Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #20 Friends of Yentl with Elise Esther Hearst
Ahead of YENTL’s run at the Sydney Opera House 17 October - 10 November 2024, Tami and Dash speak to author, playwright & content creator Elise Esther Hearst (who co-wrote the play with director Gary Abrahams and Galit Klas) about the urgency to tell and experience Jewish stories and Yiddish theatre in Australia. They also share some "super gay" talmudic facts.
Special thanks to this episode’s Pronunciation Patrol Rosa Alpert and to Ivany Investment Group for their sponsorship.
Articles relevant to the issues discussed:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/podcast-sydneys-yiddish-speakers-keep-beloved-language-alive
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/the-discomfort-of-attending-synagogue-as-a-gender-diverse-jew
Email your feedback, questions, show ideas etc: ashamed@thejewishindependent.com.au
(You can also email voice memos here).
Subscribe to The Jewish Independent's bi-weekly newsletter: jewishindependent.com.au
Tami and Dash on Instagram: tami_sussman_writer_celebrant and dashiel_and_pascoe
X: TJI_au
YouTube: thejewishindependentAU
Facebook: TheJewishIndependentAU
Instagram: thejewishindependent
LinkedIn: the-jewish-independent
Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large? But a little ashamed that you're barely keeping up to date.
Speaker 2:Well, you've come to the right place. I'm Tammy Sussman and, in this podcast series, author, historian and TJI's executive director, dashiell Lawrence, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. A Shame to Admit.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, wherever this podcast finds you, I'm Dash Lawrence from the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 2:And I'm Tammy Shtetl name Yeda Lakovsky-Sussman. I would totally be a Yeda, don't you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you probably would.
Speaker 2:Speaking of shtetls, I've got a list of old Ukrainian or Polish shtetls For those listeners who don't know what a shtetl is. They are small Eastern European towns which had significant Jewish populations before you know things like the pogroms and the Holocaust. So I've got a list of 10 shtetls Dash and I would like you to have a go at pronouncing them.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, here we go. Okay, so we have bells lusk, keep going. Do you want it with an accent, or do you want me just to do my Australian thing?
Speaker 2:I want you to try and get it right.
Speaker 1:Brovary, brovary, tolkien, keep going. Kremenets Zovka, zovkva, zovkva, medzibizi Berdichev.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sorry that I'm butchering your language folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Kamianets Podilsky.
Speaker 2:I think you're doing really well.
Speaker 1:I think that one was actually quite good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No shame, toad mitts.
Speaker 2:Try again.
Speaker 1:No shame, toad mitts.
Speaker 2:No shame, toad mitt. No shame to admit that's not a real one. I just wanted to hear you say no shame to admit but in a Slavic accent. Gotcha, so Dash. What was the porpoise of that, please? Well, week after week, I come on here and I'm vulnerable and I share things that. I'm ashamed to admit. I'm pretty open about my ignorance and you know you just get to be the smart person. So I thought we should level the playing field.
Speaker 1:Totally Show me up, yep.
Speaker 2:Here's how those words are actually pronounced. It's between the last syllable I'll just play it for you.
Speaker 3:It's Zhovkva, zhovkva, zhovkva, zhovkva, zhovkva. Then is this is Polish name and Russians didn't change it. It's pronounced Medzibozh, because Polish would have said Medzibozh, russians would say it Medzibozh, it's between God. Actually Translation is between God. Then it's the name Tulcin. It's in English, in Russian. Then it's the name. Tulchin. It's in English. In Russian it's Tulchin, it's Nevinitsa, then it's Kremenec, then it's. You can see the spelling is Ukrainian, but I will pronounce it in Russian Kamenets Podolski. Kamenets Podolski.
Speaker 2:I think you did pretty well, you think for that one you did as well as you could.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dash, as I was preparing today's episode, I thought you know what? In last season, I gave you a Hebrew name. Do you remember what the Hebrew name I endowed you with?
Speaker 3:was.
Speaker 1:No, I don't.
Speaker 2:It was Dudu.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right, Yep.
Speaker 2:Doodoo and I thought well, this season I think you need an 18th century shtetl name.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I put your name into a Yiddish name generator.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And it came back with Dovodul Leibuchkowitz.
Speaker 1:I love the fact that someone out there has created a Yiddish name generator.
Speaker 2:They haven't. I made that one up.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Dash, here's a name you'd hear thrown around a lot in a shtetl. You've probably heard of it. That name is Yentl. So, Dash, curious to know, are you a friend of Yentl?
Speaker 1:What does it mean to be a friend of Yentl Tammy?
Speaker 2:I can see you typing. If you try Googling it, it's very hard to find. Growing up, I just knew that if you said someone is a friend of Yentl, it's code for are they queer? That's why I was so happy to read a tweet from Shoshana Gottlieb Jewish memes. Only this was back in Jan 2023. She wrote are they a friend of Yentl? It's so versatile because if I say it to Jews, it's about gayness, but if I say it to gays, it's about Jewishness.
Speaker 1:So just so I can quickly understand, this was a code way of talking within the Jewish community. You would say that that person was a friend of Yentl, or that would be used as a way to encode to talk about someone being queer.
Speaker 2:I think so. The thing is is that I feel like I've always known this term. Shame to admit that I haven't been able to find the origin of it and where it first started to be used as a term. I did try and research it. You know, we're probably going to have to get our friend of the pod, marina Kamenev, onto this to find out the origin.
Speaker 4:Tammy, that might not be entirely necessary. Hi everybody, my name is Nick King and I'm usually working behind the scenes here on Ashamed to Admit, editing the podcast. This week I've invited myself onto the show very quickly because I think I might know the origin story behind Friend of Yentl. Friend of Yentl might be just a slightly different version of an older phrase that you may or may not have heard, called Friend of Dorothy.
Speaker 4:Now, according to Wikipedia, a Friend of Dorothy is a euphemism for a gay man that was first used in LGBT slang. So if you're stating that, or if you're asking if someone is a Friend of Dorothy, it's a way of suggesting sexual orientation whilst avoiding the hostility. Now, the term was likely based on the character Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz, which, very much like Yentl, is said to have had a lot of queer subtext. Actress Judy Garland, who played Dorothy in the 1939 film, is considered a gay icon. Anyway, just my thoughts. Friend of Yentl most likely the chewier and jewier version of friend of Dorothy. Anyway, back to the show version of Friend of Dorothy.
Speaker 2:Anyway, back to the show, the reason why Yentl is getting so much airtime today.
Speaker 1:The reason is Tammy Monstrous Theatre and Neil Gooding Productions, in association with Shalom and Kadima Yiddish Theatre, will very soon be premiering their remake of Yentl at the Sydney Opera House. We'll give you all the details on this one after today's interview with one of the co-writers of Yentl, elise Esther Hurst. Elise is an award-winning Melbourne-based playwright, author and content creator. Her debut novel, one Day we're All Going to Die, was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year this year. Her theatre work has appeared at various theatres around Australia, most recently A Very Jewish Christmas Carol and the aforementioned Yentl, which won the Green Room Award for Outstanding Writing in 2023. So, without further ado, we hope you enjoy this irreverent and sometimes serious and thoughtful conversation with Elise Esther Hurst.
Speaker 2:Elise Esther Hurst. Welcome to the Ashamed to Admit studio.
Speaker 5:Wow, thank you, long time listener, first time caller.
Speaker 2:Elise, I'm not going to pretend that we don't know each other already. In fact, I have eaten your apple cake in your living room. It was very moist apple cake.
Speaker 5:I'm glad it was moist.
Speaker 2:And I am talking about apple cake. The reason why it was moist was it was slightly undercooked. You might recall.
Speaker 5:Oh, that's right. That's embarrassing. I was trying to poison you, but it didn't work.
Speaker 2:So we have met before and that's how I know well. Actually, I might ask you is it fair to say that you have a special interest, borderline obsession, with telling Jewish stories?
Speaker 5:I think I have an obsession, like many writers, with telling the stories that I know.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 5:I'm really lazy with research, so I've just decided to lean in to my shtick, which is being a big Jew. Yeah, my credentials are. I have two Jewish parents. That's as big as you know a Jew you can be, I guess.
Speaker 2:And grandparents.
Speaker 5:And grandparents, yeah, yeah sure, and great-grandparents.
Speaker 2:Is that the origin of your interest? Slash obsession?
Speaker 5:I think the origin was having Holocaust survivor grandparents, three of whom I didn't know, and so I had a very strong grandmother figure in my mum's mum and I think all the absence of the other grandparents and also the stories that were lost and the things that was not spoken about or spoken about, fascinated me as a kid. So I was already as a child trying to fill those gaps with my imagination and in storytelling and lots of question asking and inappropriate question asking, I was always kind of interested in those gaps and in the ghosts and that's driven a lot of my work, I would say.
Speaker 2:It's interesting you say that because, in contrast to you, I'm pretty good at researching and that's how I know that you portrayed Dorothy in the early 90s Bialik College production of the Wiz and. I'm told that you brought a lot of Holocaust trauma to that role.
Speaker 5:I did Well, I'd lost my home. I you know, I didn't know where Auntie Em was. It was did well, I'd lost my home.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I didn't know where Auntie M was. It was, you know, very tragic. Yeah, you're a displaced person.
Speaker 5:Correct, but I eased on down that yellow brick road and you know I found my way to the holy land or something how has your storytelling progressed from there?
Speaker 5:Well, I was always a very passionate performer. That was. My dream was to act and be on the stage. And while I'd always been a writer and enjoyed writing and you know, those two, I think, go hand in hand for a lot of actors my dream was to act. So I finished high school, got the Premier's Award for drama and for English, I might add. That's just for my parents, hi, mum Auditioned for all the drama schools in Australia and was rejected by all the drama schools in Australia. So then when I auditioned again the following year and was rejected again, I decided that they were all anti-semitic. So that's how I segued into doing a creative arts degree at Melbourne where I actually really discovered playwriting and and could see kind of lots of different facets of, you know, the creative arts not purely performance but how that, yeah, how everything kind of was enmeshed and, yeah, I really loved the writing and so that's where I wrote my first play while doing that degree.
Speaker 2:And the first play was called.
Speaker 5:The first play was called Hide and Sleep. I also performed in it as. I you know ended up performing in a lot of my own work, so it was funny this play was about. It was very much based on a breakup very traumatic breakup I'd had with a boyfriend who was Israeli and who had left the country and I don't think he was ever coming back and I was very heartbroken so I wrote this. You know this play about love and it was very kind of postmodern and weird post-modern and weird.
Speaker 2:Speaking of weird post-modern plays, you and I met for the first time I think it was 12 or 13 years ago, when you came to Sydney to perform in the play that you had also written, and it was called Dirty Land. The story was told not from the perspective of the Jewish people who'd been persecuted, but will you tell us whose perspective it was written from?
Speaker 5:I'd come across this story about a town in Poland called Jedwabne Apologies for mispronunciation, but it was during at some point during the war.
Speaker 5:There was a town, a very small town, where all of the people in the town Poles and Jews lived side by side, were neighbours as they were in other places, but there was a kind of a massacre that occurred that was perpetrated by the members of the town against the Jewish population, and this was not like they were not given instructions by a higher power, by the Germans or by the Poles.
Speaker 5:It was kind of what I understood it to be, kind of a frenzied, hysteric massacre, and essentially all the Jewish people of the town were wiped out. So I had this image in my mind about this town and about these three teenagers who you know I've said it in this kind of not in this town but in a fantasy town and three teenagers who have been involved in this massacre. They're stuck in this town, the grass won't grow. In the field where there was a, you know, there was a burning and they want to get out, and so that was the play, and that was the play that you were in and we both played. I guess older members of that community, who your character was mute because I was so traumatized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I during the production dash I didn't actually speak for a whole 90 minutes. Can you believe that?
Speaker 1:that must have been extremely difficult for you, tammy.
Speaker 2:I'm a professional actor, you.
Speaker 5:You got to moan.
Speaker 2:That's true and drag the sack you dragged the sack.
Speaker 5:That was that play, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1:It was on at the Newtown Theatre. Elise. As you may be aware, in season one Tammy did recommend your debut novel One Day we Are All Going to Die. On the podcast that was soon after it came out and muzzled off all of the accolades that the book received.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 1:That story. I won't assume that readers have read the book or know much about it other than Tammy's glowing recommendation. Can you tell us a little bit about Naomi, the central character's story, and in particular what you were trying to do with regard to her lived experience of intergenerational trauma and the role that the Holocaust played in her family's life?
Speaker 5:So the book is about Naomi, who's 27. She lives in Melbourne, she's Jewish, she's single, she has a close relationship with her parents, her Holocaust survivor grandmother, and she works as a curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which is kind of a fictional representation, some might say, of the Jewish Museum of Australia. And it's really about her navigating life and I think you know, on the blurb it's like she's just trying to be a normal person, whatever that means.
Speaker 5:It's like trying to cosplay being normal, being an adult a regular, a regular, a regular adult who doesn't have all the kind of family baggage that she carries with her and is deeply connected to and sensitive about. That really kind of filters into her dating life and the tragic kind of cringeworthy moments that brings and meanwhile kind of navigating those familial relationships which you know can be prickly, can be challenging, but she's very devoted to her family and very connected to them. So it's kind of a codependency there. You know, I was driven to write a story about a woman who's very close to her grandmother, which is similar to me and kind of started from the point of what.
Speaker 5:What happens when you know someone who's brought up with, you know all the privilege of love, being in a home where you are loved, where you are provided for, where you're given the, where you're given the best education, you're given all these tools to really like succeed in life. And what happens when you're kind of trying to fit in, trying to be like that good girl, and you fail? What are the implications of choosing to be with a non-Jewish partner, for example? And I was really interested in exploring that. And also, further than that, what's the implications for someone you know who's a descendant of Holocaust survivors and trauma and why does that complicate things so much for people.
Speaker 5:So that's really, you know, that was the heart and soul of the book and I wanted to honour that story. I wanted to honour that experience. We don't really exist so much in representations of theatre, literature, film and TV. I think that is starting to change if people will still continue to have our stories. But, yeah, it felt like it was also not a motivating factor to write it, but definitely like a win that I knew that I was adding to some representation and visibility of my story because you know, I was so hungry for that when I was a kid and you know, tammy, thank you so much for your contribution to Australian literature, australian Jewish literature, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5:so you know I was hungry for those stories and still am. It's wonderful to read. You know other people's stories, but also you want reflections of your own.
Speaker 1:Clearly a very particular story that you were writing and trying, a narrative that you were creating there. I imagine that there are people from other cultural groups and other backgrounds that could relate to a lot of those idiosyncrasies that you were describing in the Jewish context and setting.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, firstly, I'm pretty confident that my publisher wouldn't have published it if they didn't see universality in it, because they're a commercial publisher. So you know, think, I think, yes, you know, it was more, probably more read by non-jews than jews, just by virtue of like yeah yeah, there are more I've heard, but we could check the census right? Yeah, I've been listening, um, but I think you know, for people from migrant backgrounds, anyone who has that sort of like understands that family pressure most of us, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who live in a close-knit community who are enmeshed with their parents.
Speaker 5:But I think people really enjoyed reading. You know. They felt like they had an insight into kind of what is contemporary Jewish life in Australia.
Speaker 2:And Elise was compared to Sally Rooney. Just want to drop that in there.
Speaker 5:I made that comparison.
Speaker 2:No, you didn't. You didn't. I read it elsewhere. So, from contemporary Jewish Australian culture to historical Jewish culture, good segue.
Speaker 5:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Because we did bring you here to talk about Yentl, the play you co-wrote, ahead of its run in Sydney. Now your Yentl is a stunning new adaptation. It's based on the original Yiddish short story by Isaac Bashevisingat. It's not based on the 1983 Barbra Streisand film, just to manage people's expectations. Now the production has been heralded as profound, mesmerizing, transformative, and I've seen it. I was lucky enough to see it in Melbourne, so I can say with authority that it was all of those things and more.
Speaker 1:Elise, I was interested in how it came to be that you ended up co-writing Yentl.
Speaker 5:So Evelyn Crape, who's the co-artistic director of the Kadima Yiddish Theatre, evelyn Crape, who's the co-artistic director of the Kadima Yiddish Theatre and she also is an actor in the production incredible doyen is that the word of Australian theatre? She came with the story Yentl. It's a very short story, I must say, about 12, 14 pages long. I've only read the English version because I am ashamed to admit I can't speak Yiddish. And when you read the story that is so short and you know the production that we have is, you know it's a big, meaty show that goes over, you know two halves.
Speaker 5:There's an interval in between and you still feel like there's parts that you have to, kind of in any adaptation. There's parts that you leave in, that you take out. It's so evocative and haunting. There's a lot of danger and mystery and questions that the story leaves you with, which is kind of the mastery of Isaac Bashevis Singer and his use of kind of Yiddish language and folklore and all those themes that he was able to bring into this tiny little story. So the theatre was working on it and so I was brought in kind of midway through the process and I worked on it with Gary Abrahams, who also directed it, and Galit Klass, who was also working on it, with Gary Abrahams who also directed it, and Galit Klass who was also working on it. So the three of us. And actually when we started working on it together, it was COVID, and I don't believe we ever met in person until, like it went into first rehearsals, like it was one of those COVID baby theatre productions.
Speaker 1:And the three of you were in the same city. I think All three of you were in Melbourne.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we were, we were, but we were. It was very much a Zoom Google Doc situation. And so then, I think, because of COVID, they'd had their season scheduled at the Arts Centre and then that was, covid cancelled as like for the, cancelled for the two-year period of 2020 to 2022 and eventually had its premiere, I think, in late 2022, at the Arts Centre in Melbourne. It had been kind of a long process of writing and development, yeah, over some time.
Speaker 2:Now the play is coming to Sydney. It's presented by Monstrous Theatre and Neil Gooding Productions in association with Shalom, and you mentioned Kadima Yiddish Theatre, who are also involved. The fact that a Yiddish theatre exists in Australia at all just blows my mind. And, elise, I'm about to blow your mind because I don't know if you know, but Dash actually produced, wrote, directed and released a podcast. He had his own COVID baby and that was a podcast about Yiddish, and so I'm directing my next question at Dash Dash, is it true that Yiddish is flourishing in Melbourne but declining in Sydney?
Speaker 1:I think it's probably fair to say although I think there are some Yiddish scholars that might quibble with that Fl flourishing in the sense that, yeah, melbourne continues to defy, you know, the demographic trend. The ageing post-war generation are now no longer with us, the great Yiddish speakers of the 20th century, but they have passed on that passion for the language and for its continuity to the generations that have followed. And we have a secular Yiddish primary school here, which I think makes it the only one left in the world, which is extraordinary in Sholem Aleichem. And we have the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, which continues to offer research in Yiddish, and Kadima is just an extraordinary institution still turning out great Yiddish theatre and productions. And I think if you add all those things together, you would have to say that Melbourne is really one of the leading centre of Jewish culture and language globally. So it's Really.
Speaker 2:Globally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Maybe Montreal would probably rival Montreal and New York would probably rival it.
Speaker 1:But, in terms of size of population you know our Jewish community here is not obviously anywhere near as big as New York or Montreal but in terms of the size of Melbourne's Jewish community and the number of people that are speaking Yiddish and the number of opportunities and spaces there are for Yiddish to be lived, it punches above its weight. So it's great that Yentl is being put on in Sydney, because actually Sydney used to have many, many decades ago, used to have a very small Yiddish theatre scene that was attached to the Jewish Folk Centre, I believe which I'm not sure if you've ever visited Tammy A little sweet little building just under the, in the shadows of the Einfeld.
Speaker 2:With the Coca-Cola sign King's Cross Red Light District.
Speaker 1:No, it's just across from near Bondi Junction, Westfield.
Speaker 2:Oh, Sid Einfeld Drive.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right, just near the Sid Einfeld Drive is.
Speaker 2:Nowhere to park, nowhere to park.
Speaker 1:Nowhere to park, right If?
Speaker 2:you're from Sydney.
Speaker 1:That was the least of the problems for the poor old Yiddish theatre scene of the mid-20th century, and Melbourne became the centre of Yiddish cultural life Full disclosure. A shame to admit that I have neither seen Barbara Streisand's 1983 film version of Yentl nor have I read the Bersheva Singer short story, so I wasn't aware that this was a story that raised questions and possibilities of danger, and so when you said that word earlier, lisa, I wanted to understand a bit more about that.
Speaker 5:Well, I love that you're coming in completely fresh.
Speaker 1:Dash.
Speaker 5:I think that the story really is about a close-knit community, a Jewish community, a religious community, as like just that was the common practice. It's the late 1800s. It's a small town in kind of Poland, and these people lived by the law, by Jewish law. This was their life. That was very rigid, very binary. The men went and worked, studied, prayed, the women were in the home raising the family. It was all very separate lives. Raising the family, it was all very separate lives and women were denied access to, probably also just like to reading. They were mostly illiterate, I would say. And so here you have, at the start of this story, this young woman who is very close with her father. Her mother has died and they have a very, very strong bond and partly owed to the fact that Yentl desires to learn and her father crosses that boundary and teaches her and he teaches her. You know, at night they shut the windows, they close the blinds, they lock the doors and in the darkness of night they study. So this is Yentl's passion and in the text, you know, she asks her father why was I not born a man? And this question I believe, you know, she's asking this purely out of because as a woman. She does not have access, she does not have permission to know, to understand, to question and why is that? She yearns to know and she yearns to learn all there is to learn from the sacred text. And her father replies to her even heaven makes mistakes. So it's already kind of sets up that Yentl is perhaps not where she is supposed to be.
Speaker 5:So the story really begins when her father dies and she is left with this huge kind of conundrum. My options here are really to get married. This is my avenue to survival, this is my only option. And so she connives a plan and her plan is she dresses in her father's clothes and she disappears and sees where that takes her. So there is a lot of danger just inherent in someone who is taking such a risk.
Speaker 5:Firstly to consider going against the laws, going against what is written down in the holy books, and especially as a woman you know, like just try and picture that you know, and the fact that she then dresses in men's clothing, like there is so much danger just in that moment. So you can only kind of imagine how that evolves for Yentl. And then when she becomes involved with other characters and she kind of brings them into her world and they become very close to her. Or, you know, yentl then is known as Anshul. I think it's just lots of. There's lots of danger. It's not only physical danger, it's like existential danger, because what are the punishments? How will Yentl be received in the afterlife? How do her actions on earth, you know, impact the greater world?
Speaker 2:Now it's interesting that you're referring to Yentl as a woman. I saw you on the 2024 Sydney Jewish Writers Festival panel, which you took part in together with Evelyn Crape and Amy Hack, who plays Yentl, and during this discussion I noticed that Amy Hack was using they them pronouns to talk about Yentl, and I was also surprised to hear that some audience members weren't making the connections between Yentl's yearnings and decisions with their gender identity and sexuality at all. And that just could be my own projections, but was that very deliberate?
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, I guess when I'm talking about Yentl as her, I suppose I was speaking about her at the start of the story. But even the way we think, you know, like the way we think about her and the way we describe her, even in the script, is as they. But I think it's more. You know, as Yentl progresses on that journey, how does Yentl's identity morph and change and shift? And so, yes, I think certain members of the audience will be asking those questions and really it is huge questions about where does this body fit, where does this yearning sit and where do people belong? I think, for all of us, particularly anyone who's been raised in any kind of organized religion, which is extremely restrictive and controlled, what happens when you do not fit in to to what is expected? So it really is. Yeah, it is it, it's, it's, it's all of that, tammy.
Speaker 2:I was reading Deborah Stone's piece about the stage production in the Jewish Independent and she spoke to co-creator and director Gary Abrahams and he said he wanted to create a production which could raise all these questions but leave the answers open. Is it a trans story, a queer story, a feminist story? He said it's not our job to decide. People will bring their own lenses to the show. That's all good and well, but between you and me and our listeners, it's super gay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super gay, yeah, cool. I just wanted to hear you say that. Or do you not want to promote it as super gay? Because it's just important for people who are queer to see their identities represented. But it's also really important for all the narrow-minded people who think that fluid gender and sexuality is a contemporary thing, and we know it's been around since forever.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think it transcends all of those things the world of the story relies so much on. You know the basis of Jewish belief and practice and ritual. You know we find these inherent like questions in our own texts, in our own origin stories of creation. About that. We have the masculine and the feminine within us. We that that all of life is a push and pulls that we should always be questioning. We are torn. People like this is what it is to be human. So I think that it doesn't really matter if you are an alpacaca with maybe more narrow-minded views that's really prejudice against alpacacas, sorry.
Speaker 5:Or that you're a young queer person looking for stories that you can connect with and that or an old queer person looking for stories that you connect with or that that represent that struggle and that trying to grapple with what is that identity? I think that's why it's been so successful, because it leans so heavily on Jewish learning, jewish teachings, the Kabbalah. It's so rich, this story.
Speaker 2:It is Do the two of you know that the Talmud mentions terms like androgynous and intersex Dash? Have you heard this before?
Speaker 1:It wasn't a part of my early Jewish education.
Speaker 2:no, it wasn't part of mine either. Trust me, I've got a bit of truth for you. So there's a rabbi called Rabbi Elliot Kukla, I think, or Kakla, I'm going with Kukla. He writes that the word tum-tum or it could be tum-tum, I think it's tum-tum someone who is gender fluid or ambiguous or someone who keeps their gender concealed. That appears 17 times in the Mishnah, 23 times in the Tosefta, compilation of Jewish oral law that complements the Mishnah, written around the same time, circa third century. It's mentioned 119 times in the Babylonian Talmud, 22 times in the Jerusalem Talmud and hundreds of times in Midrash commentaries and Halakha. You mentioned Kabbalah before Elis in mystical Kabbalah teachings. There are discussions on the fluidity of gender in a spiritual context, sometimes suggesting that the soul transcends binary gender definitions. I've brought it back to gender again. That's interesting, it's definitely a.
Speaker 2:Thing it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 1:Quote Elise Estherhurst yeah, some of our international listeners may not be aware that, in the wake of the October 7 attacks and the New South Wales government electing to emblazon the Sydney Harbour Opera House sales with the colours of Israel's flag, that in the days after that on October the 9th I believe pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at the site and there was a very ugly protest that took place. I'm sure you remember it well, elise. And here you are with the production of Yentl arriving in Sydney. And where does it premiere? In Sydney, but at the Sydney Opera House, almost 12 months after those very sorry scenes. So has the significance of that dawned on you or the rest of the Yentl cast and team?
Speaker 5:I haven't actually spoken to anyone from the Yentl cast and team about that. I just think as Jewish artists and performers, creators, writers, we need to continue to make our work. We need to continue to, you know, have our culture celebrated and represented, and I'm really proud that we get to do that. I feel like this show has the power to do that, because people just seem to connect to this show, no matter what walk of life they come from.
Speaker 5:It really takes you in. You know, you're kind of sucked into this, to this world of ancient kind of ritual mysticism. You feel like you are there in a shtetl in the late 1800s and you are transported to this place and you can't because it is. It is kind of so strange and unusual. While it might be familiar to some of us, you can't help but be there in it and be part of Yentl's journey and Yentl's pain and Yentl's and Yentl's pain and Yentl's yearning to know and to understand more. So I'm thrilled that it's going to be at the Sydney Opera House and that we continue to live and thrive and exist, and it's not a bad thing to remind people of that, even though it might annoy them. A bad thing to remind people of that, even though it might annoy them. I feel like I'm always annoying people by virtue of existing, but I can't help it. Yeah, I'm so alive.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry yeah, elise, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:It's been such a pleasure thanks, elise, great to meet you.
Speaker 2:And I'll see you at Sydney Opera House. I was about to call it Sydney Jewish Opera House. That's a good. That's a good. You should suggest that the Sydney Jewish Opera House on the 17th of October Is that opening night. Yep.
Speaker 5:That's the first preview, and opening night is the 19th, so I'll be there on the 19th, okay.
Speaker 2:We'll see you there on the 19th. Yay, bring pickles, of course.
Speaker 5:What do you take me for? No, I was going to say I'm ashamed to admit I actually don't like pickles.
Speaker 4:See you.
Speaker 5:Bye, bye guys.
Speaker 3:Something smells good. What is it? It must be the cinnamon in the baked apple. Oh, they bake apples too. No wonder he loves her. No wonder. To me A cushion, why not? Wonder, to me A cushion, why not? With ribbons and laces in all the right places?
Speaker 2:That was our interview with Elise Esther Hurst. Just a reminder that Yentl opens officially on October 19th at the Sydney Jewish Opera House. Tickets are available at sydneyoperahousecom. Be there or be anti-Semitic, and that's it for today. You've been listening to TJI's. A Shame to Admit with me Tammy Yedolakowski-Sussman and Dovidul Leibushkovitz.
Speaker 1:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 2:Our episode this week was made possible by the support of our sponsors, Peter and Sharon Ivany of Ivany Investment Group.
Speaker 1:Links to TJR articles discussed in today's show and to Yentl at the Sydney Opera House are in the show notes.
Speaker 2:If you like the podcast, leave a positive review, tell your people or encourage your mates with that excellent business to be our sponsor.
Speaker 1:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or by emailing ashamed at thejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2:As always, thanks for your support and look out for us next week, maybe on Tuesday, maybe earlier, I don't know. We like to keep you all on your toes, depending on what's going on.
Speaker 1:See you then.
Speaker 2:But seriously, thank you for listening. We love you.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye.