resistance? How far may one bend? In the end the rabbi does go mad. He cries out his truth, but it is all for naught.
I worked on the play full-time, thrilled at having discovered a new medium. Hy Kalus’s assistance was valuable. I also received help from Marion, who had studied drama and knew instantly when a line of dialogue seemed contrived or rang false.
After a few false starts René Jentet, a producer and talented director, accepted the manuscript for France-Culture radio. A private reading that included our friend the actor Joseph Wiseman was organized in New York at the apartment of Lily and Nathan Edelman near Columbia University. Wiseman showed Zalmen to his American producer and director friends. It was fortunate that Alan Schneider, director of plays by Beckett and Albee, found it to his liking. He spoke to Zelda Fichandler of the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, who accepted it. Aided by Marion, who by now was my wife, Alan staged a polished, moving production whose reception was all we could have hoped for. Mel Gussow, after mentioning in The New York Times my having said I would not write for the stage again, commented that he hoped I would change my mind. PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, decided to film the play for prime-time television. Irving Bernstein, who was at that time executive director of the UJA, decided to preview the production at his organization’s annual congress—at Carnegie Hall.
Bernstein insisted I introduce the program. My brief presentation was entitled “A Song of Songs for Russian Jewry.” After the film I hurried home for Shabbat. On my desk I found a letter from a woman in Brooklyn: “My name is Rivka, and I am the daughter of the chief rabbi of Moscow.” She said she wanted to meet me. I was amazed, for I had no idea