Israeli writer, actress and director Hadar Galron is on her way to London. But her heart is in the Czech Republic.
In the UK she will perform her one-woman shows Whistle and Passion Killer as part of the Tsitsit Fringe Festival. But the Czech Republic is where she has just premiered her play Jewish Enough for Hitler. Eastern Europe has turned into a great launch pad for her diverse plays, exploring controversial themes surrounding femininity, sexuality, orthodoxy and identity.
For many years the National Theatre of Prague was home to her play Mikveh. Set in a ritual bath, it looks at the way women assess their bodies, while taking a deeper peek at the notion of purifying themselves for their husbands. Then in 2018 she wrote The Secrets an adaptation of the film she wrote with director Avi Nesher. It’s based on the true story of a forbidden love between two teenage Charedi girls.
Many of her complex ideas for stage and screen are triggered by her own life, as well as society at large. After the premiere of the Czech version of The Secrets a young woman came up to her and started speaking to her in Hebrew. She explained that she had recently discovered that her paternal grandmother was Jewish. It was a theme that Galron had noticed was emerging with younger Eastern Europeans, which led her to eventually write Jewish Enough for Hitler (titled in Czech as My First Jewish Christmas).
“It depicts the identity crisis for mainly Eastern European Jews,” explains Galron. “The first generation are mostly those who understandably didn’t want to speak about their Judaism after the Holocaust and during the Communist era. The second generation grew into, and accepted, this ‘denial’, while the third generation, the grandchildren, have grown up in a freer world, a world in which it is permitted to ask questions, to explore their identities more deeply. They are the ones triggering the questions.”
The protagonist of the play is 23-year-old Magda, who announces to her family at the Christmas dinner that she is not studying Chinese as she had planned, but instead Hebrew. Her grandmother is furious and Magda thinks it is because she is antisemitic. It turns out that she is, in fact, Jewish.
The play is directed by renowned Czech director, 49-year-old Peter Svojtka. Ironically, while working on the play he discovered that his step-father, who has been in his life since he was six, is also Jewish.
The concept of identity resonates powerfully with Galron given her own life journey. She made aliyah from the UK with her Orthodox family when she was 13, and attended a religious high school in Tel Aviv. After her army service, she studied theatre at Tel Aviv University, which has culminated in a rich 30-year career of writing and performing.
“Identity and who I am has been a big part of my life,” says Galron. “Am I an Israeli or a foreigner? For the unorthodox I am the religious artist but for the religious I am the rebel.”
Galron, who made her debut as a stand-up comedienne, still enjoys performing her one-woman shows. There’s the cabaret show Passion Killer, a humorous, biblical view of the role of women throughout the ages — from Genesis to #MeToo. Ten years on it still brings in the audiences in Israel and abroad.
“I like the provocations that force us to think more deeply about women's status in the Jewish law,” she offers. “I do find what was provocative when I started writing is no longer so. For too many years we have given up our power to be maids, servants and helpers, making us just the ‘supporting characters’, even in our own lives.”
Galron has long been vocal about the role of Jewish women within marriage and divorce. Having now experienced the process of receiving the get following her own divorce earlier this year, her message is even stronger.
“When you get to the bottom of it you are being sold under the chupah. If you don’t know and understand this at the very beginning you will be stuck and be blocked if you get divorced, as many women are.” Although her divorce was done respectfully, she worries about other women who are not so lucky.
And that is the point of her work — to embrace the difficult subjects many are scared to broach, to impact change, and to live the best life she can.
“It is not women against men. I prefer leaving people disturbed after my plays, causing them to think.” After one show she was asked by some Charedi women to lead a political party, which she gracefully turned down. “I am not a politician. I gave up a lot to study theatre.”
While she draws much of her material from the imbalances that exist between men and women in religion and society, her creations end up becoming so much more for her than just the subjects she portrays. They are often a fully immersive experience that lead her into introspection and growth, by the time she has finished the script.
In 2016 Galron’s younger sister Yaeli died of pancreatic cancer, which was followed by the break-up of Galron’s 20-year marriage. Both life events had a profound impact on her storytelling, leading her to co-write and star in the semi-autobiographical Whistle with Yaakov Buchan, whose mother was the secretary of the Nazi doctor Mengele, who cruelly experimented on Jews. In the play, Yaakov’s alter-ego is depicted by the main character, Tammy who, at 45, “fights for her right to be happy, to live, to be loved.”
In a strange encounter she asks permission from her husband, to have an affair with a stranger. On a personal level it triggered Galron to investigate more deeply the relationships within her own marriage. Although the marriage could not be saved it helped her to divorce in a healthy way, enabling each party to talk things out and “set each other free, free of guilt”.
Oscar Wilde wrote that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” For the artist, however, art and life are intertwined into one, seamlessly feeding into the ever-changing persona of who she was, is and will become. She often still asks herself: “Who am I going to be when I grow up?’
“The river of life sometimes flows in surprising directions but I do believe these directions are trying to tell me something,” she says. “After the death of my sister, writing Whistle was a wake-up call for me to live and love and enjoy life. Life is very dynamic. In a way you need to know what you want but you cannot always know how it is going to happen.”
Having turned 50 last year, Galron says she feels younger today than she did years ago when she was burdened with heavy thoughts. Even after three decades of challenging preconceived myths, her work is not done; her fascination with women continues unabated. She is currently working with the renowned Israeli director Yossi Israeli on a play Chekhova about the wife of Anton Chekhov, which is part of a triology. She has also been commissioned to write a show for Philadelphia’s Ariel Theatre, focusing on the dynamic wives of the sages Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Nachman and Rabbi Meir.
These women who lived in ancient times were exceptional individuals, but as women in a man’s world they didn’t stand a chance to maximise their potential or be valued appropriately.
Today they could have flourished, says Galron, which just reinforces her continued message to her audiences.
“Today at 40 and 50 you can begin living another life. It’s time for us to be the leading roles in our lives. We need to dare to be.”
Whistle is at Yavneh College on October 28 and Passion Killer is on October 30 at the King Alfred Phoenix Theatre
