Yael Unterman (http://www.yaelunterman.com), a writer, creative educator and life coach, has trained teachers around the world. She is the author of the recently released biography, Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and Bible Scholar.
In the waning years of the twentieth century, the summer activity voted number one by visiting groups of teens and students from the Jewish Agency’s Israel Experience department was not hiking in the Arbel, snorkelling in Eilat or visiting to the Kotel. It was, in fact, the Murder Mystery at the Tower of David.
Keep that in mind, and follow me as we shift scene to a group of Israeli cadets in the IDF officer’s course in Midreshet Har Gilo. They have just spent a week in lectures and workshops on topics relating to Israeli-Jewish identity, and have been asked to rate each activity out of 7. One extremely charismatic lecturer – the head of the IDF education corps, no less – receives a 6.6 average; yet to his amazement he is informed that someone else beat him with a perfect 7. Who is this outstanding person? The answer: Rabbi Benjy Levene of Gesher, with his play “The Four Faces.”
Such is the power of drama. In my twenty-five years years of involvement in Jewish education of one sort or another, it has been my experience that drama, when done well, brings to life otherwise stale, dull or impenetrable topics, helping to open them up and explore them from new angles. I am not referring to cute little plays on parashat ha-shavua, but a more sophisticated and adult use of the tool, which I am guessing is insufficiently implemented in Jewish education. It seems that drama has been in the Jewish kindergarten for too long – it is high time it grew up.
I am deeply familiar with the above two plays, having appeared in both for many years. The Murder Mystery (now defunct in the English language) took place in the impressive cavernous and stony setting of David’s Citadel in Jerusalem’s Old City. The group was informed that a murder had just taken place – Aristobulus III, last scion of the Hasmonean dynasty, was found drowned in his swimming pool. Next, an introduction was made of all of the suitably costumed suspects – the victim’s sister, Queen Miriam and her husband, King Herod, a Roman soldier named Pantera and a Jewish activist/zealot named Yonina. Small groups were then led off to different rooms in the museum, where the suspects – in real life, the museum’s tour guides – cleverly utilized the various historical displays as backdrop to their story with its all-important alibi. Finally, the group got to vote as to who they thought had done it (Herod, of course, but the youth didn’t know that). The combination of the Citadel’s romantic atmosphere, the dramatic whodunit, and the nasty humorous banter between the actors all provided for a painless way to learn historical information, through actually living it for a night.
Rabbi Benjy Levene’s play, running for close to thirty years, still draws crowds, including repeat viewers. He developed it in the framework of Gesher, an organization established to address the problem of stereotyping and lack of dialogue between Jews/Israelis of all stripes. Rabbi Levene has taken his play all over the world, from an illegal showing to living-room roomful of Refusenik Hebrew teachers, to a 1500-strong audience in Toronto’s Royal Alex Theater. In between these two extremes, Rabbi Levene has exposed tens of thousands to his message: that every Jew is a person, not a stereotype, and that the Jewish people and Israel require everyone’s contributions. In the course of the show he plays four different characters – an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi, a secular bus driver, an assimilated French artist, and a wealthy American Zionist. They are interviewed onstage, and then asked questions by the audience. After the exit of each guest, the person playing the interviewer runs a facilitated discussion in which the audience gets to respond to – and disagree upon – some important questions regarding differing Jewish standpoints.
Having seen this play performed literally hundreds of times close up, I can say that it is nothing short of genius. It employs a deliberately wacky humour to handle an extremely loaded and heavy topic; and the surprise of having it treated with a healthy dose of silliness catches the audience unawares and lowers the usual defenses. While the jokes lighten what would otherwise be an often intense and aggressive debate, many of the major points of tension that typically arise are cleverly slipped in. For example, the Haredi man, when asked if he maintains any contact with the Israeli government (touching on the sore point of Ultra-Orthodox isolation and negation of the State) replies that he used to be the Foreign Minister of Meah Shearim, conducting intimate chats with Moshe Dayan, with whom, however, he didn’t always see “eye to eyes.” The convoluted relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry is hinted at when the American explains that in the last war his community donated 100,000 dollars towards an F-16 fighter plane for Israel, which was not however usable in the end since “everyone wanted their plaque on it and it was too heavy to get off the ground.”
During the question-time and the facilitated discussion, a safe space is created for strong emotional responses to be heard and accepted. Participants learn that others see things differently, and are exposed to the existential importance of these questions for the Jewish people. Rabbi Levene’s warm personality and his emphasis on creating Jewish unity – shades of his grandfather, Rabbi Aryeh Levin – leaves a strong impression and inspires others to follow suit. The show has been indeed been known to affect people in unexpected ways. One high-ranking female IDF officer, for instance, separated from her non-Jewish boyfriend, having understood that her Jewish identity was too important to her; a young British man who first attended the show wearing torn jeans, showed up the following year sporting a black kippa and white shirt, having been so deeply affected as to transform his identity. The “The Four Faces” allows an authentic connection to the Jewish people in one’s own individual way, embracing the viewer with the message, “You too are a Jew, and you are included.”
Both of the above plays are interactive, which is also constitutes an important part of their success; yet ultimately are performance-based. Now I’d like to move on to a non-performance-based, entirely interactive use of drama – a superb technique called Bibliodrama. It was invented by Dr. Peter Pitzele, who imported methods from the world of psychodrama into the study of Bible, and honed them into an art-form. His book, Scripture Windows, is designed to train the reader to use the method. The following is my own understanding of the method’s potential contributions, based on my experience with it over the past six years.
In Bibliodrama, a transition is effected from studying the texts from the outside, while using the analytical and academic left-brain, to studying them from the inside and getting under their skin, in creative and imaginative right-brain mode. To sum up, in brief, what occurs: questions are put to the participants, and they must answer in first-person language, as the biblical characters or even as objects. These questions often lack any obvious or clear answer, and stem from gaps in the text.
The simple transition from third- to first-person language makes a world of difference. The students begin to draw upon their emotions, experiences and intuitions, often astonishing themselves with the powerful insights arising from the encounter between themselves and the narrative. Even people with very weak biblical background – perhaps especially such people, since a strong education in the “correct” way to read Bible often obstructs the flow of Bibliodrama – open their mouths, and incredible ideas simply flow. This makes the session a joy for the facilitator too, incidentally – another benefit of the approach.
Not for nothing is the technique sometimes referred to as “contemporary Midrash.” Bibliodrama transforms ignorant students into sensitive Bible commentators, assiduously searching the text for clues to solve puzzles and difficulties, after their curiosity has been aroused by questions such as, “Cain, what did you say to Abel before you murdered him?” or “Jacob, what are your thoughts as you leave your family in Beer Sheva for Haran?” As the participants speak out both the text and themselves, a previously inaccessible ancient text becomes truly a tree of life.
Bibliodrama is not acting. For the most part, the students remains seated; and frequently the entire group is role-playing one character, building off each other to shape and deepen it. The method works well with both children and adults, both populations bringing different strengths and weaknesses to the technique (teenagers, however, sometimes do not connect as well, due to their particular self-consciousness). In a Bibliodrama, certain children who do not shine in the regular left-brain classroom atmosphere will come into their own – those with creative imaginations, normally deprived of the opportunity to fully display them. In general, both children and adults tremendously enjoy the group experience of building up the inner life of a story; and they relish the opportunity both to be playful and also to express deep personal feelings through the safe mask of the biblical characters. (Here, Bibliodrama may verge on the therapeutic, and participants may be encouraged to share any personal revelations, depending on how comfortable the teacher is with such activity.)
Most significantly for our subject, the experience changes the participants’ relationship to the text. Groups of students were found in the next day’s lesson to refer constantly to the insights gained in a Bibliodrama the day before; and I have witnessed an eighteen year old, product of a religious Jewish education, announce, “I never before today thought of Abraham as someone I could actually identify with!”
Two more points are pertinent to educators. Firstly, a Bibliodramatic experience constitutes an excellent companion to the study of Bible with commentaries, for after having dealing with the textual difficulties by role-playing them out, students possess far greater clarity regarding the matters the commentators struggle with. The technique is not, however, limited to Bible – it may be applied with stories from Talmud, Midrash, literature or even history, whether Jewish or not. Secondly, and very conveniently for educators, Bibliodrama may be easily be integrated into a regular class. Although a full Bibliodrama is ideally carried out in a circle, and can last for an hour or more, a teacher may also, in the course of a class, suddenly switch into a Bibliodrama moment, casually saying, “Now, everyone, I want to imagine that you are Moses standing in front of the burning bush. What are you thinking?” I have found that teachers on several continents have responded enthusiastically to being trained in this technique, and have sometimes implemented it immediately, though I fear not widely enough or with lasting effect, which would probably require further practice sessions.
My final example integrates all of the above. In 2004, I ran a series of Bibliodramas on the Cain and Abel story in various locations across the USA. Having been inspired by the fascinating insights of my youthful and adult participants, I took them and wove them together with some of my own thoughts, and gave them a form resembling the spoken word format now becoming popular. The result was a play entitled, “After Eden: The first family conflict.” I developed this into an educational-experiential unit on Genesis chapter 4, whereby the audience first experiences the narrative for themselves through participating in a Bibliodrama, and subsequently watches a solo performance of five characters all somehow involved with the world’s first murder. My vision was for the play to build directly upon the Bibliodramatic understandings, leading to an overall intense and unforgettable experience.
Since its inception, I have been privileged to bring “After Eden” to audiences in the USA, Canada, UK, Israel and Australia, including an appearance on Australian National Radio. In all likelihood this intense experience is not for everyone – for example, I don’t believe it suitable for teenagers – but I have been rewarded with seeing individuals walk away with many new thoughts and questions, the story taking on for them an entirely new dimension and becoming part of their reality.