Theatrical performance as a transnational vehicle: David Bergelson’s I Shall Not Die but Live in Mandatory Palestine

ABSTRACT

David Bergelson’s “I Shall Not Die but Live” takes place during the Nazi invasion of the USSR, in a collective settlement adjacent to an agricultural experimentation farm in the Ukraine. The world premiere of the play took place in Habima in May 1944. It was the first theatre production performed in an Eretz-Israeli theatre to deal with the extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust. This article follows the transnational network facilitated by this play, its production and public discourse, and explores how this play imported into the Yishuv a symbolic conceptualization of the Holocaust and the Jewish struggle against Nazism. The article points to the centrality of the transnational Jewish cultural mechanism in the shaping of a national, Eretz-Israeli Jewish identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Hebrew theatre
• Yiddish theatre
• Soviet Jewry
• Mandatory Palestine
• Habima
• Holocaust Drama

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The full speech was published in: Bergelson 1941, ‘Lo amut ki ekhye! – Ikh vel nit starbn, ikh vel lebn!’ [Yiddish].

2. The majority of the Jewish population in the Yishuv arrived in the land from Eastern Europe: Czarist Russia and after the war – the Baltic states, Poland, and the USSR. On the Eastern European population in the Yishuv and their language see: Halperin (2015, 1–61). On the percentage of the migrant population in Tel Aviv, one of the central cities of the Yishuv see: Bernstein (2009); Shavit and Biger (2001, 280–307).

3. Much has been written on the Eastern European transnational history of Zionism and Eretz-Israeli Hebrew culture. I will mention only few key examples, e.g. Shaked (1977). The Eretz-Israeli labour movement was deeply influenced from Russian political thinking. See for example: Shapira (1980). Habima, the theatre company that performed I Shall not Die but Live was also founded in Moscow. See: Levy (1979).

4. On the tranformations of this work see: ‘tzu der publikatzye fun d. bergelson pise ‘kh’vel lebn!’. 1968. No author name is given. We may assume that this article was written by the editor of the journal, A. Vergelis.

5. We can figure how Friedland divided the stage into different acting zones from the articles “Al ha-makhaze ve-al ha-bimuy shel “lo amut ki ekhye’“ 1944, and Goldberg (1944).

6. Kiddush Ha-Shem is the Jewish concept of Martyrdom for the sake of the lord.

7. On the national status of Habima during the 1930 s see: Kaynar-Kissinger (2017).

8. On the crisis of representation in works of art relating to the Holocaust see: Feingold (2012, 9–43) and Plunka (2009, 1–19).

9. On the presence of Meskin as an actor and his biography see: Finkel (1980). On the ways in which transnational identity is inscribed in the body see: Nathan (2009).

10. Freddie Rokem pointed at the centrality of the god figure and god function in modern drama and theatre. See: Rokem (2003).

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Shelly Zer-Zion

Shelly Zer-Zion is a senior lecturer at the department of theatre at the University of Haifa. Prior to this position she was a Fulbright post-doctoral scholar in NYU, and the director of the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts. Her research focuses on the history of modern Jewish theatre in Hebrew and Yiddish, and its role in the formation of Jewish national culture. She published numerous articles on the subject in journals such as Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Jewish Social Studies and New Theatre Quarterly. She is the author of the book Habima in Berlin: The Institutionalization of a Zionist Theatre (Magness Press, 2015). A German version of the book was published in Fink Verlag in 2016, and co-editor of the volume Habima: New Studies on National Theatre (Resling, 2017). This research is sponsored by an ISF (Israeli Science Foundation) grant no. 953/17.