Indecent

Content Warning: This section contains discussion of antisemitism, anti-gay bias, and the Holocaust.

“LEMML. We have a story we want to tell you…About a play. A play that changed my life. Every night we tell this story—but somehow I can never remember the end.”

Lemml cannot remember the ending because Indecent is a cyclical narrative, and the actors are actually ghosts. His inability to remember the end of the play foreshadows his death; by forgetting, he is able to face the story every night like it is the first time.

“NAKHMEN. Wait. Wait. Am I still a woman here? Saying this to another woman? I am not reading this garbage.”

Nakhmen’s disgust at the love between Manke and Rifkele is typical of anti-gay attitudes in the 20th century. The tension between what is acceptable and what is true and authentic converges here; Sholem is representing on stage that which men like Nakhmen think is inadmissible, shameful, and indecent.

“PERETZ. Asch. Asch. Who is your audience?

ASCH. I want to write for everyone.

LEMML (To himself). Yes—

ASCH. —You told me we need plays in Yiddish which are universal.

PERETZ. Plays that represent our people as valiant, heroic—

ASCH. —Why must every Jew onstage be a paragon?!!

NAKHMEN. You are representing our people as prostitutes and pimps!

ASCH. Some of our people are!

PERETZ. You are pouring petrol on the flames of anti-Semitism. This is not the time.

ASCH. When! When will be the right time?”

Sholem points out the hypocrisy of calling for universal Yiddish plays that only depict Jewish people as virtuous. Peretz wants Yiddish literature to fight against the persecution and dehumanization that Jewish people are facing. Sholem, on the other hand, envisions a future where Jewish stories can depict the true range of human experiences.