Playwright Explores Jewish Psyche

There are many images that Jews find disquieting. Nazis, Klansmen, Arab terrorists. But perhaps most wounding are images that reflect ugliness and incoherence within the Jewish culture itself.

In “Ghetto” (produced at the Mark Taper Forum in 1986), Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol showed an occupied community turning on itself during the Holocaust.

In his “Jerusalem Syndrome,” characters mirror Israeli soldiers’ oppression of Palestinian refugees. In “The Soul of a Jew--The Last Night of Otto Weininger” (opening tonight at the Taper for eight performances), he examines a self-hating Jew. The play is based on the life of a Jewish Viennese philosopher at the turn of the century.

“At 23, he wrote a scandalous book called ‘Sex and Character,’ which was both anti-Semitic and anti-feminist,” noted Sobol in over the phone from London, where he was supervising the National Theatre’s staging of “Ghetto.” “Shortly after publishing the book, Weininger converted to Christianity, became a Protestant. Six months later, he committed suicide in the room where Beethoven had died.”

Sobol, 49, feels Weininger’s Angst had more to do with socio-sexual identity than with Judaism.

“He felt endangered by what he called the femininity in himself; he attacks it as ‘the femininity of Judaism.’ He believed that every human being has a proportion of masculinity and femininity, which together make up their character. The ‘masculine principle’ represents everything rational, ethical, law-abiding and orderly; the ‘feminine principle’ was irrational, chaotic, emotional--and the two elements are destined to clash.”

Weininger’s book was a best seller for 20 years in Europe, in 28 editions. “He was characteristic of the time,” explained the Sorbonne-educated playwright. “There were others like him who didn’t dare say so openly what he did. But the turn of the century was infested with male chauvinism and anti-Semitism. The members of the Christian Socialist Party--which was really the forerunner of the German National Socialist Party--were talking openly about the need to see Austria rid itself of its Jews.

“Most people tried to ignore the meaning of it. But Weininger was one of the few who had that kind of insight into the future. He somehow understood what was going to happen in the German territories. He felt it was going to be ‘either/or,’ that, like the masculine/feminine principle, German culture and Jewish existence were incompatible. Hitler admired him very much. He once remarked that Weininger was the only Jew who merited to live.”

Sobol’s interest in the subject was triggered by what he saw as “the renaissance of anti-Semitism in France at the beginning of the ‘80s--and the renewal of neo-Nazism and neo-Fascism all over the world.”

In the wake of its success (“Soul” has been playing in Israel since 1983), he has attempted to figure out its appeal. “I think it touches a certain unhealed wound, both for Jews and non-Jews, which is part of our past and our future--and the terrible failure to reconcile these antagonistic tendencies.”

Although he was chastised for airing “dirty linen” when he took the play to the Edinburgh Festival in 1983, nothing prepared Sobol for the overwhelming reaction to last year’s “The Jerusalem Syndrome.”

“When I wrote it, I didn’t know it was going to coincide with the insurrection in the territories,” he stressed. “It was bad timing. In one way, the play was dealing with the conflict between Jewish history and what it means to be an Israeli today. It brought to light the fact that if we seek to dominate other people, we’ll have a problem with our past. Being Jewish--and having been victims of oppression and occupation in the past--we cannot reconcile dominating other people.

“The audience was invited to experience a kind of split identity in the play, because every one of the characters vacillated between his Jewish identity and another identity. The Jews revolting against the Romans can easily be seen as the Palestinians at a certain point. The Roman centurion can be seen as a contemporary Israeli soldier. So the audience was thrown between what is generally taken to be our past, and what we recognize as our present.”

People were more than thrown. They were furious. Demonstrations were held at the theater, diatribes filled the papers. In the Parliament, a member of the right-wing party suggested Sobol “take the example of his beloved hero Otto Weininger and commit suicide.” In February, he and director Gedalia Besser resigned their positions with the Haifa theater.

“I was always very happy to have such strong response from Israeli audiences,” he sighed. “They came to the theater ready to cope with problems and difficulties--and they were grateful when you honored them, respected them (with the truth). When audiences were so outraged about ‘Jerusalem,’ it made me think, ‘Is there something wrong with me or the country?’ All I know is that people were terribly afraid. The theater was a scapegoat for a lot of anger and pain and frustration.

“Of course I’ll go back,” he said gently. “I’m going on writing for an Israeli audience. I consider myself as absolutely belonging to it.”

And yet confronting it? “Jewish history and Jewish experience are not always comfortable,” he allowed. “I feel that the kind of theater I’m trying to do, almost compelled to do, is very painful.”