All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [234]
I often think about that speech when participating in demonstrations in support of persecuted Jews anywhere, and I tell myself the inspector was wrong. In the play the aged rabbi’s cry is heard. All the characters undergo a metamorphosis in the second act; even his adversaries rally to him. And yes, a man’s desperate cry is never lost. The sacrifices of the Soviet Jews were not in vain. As I write these lines, thousands of them are landing at Lod Airport. If they were released, it was thanks in part to people like Rivka’s father, who, before he died, shared with his daughter his conviction that a Jew’s honor is linked to his Jewishness.
Of all the productions of Zalmen, it was the one in Tel Aviv that proved most disappointing, nearly causing a break between my old friend Dov and me. It also marked a turning point in my relations with certain Israelis.
Until then I had been quite kindly regarded. I had friends in the establishment and the opposition alike. I tried not to take sides in the political quarrels that have always divided the Israeli nation and the Jewish people at large. My news reports and articles on cultural affairs were greeted positively, my books favorably reviewed in the press. At Yedioth Ahronoth my colleagues wondered whether I had any enemies at all. In time this would change, and the first sign of that change came with the production of Zalmen.
It all began with a proposal from the director of Habimah, the National Theater, who came up to our table in the restaurant at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, introduced himself, and shared with us his indignation. “I just got back from Germany, where I saw a performance of Zalmen. An outrage.” I asked him politely what exactly he was talking about. “Your play should have had its world premiere here in Israel and nowhere else,” he declared. Then he pulled up a chair, but seemed even more unhappy sitting down. Marion and I listened in silence, wondering whether we should tell him we didn’t even know the play had been staged in Germany. I waited for him to come up for air and then told him how sorry I was to see him so unhappy on my account. “I would like to buy the rights to your play,” he said. I replied that the rights belonged to my French publisher, Le Seuil, and that he should get in touch with them. He made a note of the name, address, and phone number. “It is high time,” he then solemnly announced, “for Zalmen to come home to live among his own people.”
Back in New York we thought no more about it. The world of the theater is full of promises and illusions, and I knew enough not to take this kind of commitment seriously. That was my first mistake. Some six or eight months later Le Seuil informed me that Habimah was interested in the rights to Zalmen. In fact, the letter said, it seemed I had already agreed. I immediately corrected that impression: I had agreed to nothing. Next came a phone call from Tel Aviv. The director of the National Theater appealed to my kind Jewish heart and to my love of Israel: it was absolutely essential that Zalmen open the season. After all, the play was about Soviet Jews, and was there any cause more sacred to me than the struggle for their freedom? In fact, the director remarked, rehearsals were about to begin. I protested that he had no right to stage the play before a contract was signed, that Le Seuil could sue him. Not to worry, he said, agents and lawyers would take care of the contract. The purpose of his call was simply to assure me that he intended to use only the best talents and that the play’s integrity would be scrupulously respected: Not a word would be added, not a word deleted. His passion and energy persuaded me to yield, especially since he promised to invite me to Tel Aviv in a few weeks to attend the initial rehearsals and correct any small, if unlikely, mistakes. A week went by, then a month, then two months, and we heard nothing more from him. Then, one day, there was another phone call from the director, inviting me to the premiere. This time I lost my