‘Mendel & Moses’ & the Messiah

‘Mendel & Moses,” the musical at the Canon Theatre, is stirring up controversy within the Jewish community.

“Mendel” tells the tale of a contemporary Jew who is transported back to ancient Egypt by an angel. There, he follows and advises Moses during the exodus and while wandering in the desert. He emerges with a newfound appreciation of his own Judaism.

That might sound like a show ready-made for groups from temples and other Jewish organizations. Some such groups have booked tickets--or saw the show at a smaller venue, the Century City Playhouse, during an earlier run.

Some Jews have, however, objected to the credentials of Jeremiah and Wendy Ginsberg, the couple who created the show and produce it under the name the Passover Co.

The Ginsbergs are “messianic” Jews--they believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Asked last week if they consider themselves Christian, Wendy Ginsberg replied that the word can have “strange connotations” that she doesn’t endorse--but “if Christian means someone who follows the Jewish Messiah, that’s what we do.”

The Israeli consulate had been asked to co-sponsor the opening of “Mendel & Moses” and had sent its logo to be used on the invitations--but it withdrew its permission a day before the invitations were to be mailed. “We received some complaints that raised doubts as to the messianic nature, the possible hidden agenda of the Passover Co.,” said spokesman Ido Aharoni.

Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, founder and director of the anti-missionary group Jews for Judaism, recently sent an “alert” to temples and other Jewish organizations advising them of the Ginsbergs’ beliefs. “I don’t tell them whether they should go,” he said, “but I think [the Ginsbergs] are doing something deceptive. . . . The production is Christian, though it’s masked in a Jewish form.”

Jesus isn’t mentioned in “Mendel & Moses.” The primary element of the script that veers from conventional Jewish theology is the presence of a devil known by the New Testament name of Beelzebub, and his two-horned assistant. Beelzebub is the serpent in the Garden of Eden; he later helps seduce the Israelites with a golden calf.

“If [Jews] are the chosen people, then why are we persecuted?” Jeremiah Ginsberg said last week. “It is important to me to show that there was an enemy of our people, and it began in the Garden of Eden. Torah is very clear that there was a devil, the serpent, in the Garden of Eden.” He also noted that a Canaanite god named Baalzebub is mentioned in the book of 2 Kings, in the Hebrew Bible. There is, however, no figure with that name in the Torah--which is the source material for most of “Mendel.”

Although not present in “Mendel,” Jesus (known by the Hebrew name Yeshua) was a leading character in a previous show by Jeremiah Ginsberg, “Rabboni.” A version of “Rabboni” was produced in the early ‘80s in a Pasadena church, Ginsberg said. A 1985 version in New York was described in a New York Times review as making, “with the fervor of a preachment, a plea for the world to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Its fundamentalist message is that Satan exists and is devoting his time to influencing people to reject Jesus.” The actor who played Beelzebub then, Ned York, plays him again in “Mendel.”

The current show’s eponymous Mendel Moskowitz character was first added to “Rabboni” for a 1991 production, in which he went back in time to encounter Jesus. An ad for the video version of that staging billed it as “the Gospel with an authentic Jewish flavor” and said that Mendel finally realizes that Jesus “really is the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.”

Last week Ginsberg said that Mendel is a “combination of me and my grandfather, showing how my faith grew.” He has been a Messianic Jew since 1972.

However, “Mendel & Moses” “is not about a religious battle,” he said. “We haven’t tried to proselytize. We wanted it to be a blessing to the Jewish community in California.”

Even Rabbi Kravitz acknowledged that from what he has heard (he hasn’t seen “Mendel”), “I don’t think this play in particular has a missionary tone.”

However, a Jewish member of the cast who left the show during its first run, Karen Kataline, said some members of the company were proselytizing for Christianity backstage. She said that she first began to realize the nature of the show when she arrived at a rehearsal after a minor fender-bender and was immediately surrounded by a group of company members in a prayer circle; they told her that evil forces had caused the fender-bender and were trying to derail the show.

She told the Ginsbergs she quit because her part was cut back but in fact, she said, she felt uncomfortable in the production because “I felt I was contributing to a deception.”

Ginsberg said that he personally wasn’t proselytizing and in fact had cautioned those members of the company who did know about his beliefs not to talk about them with others. Company members were selected on the basis of talent, not theology, he said. As for backstage prayer circles, he estimated that “in half of the Broadway casts, groups hold hands in a circle and pray.”

Ginsberg is a former New York theatrical lawyer who hopes to take “Mendel” to Broadway. Although this production cost around $300,000, he said he has a signed agreement for a Broadway budget of about $10 million, from a Midwestern banker who is (non-Messianic) Jewish.

Of the two primary investors in the L.A. production, he described one as “a Christian who loves Israel” and the other as a couple, one of whom is Messianic Jewish. The group Jews for Jesus had nothing to do with the show, he said.