At Theatre Ariel in Philadelphia, a Jewish production company, the stories of Jewish worship and experience are varied. There is so much more to tell than just “The Fiddler on the Roof,” according to Theatre Ariel Artistic Director Jesse Bernstein. He recalled one moment where a unique play really resonated with an audience member.
“We did a play a few years ago about a secular Jewish family that wanted to celebrate Passover for the first time in a long time and the challenges they face in making that happen,” he said. “After the play, a woman came up to me and said, ‘Thank you, because I have never seen my family portrayed in a Jewish story like that before.’”
Theater and Judaism have always been Bernstein’s passions, but uniting the two is an opportunity that came about recently. A few years ago, after he had been working on and off with Theatre Ariel, the founding artistic director, Deborah Baer Mozes, decided to make aliyah. At that point, theater leadership asked him to join the team in the newly vacated position. He didn’t have to think too long. He has been in the role since early 2021 and has put on dozens of productions centered around Jewish storytelling.
Bernstein said Theatre Ariel has no interest in pieces that are “incidentally Jewish.”
Anything that the theater shows is guaranteed to not just involve Judaism but to have it be central to the plot. Bernstein spends hours each week sifting through plays, reading scripts and looking for Theatre Ariel’s next show.
The challenge is to take these Jewish stories and make them applicable to everyone. Bernstein said he would love to see a day when the audience at a given show is half Jewish and half not.
“My goal is for Theatre Ariel to be a spiritual home for secular Jews, a cultural home for religious Jews and a place of learning and understanding for non-Jews,” he said.
One piece of feedback from a non-Jewish audience member that resonated with Bernstein came from an Irish-Catholic viewer, who told him afterward that the classically Jewish family depicted in the play was just like hers. Sometimes, there are surprising responses from Jewish audience members, too. One such comment came after a solo show that Bernstein starred in, focused on his own grandfather’s relationship with a famous Jewish gangster, as well as his grandfather’s experiences with antisemitism in America in the early 20th century.
“We had someone from Israel in the crowd who saw the piece, and afterwards they told me that they didn’t know American Jews had to go through [antisemitism] like that,” he said.
For Bernstein, this was shocking considering his own upbringing in Montgomery County. Bernstein’s youth was filled with abuse and discrimination. He never imagined any Jew could be unaware that other Jews experience this.
“My senior year of high school, the school board was run by someone who was publicly antisemitic,” he said. “I was called a k***. I had pennies thrown at me in the hallway.”
Bernstein said these experiences have stuck with him. Following the Oct. 7 attacks, he thinks other Jews who are not as used to interacting with non-Jews are beginning to understand what that is.
“A lot of my friends who had grown up in really Jewish communities started hearing things and experiencing antisemitism, and they have reached out to me and said that they can’t believe some of the thoughts and beliefs that they have heard recently,” he said. “Part of me is surprised they’re surprised — welcome to the club!”
With this in mind, Bernstein is focusing on something specific for the theater’s next run of short, one-act shows written by locals: Jewish joy.
“I’ve told the playwrights to run with whatever they think that means, because I think we don’t have enough of that right now,” Bernstein said.
One of these plays is centered around the experience of a family of Iraqi Jews who moved to the United States, told from the perspective of the daughter, a first-generation naturalized American.
“It’s a beautiful piece, and it’s a Jewish story that — especially in America — we don’t see very often, and I’m really excited to be helping to develop and present it,” Bernstein said. “I really want to continue to find those stories that paint the diversity of the modern Jewish experience.”
Perhaps what Bernstein is most excited for is Theatre Ariel’s run of “Amsterdam” from Nov. 14-24. The show is the theater’s first full-scale production in a decade and a half, as opposed to the small salon shows they usually put on. Bernstein said they needed to step up considering the state of the world right now.
“Now is an important time for a Jewish theater to play on the same level as the rest of the theaters in the community,” he said.
The show will include a litany of well-known Philadelphia actors. Some of the cast have won Barrymore Awards, a prestigious series of awards for theater in the Philadelphia area.
Bernstein said that, ultimately, what he hopes Theatre Ariel offers is a space for Jews to understand their culture and religion in a way that is different than they might be used to.
“I find that we offer a different way for people to experience their Judaism than they can find in a synagogue, for example,” he said.
