Playwrights are advised that to keep an audience engaged from the first scene until the last, the basic plotline needs the equivalent of a famished bear on the outside of a cottage, inside of which human characters are trapped. In Di Froyn (The Women) the bear is the mother who is threatening to show up at her daughter’s wedding.
What has this Yiddishe Mama done to make herself so despised? She’s abandoned her husband and their many children. He’s a pillar of their Charedi community that once respected but now shuns her. Her eldest daughter, who was forced to become a surrogate mother to her younger siblings as well as having had to marry “down” because of the shame the mother brought on the family, is hurt, furious and protective of her siblings, especially the sister who’s about to marry. She and her maternal grandmother are both vociferous opponents to reconciliation. Surprisingly, the protagonist’s former mother-in-law seems to be the most understanding of these women, who include two nosy neighbors who worm their way into the family drama. It is they and the social worker, the only one in the cast who speaks in English, who provide comic relief in what is otherwise a tense and absorbing drama.
The social worker is Jewish but clueless at speaking the language, both literal and figurative, of these Charedi Jews. She is present to support her client, who has been able to get a court order that will allow her contact with her beloved children. Leaving her husband has cost her client everything she had, most tragically, her children. She’s been prevented from having contact with her family, friends and the entire community for years and she’s desperate to see her offspring again, especially the youngest ones whose memories of her have been eradicated.
Only in the last scene do we learn that leaving was not due to the selfish desire to follow her bliss at all costs, as her detractors imply. It was a case of pikuach nefesh, and the life she was saving was her own. Not only did her husband threaten to kill her, he beat her so viciously she barely survived, something those closest to her knew but chose to overlook.
The denouement comes through her friend, who is Orthodox but not Charedi. Although the other women refuse to accept the words of this “liberal” outsider, the sister of the accused does carry weight when she finally confesses that she, too, was molested by her brother. Moreover the man is not merely a thief and rapist, he has a long history of sexual abuse, including homosexual predation. Worse, the rabbi this insular community reveres as a saint was responsible for the cover-up and has organized the males in the community to gather outside the house to read Tehillim and do everything they can to prevent the beleaguered mother from being reunited with her children.
Di Froyn is based on “The Womens’ Minyan,” a story by Naomi Ragen, who was inspired by the true story of a mother of 12 who found herself in a similar situation. Ragen, an Orthodox woman from Brooklyn, made aliyah years ago and became a popular novelist. Habimah, in Tel Aviv, commissioned her to turn the story into a play. This Yiddish version gives it an authenticity it wouldn’t otherwise have.
Di Froyn was translated and adapted by Malky Goldman and Melissa Weisz. The two women, who also are members of the cast, have peppered it with just enough Yinglish to make it sound like the Yiddish that’s actually spoken by second-, third- and fourth-generation American Jews whose mother tongue is Yiddish. Both were born and raised in Charedi communities.
Di Froyn is well-wrought, timely and beautifully performed. The topic is universal in its exploration of what makes solidarity, leadership and yichus (status); how greed, privilege and power can corrupt; how women allow themselves to be bullied and marginalized by males—until they don’t; how people can know and not know at the same time; and how religion can bind but also be blind.
The Jewish Plays Project (JPP) has successfully partnered with the New Yiddish Rep on several plays and Di Froyn is their most recent collaboration. In June, Di Froyn was performed in a staged reading at the 14th Street Y as part of the JPP Festival of New Jewish Theatre.
JPP, whose goal is to produce theater that moves people closer to Judaism, was founded less than a decade ago. It was originally developed as a forum for inspiring and launching new plays on Jewish topics. Initially it was based in West Orange at the JCC of MetroWest, and also in Manhattan. Today it is housed at the JCC of Manhattan in the fall and the 14th Street Y in the summer.
To accommodate those who couldn’t get into the standing-room-only performance in June, another staged reading of Di Froyn will take place on Sunday, July 15, at 6 p.m. at the 14th Street Y. For tickets, which are free, though a donation is suggested, contact https://www.jewishplaysproject.org/ or http://www.newyiddishrep.org.
By Barbara Wind
Barbara Wind is the director of the Holocaust Center of Greater MetroWest.
