It’s in our souls
Meet KiHeref Ayin, Israel’s first mixed-gender Orthodox theater group. The young actors, including yeshiva, ulpana alumni, draw some raised eyebrows, but they insist that 'the play’s the thing'
They are not typical drama majors, dreaming of making it big in show business. Instead, all three are members of KiHeref Ayin (“Like the Blink of an Eye”) – Israel’s first mixed-gender, religiously observant theater group.
Most of the group’s eight members are in their twenties. Six are still single, and almost all of them live in the Jerusalem area, far from Tel Aviv’s theater scene. In between rehearsals, they teach high school students, direct, work in community centers, and even lead dramatic tours around Jerusalem.
During the Alterative Theater Festival in Acre, they will make their onstage debut in a play about eight lonely singles from across the religious spectrum. The characters employ Midrash, halachic rulings, and contemporary texts in order to find their places within Orthodox society.
From Hesder Yeshiva to Nissan Nativ
Three years ago, Bentzi Faber, 28, participated in the Acre Festival, where he met Smadar Paz, a drama graduate of Tel Aviv University. Together, they established the theater group and were eventually joined by six other actors. In addition, two writers – Netanel Lifshitz and Bosmat Chazan, a 37-year old mother of two – collaborate with the actors to produce the finished plays.
Faber, a graduate of the Seminar HaKibbutzim Theater School, teaches drama at Jerusalem’s Rene Cassin High School. “Theater was always in my head, and it waited patiently until the right moment,” he says.
“When I finished the Hesder Yeshiva, at age 22, I began to consider what to do next. I decided that I’m devoting a year to deliberation – to study some of the spiritual sciences and in the preparatory course at the Nissan Nativ Theater School – and then we’ll see what happens next. During the course, I discovered that theater interests me more than anything else.”
'What will they think?'
Netanella Ben-Saadon, 27, prances around the rehearsal stage in white clothes. One of nine siblings from Kochav HaShachar, a communal settlement situated over the Green Line, Ben-Saadon studied at the Nissan Nativ Studio in Jerusalem. She caught the acting bug early on.
“Theater attracted me even in childhood,” she recounts. “But I didn’t have the option of turning it into reality. In high school in Jerusalem, I practiced with a group of girls, and that’s it. After my national service, I understood that the demon won’t let me go - apparently, it will never let me go - and I decided to embrace it.”
Did you care what your social circle would think about the path you chose?
“Absolutely. But ‘what will they think’ is a life challenge, as far as I’m concerned. I – and all those around me – deal our entire lives with ‘what will they think’. The pressure and the desire to see you settled are perhaps stronger with us, the observant.
“My parents didn’t say no to most things that I did with my life, but they were very worried. When I wanted to study acting, and my mother thought about sending me to a class at the museum, she was startled when they told her that it was a mixed group. But it’s in my soul. Despite this fear, the need to act simply burns inside of me.”
For Shlomit Ben-Menachem, 25, a Hebrew University theater graduate, the contradictions are less troublesome. Her parents sent her to a science and theater summer camp “to get a first taste”. Later, she majored in drama in both high school and university.
How did you manage in secular acting schools?
Faber: “On a practical level, I managed. I decided what I’ll do and what I won’t do. A directing class involves less physical boundaries that an acting class. It was hard for me to absorb a language that I didn’t understand. Once, I was joking around with a religious student in the class, and I said to her: ‘If we bring a religious item to class, everyone will say wow. Even if it’s the worst theater in the world, they’ll still say wow, because it’s something different, foreign.’ It’s frustrating.”
Bosmat Chazan: “When I studied in the Visual Theater School, 15 years ago, the situation was the opposite, I would bring up a religious topic, and they would tell me ‘yuck’. Apparently, the world has undergone an upheaval. When I began to study, they viewed me as an alien, and now everything is much simpler, both within Orthodox society and outside.
"My friends, who studied theater at Nissan Nativ, had to decide whether or not they’re remaining observant. Today, the question is much less relevant. To be in Netanella’s place, and to stand in Nissan Nativ and announce: ‘I’m not rehearsing on Shabbat, and I’m not wearing a miniskirt onstage’ – was not legitimate 15 years ago.”
Are there advantages to belonging to an Orthodox theater group, rather than a secular one?
Ben-Saadon: “In Nissan Nativ, I immediately erected barriers. Here, in the group, for the first time, I feel that I can invite my circle and my family to something that I’m participating in and that I can stand behind it. I know there will be more than a little criticism, but I also know that I can handle it… I constantly have a need to ask questions, express my pain, frustration. And it’s more feasible in a group like ours, with the type of materials that we have dealt with.”
Will you continue to act even after you get married?
Ben-Saadon: It’s clear to me that I want a family and that I want my world to be full and complete. My mother has nine children, and I know how fulfilling and enriching that is. But I also want to act. Many actors postpone having a family until a more appropriate time. They drag it out in order to establish their careers. Not only us.”
Within the group, do you have set rules and limits about what is forbidden and what is permitted?
Faber: “We clarified the end points. We understood that there will be girls who will be involved in movement within the group, and the boys will be there and watch. This is something that can’t be avoided. On the other hand, it was clear to all of us that there will be no nudity, physical nudity.”
Ben-Saadon: “The boundaries are very different within the group. Everyone came with different life experiences. I was raised in a religious family, and I’m in some sort of clarification process: what is my religious world, and what is my personal world? When I came to the group, I suddenly felt that I want to defend the world that I came from, and sometimes, I had a strong desire to do something more radical.”
Faber: “I always ask what the religious world can contribute to the theater. From my perspective, it’s a different language, which manages to create something lofty: a play where the audience wants to join the actors, just like the congregation joins the cantor in the synagogue. We don’t want to come and present a poster here: ‘Come and see. This is what Orthodox Jews look like.’ It really doesn’t interest us. I think that what does interest us is to turn out an honest and interesting theatrical production.”
Ben-Menachem: “I think that the question that arose more than once is how much criticism are we ready and willing to bring to the stage. The group doesn’t exist so that we can deal with and examine our religious boundaries. That may be a side benefit, but most of us come from a more or less stable place. I choose to be observant, and therefore, when I come to create, I do so from within these boundaries.”
Faber: “I don’t feel any responsibility as a religious man. That interests me less. I feel a responsibility to create good religious theater, brave religious theater, and qualitative religious theater. Call it religious theater, but it must function as I believe a theater should function. It should introduce theatrical language to Orthodox society.
“I realize that people are interested to know if we touch each other, but I want them to see the language that we are trying to create. We aren’t people with deep emotional rifts who banded together in a support group. We gathered around the common denominator of language. If someone very religious comes and is willing to work with the girls in the group, I will gladly accept him.”
