Fic­tion

The Golem, Methuse­lah, and Shy­lock: Plays

  • Review
By – July 13, 2012

Uti­liz­ing leg­ends, along with Bib­li­cal and Shake­speare­an mate­r­i­al — in the style of absur­dist the­atre and from a con­tem­po­rary per­spec­tive — Edward Ein­horn dra­ma­tizes and reflects upon the Jew­ish condition. 

In The Golem, the myth­ic super­man that Rab­bi Loew cre­ates out of clay to defend the Jews of 16th cen­tu­ry Prague from anti- Semit­ic slaugh­ter, does so with­out blood-shed — but at the cost of his own life. 

In Methuse­lah, the old­est per­son who ever lived re-expe­ri­ences the high­lights of his lengthy exis­tence (which the play­wright stretch­es into the present) — deny­ing assump­tions that his sex­u­al­i­ty has dimin­ished and lament­ing that his only claim to fame is his longevity. 

Shy­lock sends off all the stereo­typ­i­cal ver­sions of Shakespeare’s so-called Jew­ish vil­lain to reveal — through the Bard’s own words (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”)— a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al human being. 

One-Eyed Moses and the Churn­ing Sea is a sketch, writ­ten and staged with­in 24 hours for a the­ater fes­ti­val, about a woman rabbi’s dream of Moses as a pirate cap­tain in bat­tle with Pharaoh.

Nor­man J. Fed­der, Ph.D., is dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of the­atre at Kansas State Uni­ver­si­ty. He is cur­rent­ly on the fac­ul­ty of the Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Arts Pro­gram at Nova South­east­ern University.

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