Jews, Revenge, and the Modern State: Secular and Sacred in Haim Sloves's Nekomeh-nemer

Nekomeh-nemer was a Yiddish play commemorating the heroes of the Jewish Resistance in France and celebrating their willingness to engage in violent combat. The play's protagonists embody the "New Jew" who leaves religious tradition behind to forge a new Jewish future. But this well-known trope is too narrow to capture the experience of the war and its aftermath. This essay explores the overflows of the ideological frame within and outside the play, focusing on text, performance, and audience reception. It reflects on what revenge might mean, beyond the call for retribution, and examines the dynamics of Jewish loyalties. The Jews are never within just one world or just one group, even their own. The larger aim of this essay is to suggest a religious dimension in what we are accustomed to call the secular, present through the very inability to fit Jews simply within a nationalist frame, either their own or that of others.