Tales of a Jewish American Prince by Glenn Laszlo Weiss

This Play is the copyright of the Author and must NOT be Performed without the Author's PRIOR consent

Tales of a Jewish American Prince was first presented by Star Mountainville Group at MAKOR of the 92nd Street Y on May 18, 2004 at West 67th Street in NYC. It was directed by the author (with valuable input from Moshe Paul Mones and Jack Zeman) with the following cast:

Judah……………………………………………… Glenn Laszlo Weiss
A sprite, Mother, Sally, Rae, etc …………………. Norma Jean Howland

Sound was by Jonathan Delson
Dramaturgical Assistance was provided by Jack Zeman.

Music was given to the production by Frank London, David Krakauer and Andy Statman.

Part One

Once upon a time there was a…a…a…survivor, no, no, … a prince … no, a Jewish American Prince, he heard a call … once upon a time … Hungarians, survivors, lots of them and dad, no, no, no. Once upon a … gave me this so called kingdom, named me Isadore after my father’s father - Isser in Hebrew … but once upon a time….royalty? I prefer Judah….once upon a time got called Isser the pisser by kids … call me Judah…who speaks through the Jewish Blues, once upon a time dad was in the camps …no, no – his dad gave up his food so my dad could eat…see? No, no … once upon a time … he starved. Once upon a time - how about, how about….call me Judah, Judah Ben Judah, son of a Jew. Hey, this isn’t my kingdom, is it? What is this kingdom … some old guy with a beard? Crying for his women? No, no, no … once upon a time….same old story … he disappoints … mother … wife …. daughter… oh yeah, oh yeah … it’s the Jewish blues…


(BLUEJEW)

What? Do you hear? What do they want?
The worst. I say, the worst cry you can ever hear.
Is a mother’s cry. It leaves such a bitter taste.
In her son when he disappoints her.
He never gets over it. He never stops hearing the sound.

What? What do you want?
Is honesty not enough?
Is the truth too costly?
Is my suffering never in your league?
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
Now, you hear my sound down low.
Without laughter.
My own sound of blue.
Blue. Jew.

I always had this raging conflict going on between the good Jewish boy inside me and a more questioning and rebellious one. The good one, in my mind would parade around in a flock of Black Hats, Orthodox Jews, a proud member of the first born of the Holocaust survivors. My mission clear and engrossed in absolute devotion.

(OUR SOUND)

Listen, listen to our sound. Hear it echo through the ages. Hear it call our people our people together. Hear it sing through the centuries of trials. Trials not by our peers.

Listen. Hear the sounds of laughter on a crowded street. Feel the hustle, the bustle to make a buck. Crowded together, people all talking at the same time. Crowded in great numbers though we are few. Listen to our sound. Voices that clamor, that clash together. Trying to put across each other’s view. Rejoicing in being so few.

Choosing to walk the streets at dusk. Together, always together. Witnessing the sun going down in the distance. Seeing the light of our God and following it to its furthest point. Together, always together. Clamoring, pushing, savoring our closeness to each other. Listen to our sound. Others plot against us and scheme some nonsense but we weather the storms. They cry out to the world and rely on age-old perceptions yet we persevere. Together, though we are few. Crowded in great numbers in a little space. Like our fathers, like our grandfathers, we go on safe together and we sway to our sound. We go down the embankment as the sunset develops. We argue some Talmud and mix in a little business. Follow your gods, leave us in peace. Peace, peace. We want peace, not suspicions. Peace, peace. We want peace, not innuendoes. Into the night we wander. Crowded together in diminishing numbers, voices growing softer into the vapors of the night. Listen to us owning our sound. Together, always together, though we are few.

And then I was also the boy who stood apart. I was bored in synagogue. Feeling the religion deadening all the spirit around me. With a God defined in such stark terms of good and evil, crime and punishment, sin and piety, I couldn’t help but feel there was a wheeler-dealer standing outside the gates of Heaven checking Jewish membership cards.

(JEWS IN HEAVEN)

Come all you Jews to Heaven.
Which Jews? All Jews. You sure? There are so many kinds of Jews, nu? Don’t miss it! It’s the closest thing to a country club. Golf all day. Kibbitzing in the day room. Ethical discussions in the library. Food, all the food you can savor. I told you it’s like a country club. But so confusing to choose the type of Jews we want here. You got Orthodox, Conservatives, Reformed, Revisionists, Reconstructionists, Refuseniks and even some who know Jesus, emmis! I can’t make a decision, I’m only security, see. Come, all of you Jews and get on board. For sure, it’s relaxed here. It’s like, you know, a country club atmosphere. And you know what? It’s a little like The Concord. Or Colorado, but only a few of you know Colorado. And can you believe? We've got shuffleboard, too. What do you think? What kind of a place you think we’re running here? And now, most important, what kind of a Jew are you? A black hat? Do you put on the tsistsis and the tfillin or what? What? Am I getting too personal or something? We must know. Are you just plain old neighborhood variety with the questions in the voice and the ability to bug all the goyim? No big deal. Doesn’t really matter. We’re completely relaxed here. Supper is always served on time. We’re informal but as you can tell, well-informed. Thanks a lot. See you soon.

One day in early middle age, I was hit with all this buried passion, voices and opinions I didn’t know I had inside of me. I heard the Jewish blues and this turmoil began its course. It was uncovered not like a buried treasure but more along the lines of distorted feelings and actions. There I stood unable to explain why such a thirst to erase the ghosts and shadows of the past lived in me and yet the creative urge to HOWL also emerged. There were the stories of my mother’s father, the rabbi. Stoic, resourceful and heroic, he saved his family from the Nazis. Remarkably, he learned English well enough at fifty years of age to become a rabbi in America because it was a better gig than teaching, his previous occupation in Hungary. I can still hear my grandmother’s voice singing his praises.

(GRANDPA’S STORY)

Listen children, I want to tell you a story.
Listen, children, children everywhere.
There was a man who had a mission.
To save his children, just like you they were.
He went into the woods a Jew.
And came out onto the street, a German baker,
The best around.
His heart was aching.
His soul seemed damned.
His pulse was quaking.
His demeanor stayed calm.
He lied to his enemy.
He had to have the remedy,
To protect the lives he brought into the world.

He used to be a teacher.
He now was a forger of passports.
He was his town’s most learned man.
He now became a laborer, who worked with his hands.
He never gave up on his freedom.
He never deserted his family.
Hear O Israel, how many like him there were.
Today so precious few have arisen from the seeds.
To pray in Hebrew while cursing in German.
Finding solace in praying while playing a devil.

He went into the woods a scared Jew
And out he came a great German baker.
Wiping flour and blowing powder
Right off his white duds
As somewhere else in the air…
Flew Jewish suds.

That was one hell of a road to follow or rather quite a legacy to live up to. Then there was my father. He survived three concentration camps. He was an adolescent when the Holocaust started. He was guided by something bigger than circumstance or maybe by some great inner resource that defied the evil reality around him.

FUNNY KID

A funny kid on the run.
Getting away without murder.
His own, narrowly escaping his own.
Living on his wits and entertaining the idiots
Who follow the deadly orders.

He’s missing when work starts.
Missing work is the key.
Little does he know it’s his destiny.
Where is the funny yid, the funny kid?
Who runs away all the time.

Hiding in the trenches.
Diving into the ditches.
Work is only a pretense
To keep the steady flow in this marriage
Of profit and racial purity.
He’s lost in the shuffle.
He can’t be held long enough
For anyone to decide what to do with him.
They just laugh that he’s missing a finger.
Look, he can’t work today.
Then send him off to another camp.
Auschwitz, Buchenwald, a little time in Treblinka.
But when he sees that line for those number tattoos
He knows it’s time to run again, that funny yid.
Funny kid, they think he’s a gas.
Like a frisky pet, he saves his ass.

A funny kid on the run.
Getting away without murder.
His own, narrowly escaping his own.
Living on his wits and entertaining the idiots
Who follow the deadly orders.

Funny kid on the run.
Dodging fate and beating hate
With his quick feet and quicker smile.

And then there was our relationship. It was always painful and confusing. I wanted to fight for his lost youth and dreams. He wanted to spare me disappointment. I was born too late to fight the Nazis. He was too beaten to match my enthusiasm and tried to scale down my hopes and dreams. It all hurt.

SON

He has an old face. He has my look. It’s in his eyes. It’s in his soul. It’s in his heart. The burning bush handed down to him is the same one handed down to me. Handed down, what a diluted mess. Believe it or not, it shrouds us both. When he hides, so do I. When I disappoint him, I can’t cover unless I reach into his point of view and make light. A view I have fled all my life. Futile wish. I despise him/me. In these times.

I was told that I was important but not by him.
I was told to speak up but not by him.
I was told to get myself secure by him, by him.
(Sung cantorally)
By him, by him. Quiet. On and on.
By him, by him. Quiet. On and on.
By him, by him. Quiet. On and on and on.

When he got here he spoke five languages, only parts of them, not one whole. This they done to him. He could not communicate with others. Just work with his hands. And write endless numbers on newspapers. This was his true calling. Of course, somewhere else, that is. Another world. This one didn’t exist anymore for him. To himself, he was terrified. Wouldn’t you be? He gave me this fear. By himself, he felt guilty. Why, oh why, was he spared? No one else that he knew. No one else that he was connected to was saved. Just him. And he could only speak fractions of words. He could only clench his fists. Shake his head. And wonder and wander and ponder. Until it all blanked out. It’s my task to get past this. And not give it to mine.

So, the battle lines were drawn inside of me. Would I become this unstoppable macher like Grandpa? Or a darting, toe the line working man like my dad? This tango of two tales played out in the wilderness that was my soul.

TANGO TALE

They were two different men
Very different from each other they were
Grandpa came out of the shtetl
With a pompous air about him.
‘cause he was the big macher where he came from.

Dad was wild-eyed scared.
When he got married, he looked like the personification of Fear.
Probably didn’t want to let go of the people
Who came to his wedding.
He needed to know people, his people
Could and would stick around.

Grandpa, he went right from the shtetl
Right into the synagogue.
Congregation after congregation
He came and went, came and went.
He only learned English at fifty.
And boy, could he make speeches.
He traveled across his new country
He’d outrun the Germans
And soon he’d be outrunning his age.
There was not a retiring bone in his body.
He argued everywhere he went.
He fought about all the numbers in Deuteronomy
Prophesized the doom he’d escaped from.
He told the truth his way.
The one he’d lived through.
He stuck out his chest, he knew who he was.
He got behind a used Cadillac.
It had more miles on it than it had a right to.
Like its driver, it just kept right on going.

Dad tried to piece it together.
He felt hollow echoes reverberate through his brain.
He’d found a new family to replace the one he’d lost.
He was helped by his extended family.
Because, see, he was so fractured.
He thought only parts of thoughts.
He’d cheated death so many times.
He was still a very young man.
He was taught a trade working with his hands.
Though his hands always betrayed him.
He kept thinking of his lame pal who’d been with him in all three
camps struggle in the new country without much help and was thankful.
He dared seldom to dream of the father he last saw through the vapors
Of poisoned gas.
Boom! They shot his uncle in America out of nowhere.

Boom! Grandpa had another door slammed in his face.
They met in the bustling city.
Damaged, aged and destined to go on.
They did a tango of survival
Death had been cheated at the door.
Men who knew when to cut and run.
Their faith twisted to fit whatever calamity awaited them.

A boy missing a finger.
A rabbi born out of circumstance.
Taking his chances on the outer roads of America.
While the boy picked up his dead uncle off the stone floor.
One adopts the other
Not really knowing much
Not really caring
Except for one fact.
He’s a Jew and He’s a Jew.
This they both knew real well.
This is what they shared together.

My father never talked about his experiences in the camps. He didn’t say what he’d been through but rather dwelled on what the world could do to me, if I wasn’t careful. “It’s no joke” was a favorite refrain of his. He was overprotective, picking me up everywhere by foot, he didn’t know how to drive. He didn’t know how to swim. He couldn’t fix anything with his hands. I grew up missing my right ring finger just like him. Except that I had mine. Sympathetic syndrome, my Mom called it. Once we heard a noise in the bushes, my Dad and I. It was probably kids goofing around. My Dad yelled and pointed to imaginary others as if he had a virtual army with him and the figures in the dark ran away. Whenever I’m scared I think of that invisible army he created. He had no numbers on his arm like most survivors. When the Steven Spielberg people interviewed him for a documentary about Holocaust survivors, they were fascinated by this fact. They pressed for details and he was insulted. He felt they didn’t believe him. Some days I’m bold like my grandpa and some days I’m shy and private like my Dad. Some days I believe in miracles. Some days I see through everything and everybody and conclude it’s all lies. Some days I pursue my dreams. Some days I turn on myself. I usually walk away before I believe in something. My mother wanted me to succeed. She saw my lack of belief. She taught me this prayer.

PRAYER (TUMULT)

Open my eyes, so I can see
This tumult going on inside of me.
In due time, you say
Be patient, restless one, you say.

Quell this commotion
That is rocking my world.
Force this pounding
In my brain to pause
I ask you nice.

A tumult, a tumult that comes every night.

Forces visit me.
They upset my whole vision of life.
They tear apart my comfort.
They push my serenity to the limit.
Voices rise up in my head
And discuss questions I never asked.
Upheavals resume nightly,
Stop this madness
Before I go insane.
I never was that stable to begin with.

Haunting images call me.
Carry me to the edge.
I witness a wrinkled old man who protected them.
S o two troubled people could bear me.
I was blind before but now I see.
Blind before but now I see.
Yes, blind but now I see.

(Softly) I call myself Judah.

End of Part One
 
Part Two

So much of this background of pain was ignored in my youth. Oh, there was teenage pain. There was rebellion, plenty of it. There was the point of view that having European parents was not cool. They didn’t understand us even more than those kids with Jewish American parents. My Dad staked us out when we partied and went through my chest drawers when I succumbed to drugs. His interventions seemed ridiculously futile and pathetic. Today, I know he was just being a loving father. I became “Pete West” and ran off to do summer stock while a lot of my Jewish peers prepared for their law and medical careers. My aversion to my background kept growing. I became a master of the escape with a head full of learned responsibility. The carefree artistic world aided my flight from this fractured Jewish tradition I was born into. But, late at night, the roots reached out to me. I became Judah again.

THE HUNGER

Three a.m. and it’s my nightly bad dream wake-up. Familiar terrain covered in repeated nightmares. Jewish sounds reverberate the walls. Jewish faces infiltrate my cool, plastic assimilated world. I peer in from outside a fence. I see a secret coded world but deep within me, I possess a key. A world of ethereal ghosts. A world where monsters dwell. A world where despots rule. A world watched over by the long hand of Justice. A world where history does cast a doubt. A world where absolute faith in nothing is advised. A world where every now and then this long hand of Justice does falter. A world of dead scrolls, a world of parted seas. Some that roar, some that angrily flow. Some that allow the faithful to flee. Some that swallow up all of the world’s misery.

Jewish faces. Jewish laws. Jewish headaches. Jewish questions. Jewish dreams. Oy, this key weighs so heavy on me. What is a Jew? So many factions. So many sects. So many theories. So many texts. Different ones that huddle together. Some that are assimilated with the masses. Some so radical and militant. Some so benign and accommodating. All kinds in times of trouble. Always times of trouble, a world full of trouble, always a monster and always the search for angels. Always ghosts of ancient sages who are always watching. Jewish lives bear a lot of watching.
.
My soul knows the stories, my being knows the sounds.
My feet know the steps, my heart knows what to feel.
My rhythm comes from way back, my speech has the twists and turns.
My voice has the hully-gullies of Galilee.
My hunger for togetherness is bottomless and centuries old.

My soul knows the stories, my being knows the sounds.
My feet know the steps, my heart knows what to feel.
My rhythm comes from way back, my speech has the twists and turns.
My voice has the hully-gullies from Galilee.
My hunger for togetherness is bottomless and centuries old.