Jewish/Queer: Thresholds of Vulnerable Identities in Tony Kushner's Angels in America

For many, it has long seemed apparent that in his two-part "gay fantasia," Angels in America, Kushner aspired to forge some vital but unspoken alliance between Judaism and gay struggle. For many, this remains one of the play's most interesting and yet not altogether coherent arguments. Yet when one considers the myriad of ways that Judaism always presumes a community of believers and more importantly, ethical adherents bound to one another and God by covenant, the politics of Angels cannot be isolated from its relation to Judaism's understanding of the sacred status of the stranger. By considering Judaism's intrinsic relation to "prophecy" as a rigorous mission of social progress, the coherence of Kushner's vision of men and angels emerges with greater clarity. In recasting the biblical outsider as AIDS victim, Kushner sought to reconfigure the encoded tribalism of liberation, to ensure that the prophetic message of the sacred texts was restated in the most inclusive terms possible.