L IFESTYLE /C ULTURE
Writer’s Work Returning to Theatre Ariel
T H EATER
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
IN HER LAST THEATRE
Ariel production just before
the pandemic, Deborah Baer
Mozes put on “Dov and Ali,”
a show about the relation-
ship between an Orthodox
Jewish teacher and his Muslim
student. Th e founding artistic director
of the Main Line-based salon
theater company loved that
play because of its writer: New
York City-based Anna Ziegler.

As Baer Mozes recalled, “Dov
and Ali” had distinct characters,
dialogue that drew you into their
stories and journeys that kept
you interested.

Ziegler, according to Baer
Mozes, could engross you “in a
matter of moments.”
“I fell in love with her work,”
the director added.

So, almost two years later,
with Th eatre Ariel back open
in person at local synagogues,
Baer Mozes is putting on
another Ziegler production.

“The Wanderers,” the
playwright’s most recent work,
about a Satmar Chasidic couple
whose marriage was arranged
and a Jewish secular couple
who have been friends since
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childhood, will premiere
on Feb. 19 at 8 p.m. at Main
Line Reform Temple in
Wynnewood. Another in-person perfor-
mance will follow at the same
place the next day but at 2
p.m. Th e run will conclude
with two virtual shows the
following week on Feb. 26 and
27. For tickets, visit theatrea-
riel.org. Ziegler’s latest work explores
how two couples who are so
diff erent on the surface can be
quite similar when you dig into
their stories and confl icts.

“Th ere is much that binds
these couples in a play of twists
and turns about human nature,
marriage and what we neglect
to see,” reads a play descrip-
tion from a Th eatre Ariel press
release. “Th e Wanderers” will appear
in the Philadelphia suburbs
before its Off -Broadway run in
January 2023.

Baer Mozes called the play
“exquisite.” “Because she’s such a
skillful writer, you really get to
feel the pain of the struggle in
very down-to-earth ways,” the
director added.

Aft er the local run of “Dov
and Ali” in February 2020,
Baer Mozes started looking
into Ziegler’s oeuvre. She
learned of “Th e Wanderers”
because it was completing a
run at Th eater J in Washington,
D.C., around the same time.

More than a year later, in
the spring of 2021, the director
got a copy of the script from the
Alliance for Jewish Th eatre, “an
international network of Jewish
theatres and theatre artists,”
according to its website. Baer
Mozes was in the process of
planning her 2021-’22 season
and needed shows.

She began reading and fell
in love with Ziegler’s words all
over again.

“Aft er the fi rst paragraph,
I was there,” the director said.

Baer Mozes contacted
Anna Ziegler Photo by Jessica Nash
A performance of Anna Ziegler’s
last play to run at Theatre Ariel,
“Dov and Ali,” in February 2020
Courtesy of Rebecca Cureton
Ziegler about producing the
show, and Ziegler, for her part,
was excited; Th eatre Ariel had
put on one of her plays before
and now it wanted to put on
another. But there was an issue:
Th e Roundabout Th eatre Co.

held the rights and planned to
produce the show Off -Broadway
last spring.

“I didn’t think we were going
to get it,” Baer Mozes said.

Yet she kept calling Ziegler’s
agent, once, then twice. He
said he needed to reach out to
Roundabout, which had not yet
opened the show.

Finally, last summer,
on Baer Mozes’ third call,
Ziegler’s agent informed her
that Roundabout had granted
permission. “I was ecstatic,” Baer Mozes
said. Ziegler was, too. Th ough
she’s now working on scripts
for HBO Max and Apple TV,
she still considers herself a
JEWISH EXPONENT
playwright fi rst and foremost.

It’s just been hard to get any
work to the stage during the
pandemic years.

The playwright is not
planning on attending the
run because she’s still being
careful about avoiding the
virus. She also said she doesn’t
love watching her plays on
Zoom. But she is grateful.

“It’s just nice, especially
during a pandemic, people
are still out there reading your
work and want to make it
happen,” Ziegler said.

Th eatre Ariel’s most recent
play of the 2021-’22 season,
“Th e Sabbath Girl” by Cary
Gitter, drew in-person crowds
of 41 and 35 people, respec-
tively, during its run back in
December. Baer Mozes expects a similar
audience for “Th e Wanderers,”
even though, as COVID
continues, salon theater fans
are waiting until the last few
days to buy tickets.

“We have a very loyal
audience,” Baer Mozes said.

Th e salon theater has the
same COVID protocols as it
did at the end of 2021. Audience
members must show proof
of vaccination at the door
and wear masks during the
performance. ●
jsaff ren@jewishexponent.com;
215-832-0740 JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



T orah P ortion
Moses the Ideal Leader
BY RABBI ALAN ISER
Parshat Ki Tissa
IN THIS WEEK’S Torah
portion, God threatens to
destroy the entire nation of Israel
for the sin of worshipping the
Golden Calf. Moses intercedes
and convinces God not to carry
out that destructive plan, and
God renounces the punishment.

Later in his dialogue with
God, Moses asks God to forgive
the people’s sin, but if not, God
should “blot me out from Your
book” (Exodus 33:32). Did God
really intend to destroy the
entire nation? Why is Moses
offering to give up his own life?
Let me provide an answer to
the second question first.

Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman
Shapira, the last Chasidic rebbe
alive in the Warsaw Ghetto,
in his collection of sermons
Refugee Continued from Page 5
became home to two interna-
tional settlements — places of
refuge that did not require a
visa for entry.

At the time, Nazis required
two pieces of documentation
to leave occupied countries —
one of which was a passport,
which Jews were forced to
surrender to the Third Reich in
1938. Shanghai became one of
the few options for refuge for
fleeing Jews.

“Jews were desperate,” said
Jean Hoffmann Lewanda, a
Yardley resident whose father
fled from Vienna to Shanghai
in 1938. “When Jews discov-
ered that they could go to
Shanghai, they just started
getting boat tickets.”
Lewanda is
virtu- ally presenting “Escape to
Shanghai” at 2 p.m. on Feb.

20 at Congregation Beth El
of Bucks County to detail her
family’s experiences.

Lewanda’s father, Paul
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM delivered in the ghetto, “Aish
Kodesh” (Holy Fire) explains
that a person who is willing to
sacrifice his life to save a fellow
Jew is greater than someone
who gives their life for the sake
of God alone. (I would expand
this to include saving the life of
any human being.)
In a metaphor Rabbi
Shapira relates, the former is
like someone who gives their
life to save the king’s son. Their
love for the king is so great
that they are willing to give up
their life, not only for the sake
of the king, but also for the
king’s son.

When Moses saw that the
people were in need of mercy,
he was prepared to sacrifice his
life for the Jewish people, who
are the children of God, out
of his love for both the people
and God. God, in turn, was
aroused by Moses’ love to love
and be merciful to the people
he was leading.

Some commentators see
God’s angry threat as deliber-
ately testing Moses as a leader.

First, God refers to the
people as “your people” while
informing Moses of the events
that occurred at the bottom of
Mount Sinai, as if challenging
Moses to assume his responsi-
bility for the people. Then when
God says, “Let Me be, that My
anger may blaze forth against
them and I may destroy them
and make you a great nation”
(Exodus 32:9), God is providing
Moses with an opening to plead
his case and dissuade God. The
midrash asks why does God
need to say “leave me alone”?
Was Moses holding God
back? Rather, it is like a king
telling his son’s tutor, let me
alone so I can hit and punish
my child. The king doesn’t
Hoffmann, was one of the first
Jews in Vienna to find a boat ticket,
and he also settled in a small,
two-room apartment, where he
would study and read at night at a
small desk, lit only by a cup filled
with peanut oil with a wick in it.

Hoffmann, who died in
2010, fared better than many
in the Hongkew ghetto,
according to Lewanda. In
“Witness to History: From
Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir
of Escape, Survival and
Resilience,” a memoir written
by Hoffmann and edited by
Lewanda, Hoffmann recounts
his time training to become a
lawyer and eventually moving
to the French Concession, a
much prettier area of the inter-
national settlement.

Hoffmann and
his soon-to-be
wife Shirley
Hoffmann met in 1949,
married in 1950 and had their
first child in 1952. His privilege
and status meant his young
family enjoyed niceties others
didn’t. Though many refugees
left for Israel, the U.S. or
Australia in the years leading
to the Chinese Communist
Revolution in 1949, the
Hoffmanns stayed until 1952,
arriving in New York in 1953
before moving to Philadelphia.

Despite the Hoffmann
family living in Shanghai for
several years and through the
beginnings of the Communist
Revolution, the family never
learned to speak Mandarin
and learned English in schools,
indicating little assimilation
into Shanghai culture.

Booker had a strong distaste
for Chinese food because of the
living conditions within the
ghetto, and the robust interna-
tional settlement community
clung to many of their western
roots and cultural touchstones
but remained friendly with the
Shanghailanders, who showed
them little malice.

“The remarkable thing
about China was there was no
antisemitism,” Lewanda said.

“Jews were no different from
any other foreigners.”
Though the
Jewish JEWISH EXPONENT
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
Feb. 18
Feb. 25
need the tutor’s permission but
is sending a message for the
tutor to restrain him. In our
case, Moses takes the hint and
intercedes. Indeed, in a daring recre-
ation of this conversation,
another rabbinic passage
has Moses grabbing hold of
God like a person grabbing a
friend’s garment and saying,
“Master of the Universe, I am
not leaving You alone until you
forgive them” (Brachot 32a).

This story illustrates why
Moses is known in Jewish
tradition as “Moshe Rabbeinu,”
or Moses, our teacher. As the
ideal leader, he does not shrink
from the burden of leadership.

In a time of crisis, he defends
the people and puts the needs
of others before his own needs
and desires to the point of
laying his life on the line.

Our sages also portray the
5:22 p.m.

5:30 p.m.

opposite of this kind of leader-
ship in a predictive curse. In the
future, they say, your leaders
will be like dogs, sniffing the
wind to see which way to go.

May we merit to have leaders
like Moshe Rabbeinu. l
Rabbi Alan Iser is an adjunct
professor of theology at St.

Joseph’s University and St.

Charles Borromeo Seminary and
also teaches at the Conservative
Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The Board
of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia
is proud to provide diverse
perspectives on Torah commentary
for the Jewish Exponent. The
opinions expressed in this column
are the author’s own and do not
reflect the view of the Board of
Rabbis. Paul and Shirley Hoffman at their wedding in 1950
community in Hongkew was
insular and tight-knit, descen-
dants of these refugees are
just now beginning to form
bonds. Lewanda met Evie
Shaffer, daughter of Booker, a
few months ago when Shaffer
received an email about a talk
Lewanda was giving about
her father’s memoir. Before
Lewanda, Shaffer hadn’t met
another Jewish person with
roots in the Shanghai ghetto.

Shaffer asserts that though
her meeting of Lewanda was a
“weird coincidence,” the experi-
ences of all Holocaust refugees
share common threads.

“Everyone who survived
the Holocaust has their own
interesting story. The Shanghai
story is not unique,” Shaffer
said. “There are Jews who
emigrated to South America,
Australia, wherever they could
get a visa and get the hell out of
Germany.” l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0741
FEBRUARY 17, 2022
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