From Teresa Eyring’s Weekly Briefing, 11/2/23: I write today with great heaviness in my heart. Over the last month, the violence in Gaza, in Israel, and the Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh have inflamed wounds with deep and painful roots. We also know this violence ripples out to make people throughout these diasporas more vulnerable. The recent surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia in the U.S. is deeply disturbing, and we know that theatremakers have a role to play in stopping it. For while we may not write foreign policy, our work can foster peace-building, mutual understanding, and liberation. We can humanize, find common ground, and speak truth to power. This rift in our community calls for more than a single statement, and we welcome your ideas for how our theatre ecology can repair and reimagine our relationships to each other.
RESOURCES TO END ANTISEMITISM AND SUPPORT JEWISH THEATREMAKERS
In October 2023, the FBI released statistics showing that antisemitic hate crimes rose 25 percent from 2021 to 2022, and that antisemitism accounted for over half of all reported religion-based hate crimes. Within our own theatre sector, in February of this year we witnessed the horrors of neo-Nazis harassing theatre-goers at a performance of Parade on Broadway. College students, including theatre students, are facing the highest levels of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campuses in almost a decade. And the Queer Jewish love story of Paula Vogel’s Indecent was canceled at a Florida High School—a painful reminder of how antisemitism often intersects with other forms of oppression.
Yet we know this horrific surge in violence against Jewish communities is not new. We recently marked the five-year anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and we share again the words of solidarity Teresa offered at that time, whose sentiments are still so painfully relevant:
“We stand with all our Jewish theatres, colleagues, and friends to advocate for peace, justice, and an end to antisemitism. In reading about the lives lost, we’ve been so moved to learn about these guardians of the faith whose works gave so much to their community. May their memory be a blessing.”
Indeed, the evil of antisemitism has resurfaced throughout U.S. history, and as theatremakers, we have a responsibility to uproot it. We have a critical role to play as proponents of peace-building, mutual understanding, and liberation. We can humanize, find common ground, and speak truth to power. We can repair and reimagine our relationships to each other.
In service of that, we’re offering some resources and actions theatre people can take:
- Support Jewish theatres in your community, such as Theater J, Six Points Theater, and The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene;
- Stage plays that confront the rise of antisemitism and fascism;
- Celebrate Jewish joy as well as acknowledging trauma;
- Participate in the Holocaust Theater International Initiative’s Remembrance Readings;
- Create workplace environments that support and celebrate diverse religious observances—don’t schedule meetings or events on Jewish holy days;
- Encourage Jewish staff and colleagues to take time for self and community care during time of stress and violence, and shift staff resources to support that time;
- Hire Jewish artists for all roles and consider the importance of authentic casting in plays dealing with antisemitism;
- Champion the diversity of Jewish identities in casting and beyond, including Jews of Color, LGBTQ Jews, and disabled Jews, as well as gender-expansive casting;
- Resist efforts to pit movements for justice against each other, and learn about the longstanding relationship between movements for racial justice and ending antisemitism; and
- Support networks of Jewish theatres and theatremakers, such as the Alliance for Jewish Theatre;
In closing, we acknowledge that too often, our Jewish colleagues in theatre feel as though the fight against antisemitism is deprioritized in our efforts to advance justice and equity. TCG has also fallen short in this way, and we’re grateful to the colleagues who have called us in. We commit to continuing to update this page with resources to end antisemitism in service of our mission to lead for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Please email us with any additions or suggestions for this page.