"My Aim Is to Get Higher and Higher": Worship Onstage

Orthodox Women's Theater in Israel: "A Theater of Our Own"¹

This article will focus on two theatrical scenes dealing with Orthodox Jewish women's worship. Both were performed by Rachel Keshet in the years 2001 and 2002 within the framework of a theater group called "The Dosiyot," which I researched in the context of a broad study of Orthodox women's theater in Israel.² As a theater anthropologist, my aim was to examine the function of theater in Israeli Orthodox society as a cultural pattern that had "infiltrated" into that society.

"The Dosiyot" (see below for the significance of the group's name) is the most professional group of Orthodox women that existed in the first decade of such theatrical initiatives in Israel, which began in the early 1990s. The group members fit the criteria I had defined for "Orthodox women," distinguishing them from secular women on the one hand, and Ultra-Orthodox women on the other: They observe the Sabbath and send their children to Orthodox state schools, and they or immediate family members had either done National Service or served in the army. Nevertheless, they felt uncomfortable at being affiliated with mainstream Orthodox society, and in striving to become professional performers, they suggested new directions that this theater might take in the future. Their work also illuminated with great clarity the complicated and diverse nature of Orthodox Israeli society today. The nature of the group, its innovative working techniques, and its dynamics set them off from other Orthodox women's theater groups in Israel, which are conservative in nature and in production style.

Other, less professional Orthodox women have formed theater groups in various areas all over Israel: in the north (the Haifa area), in the south (Gush Katif), in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and in the settlements in Judea and Samaria (Beit-El, Efrat, Bat Ayin). These groups vary in their duration,³ the ages and professional training of their members, their working techniques, and the content of their plays. Most participants believe that they are transforming what may be considered a potentially subversive activity—theater—into a holy endeavor, avodat kodesh, a term ordinarily used for prayers and ritual activities.

In rabbinic literature, theater was considered a place of idolatry. Although contemporary Orthodox women performing in theater are, in fact, defying the traditional, negative attitude of Judaism towards western theater, most group members are not rebelling against the Orthodox Jewish way of life. On the contrary; they see the theater as a sphere where women can freely and openly express their religious feelings. Nevertheless, many groups engage onstage in rituals in which Orthodox women are still marginalized or from which they are altogether excluded, and in dramatic manifestations of religious fervor for which there is no place in the synagogue. Through this artistic venue, they appropriate western theater, in the words of one participant, as a "tool to create, to discover, to express and transfer in my words and my body—the holy . . . to make me a tool for your calling."⁴

Theatrical initiatives of Israeli Orthodox women may be viewed as yet another initiative for turning women's traditional marginalization into a positive force of creativity and empowerment. Like women's prayer groups and advanced study of talmudic texts by women, they represent what Tamar Ross has called "a break with dominant interpretive traditions of the past and a grass-root initiative of the women themselves in an effort to resolve dissatisfying aspects of their current situation."⁵ Indeed, many performances represented Orthodox women's dissatisfaction with traditional limitations on their religious practices and on their participation in religious services, and with the curbs placed by the principle of "modesty" on their freedom of expression and action.

Methodology

Semiotic analysis of thetheatrical elements of the productions and phenomenological analysis of the theatrical...