WEB EXCLUSIVE: Yom Kippur War, The Play

Two secular American couples are torn apart by political affairs and their own emotional conflicts.

by Ted Merwin
Special To The Jewish Week

From “Lysistrata” to “Othello,” “Les Miz” to “South Pacific,” plays and
musicals are often set against a backdrop of war. For playwright Meri
Wallace, it was the Yom Kippur War that proved irresistible as a springboard
for drama. Entitled simply “Yom Kippur,” Wallace’s loosely autobiographical
play focuses on two secular Jewish couples who have made aliyah, and whose
lives change forever when their adopted country is suddenly attacked by
Egypt and Syria on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The play, which
opens July 16, is being presented as part of the Ninth Annual Midtown
International Theatre Festival.

Directed by Halina Ujda, “Yom Kippur” shows husband and wife
Ephraim (Orion Delwaterman) and Sara (Gayle Robbins) as they entertain
another couple, Yitz (Shane

Jerome) and Yael (Arela Rivas), in their
apartment in Jerusalem on the morning of the Day of Atonement.
Yael is entering her ninth month of pregnancy, and Ephraim is trying to hide
the fact that he is in love with her; he is still bitter at Yitz for winning
her away from him years ago. The air sirens signal the onset of war, and the
two couples are eventually torn apart both by political affairs and by their
own unresolved emotional conflicts. By the play’s end, they must decide with
whom, and in what land, their true loyalties reside. Leah Vanessa Bachar,
Annalisa Leoffler, Aylam Orian, Daniella Rabbani and Evan Sokol are also in
the cast.

Wallace was born in Coney Island and attended Sheepshead Bay High School.
She was active in Hashomer Hatzair (the Zionist Youth Movement) but first
traveled to Israel at the age of 18. After she enrolled at Brooklyn College,
the 1967 war broke out, and she moved to a farm in Hightstown, N.J., where
young Jews were trained in communal living as a preparation for aliyah.
After living on a kibbutz, she moved to Jerusalem, where she studied dance
and eventually opened her own dance studio. She ultimately returned to New
York in 1975 and got a social work degree from NYU, whereupon she opened a
private psychotherapy practice and began writing parenting books. Her
best-known work, “Birth Order Blues,” led to appearances on both local and
national TV shows, including Montel Williams and “The Early Show.”
Wallace, who now lives year round in Amagansett, L.I., started writing short
plays just a few years ago. Her first 10-minute play, “Secrets Women Share,”
which debuted at the same festival last summer, is a series of six 10-minute
plays about female bonding. “Yom Kippur,” is produced by the playwright
herself; she and her husband, Jonathan, recently founded their own
production company, the Howling Moon Cab Company.
In a telephone interview with The Jewish Week, Wallace recalled what it was
like living in Israel during one of the country’s darkest hours. Part of
what made the situation so frightening, she said, was the lack of
information after the air sirens went off at two in the afternoon.
For even as Golda Meir agonized about whether or not to resort to nuclear
weapons (as detailed in the recent play, “Golda’s Balcony”), ordinary people
on the ground struggled to find out the basic information about what was
going on. “It wasn’t like turning on CNN and seeing the planes hitting the
towers,” she said. “We knew nothing the whole day except that all the men
were gone.”

When they finally found out, she said, they were incredulous. “We had
thought we were invincible; our army was so powerful, we were going into
other countries and freeing hostages. We had absolutely no feeling of
vulnerability.” But after the war broke out, “the country was thrown into a
depression, and a lot of people died,” including the husband of one of her
friends.

She wrote the play, she explained, in order to “convey the love of
Israel that American Jews feel.” At the same time, she said, she wanted to
show what happens when this love is put to the extreme test. The Yom Kippur
War, Wallace pointed out, both brought home to the Jewish State her
essential vulnerability, and exacerbated the anxieties of many newcomers,
who found that their own economic and physical security were also extremely
precarious. This led many of them to flee in search of a more comfortable
life. “We realized, both as a country and as individuals, that we couldn’t
take care of ourselves as well as we thought we could.”
But as her characters do, Wallace still feels an intense and abiding
attachment to the Jewish State, even from afar. “I still feel a tremendous
kinship to the country; I feel like it’s my country.”

“Yom Kippur” runs from July 16 – Aug. 2 at the Workshop Theater, 312 W. 36th
St. For tickets, $18 ($15 for students/seniors) and reservations, call
Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization