Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza is a six-page, 10-minute play by British playwright Caryl Churchill, written in response to the 2008-2009 Israel military strike on Gaza, and first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre on 6 February 2009. Churchill, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has said that anyone wishing to produce it may do so gratis, so long as they hold a collection for the people of Gaza at the end.
The play consists of seven scenes spread over roughly seventy years, in which Jewish adults discuss what, or whether, their children should be told about certain events in recent Jewish history that the play alludes to only indirectly, beginning with the Holocaust and continuing with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The play has been criticized by many as antisemitic. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has criticized it as both "horrifically anti-Semitic" and "beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse", while Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic called the play a blood libel and "the mainstreaming of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes"."The Royal Court Theatre's Blood Libel" Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic 9 February 2009 Other commentators, such as Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian and Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon writing in The Nation, have emphatically defended the play from these accusations.
Description The play takes the form of a litany, repeating the phrases "Tell her", "Don't tell her" to reflect an ostensible tension within Israel and the Jewish community over how to describe events in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: "Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own/Tell her again this is our promised land/Don't tell her they said it was a land without people/Don't tell her I wouldn't have come if I'd known/Tell her maybe we can share/Don't tell her that." Churchill has been particularly criticized for a monologue within the play purportedly representing a hardline Israeli view: "tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it's not her/Don't tell her that."Seven Jewish Children, a production of the play by The Guardian, with Jennie Stoller.
The play is based around the increasingly urgent repetition of "Tell her," and "Don't tell her".Higgins, Charlotte. "Is Caryl Churchill's play Seven Jewish Children antisemitic?", The Guardian, 18 February 2009. Occasionally breaking into this pattern is the injunction "don't frighten her", three significant wordsCarol Rocamora "The power of theater: Eight minutes about Seven Jewish Children", Broad Street Review, 16 May 2009 that are also the last in the play.
These motifs can be seen in the opening lines of the play:
Tell her it’s a game Tell her it’s serious But don’t frighten her Don’t tell her they’ll kill herCaryl Churchill (2009) Seven Jewish Children, p.2, London, Nick Hern Books Although Churchill indicates that the scenes concern different children, thus speakers change between them, she leaves it for each production to decide how many adults take part and how the lines are shared between them. The Guardian, for example, has produced a version with Jennie Stoller that is a simple monologue throughout.
The first two scenes concern the Holocaust, featuring one family that is hiding from Nazis and another wondering how to tell their child of the many family members who have been killed. Later scenes are about episodes in the development of the Israeli–Arab conflict: one family is migrating to Jerusalem; another wonders what to tell their daughter about Palestinian Arabs; the next discusses an Israeli victory; and the next is speaking as the Israeli West Bank barrier is being built and when a Palestinian child has been shot. The culminating scene is during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict.Caryl Churchill (2009) Seven Jewish Children, p.7, London, Nick Hern Books
Mission Churchill has said she sees the play as a political event. Anyone wishing to produce it may do so for free so long as they take a collection for the people of Gaza after the performance, with proceeds to be sent to Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British medical aid and political advocacy organization.Healy, Patrick. Readings and Talks for Pro-Gaza Playlet, The New York Times, 15 March 2009. She also made the script of the play available as a downloadable PDF on the website of the Royal Court Theatre.Nathan, John. "Seven Jewish Children - A Play for Gaza, at the Royal Court: Hot Topic", Theater News Online, 29 January 2009 A one-woman video performance of the play is also available online from The Guardians website.Caryl Churchill (2009) Seven Jewish Children read by Jennie Stoller, Guardian Online, 25 April 2009Brown, Mark, Churchill's Children: Guardian reading for Caryl Churchill's Gaza play, The Guardian, 25 April 2009The Guardian, 1 May 2009, The blood libel brought up to date
Reception
Praise The Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington awarded the play four of five stars and wrote that the play captures his belief that "security has become the pretext for indiscriminate slaughter."Billington, Michael. "Seven Jewish Children Royal Court, London", The Guardian, 11 February 2009 The journalist Robert Mackey wrote that "Mr. Billington’s sympathetic review describes the context of the cryptic play and points to some of the lines from the script that have disturbed readers like Mr. Goldberg." The Times'''s Dominic Maxwell also awarded the play four of five stars and praised it for an "impassioned response to the events in Gaza that is elliptical, empathetic and illuminating"."Seven Jewish Children at Royal Court, SW1, The Times, 13 February 2009 In the Saudi Arabian English-language publication Saudi Gazette, London-based freelance journalist Susannah Tarbush wrote that the play "succinctly dramatizes the tragedies and ironies of history for both sides" and builds to what she calls "a devastating final scene set during the Gaza onslaught".
Noting comments by the Board of Deputies of British Jews that critiqued the play as antisemitic, award-winning dramatist and essayist Tony Kushner and academic journalist and critic Alisa Solomon, both Jewish American critics of modern Israeli politics, wrote in The Nation that: "We emphatically disagree. We think Churchill's play should be seen and discussed as widely as possible... To see anti-Semitism here is to construe erroneously the words spoken by the worst of Churchill's characters as a statement from the playwright about all Jews as preternaturally filled with a viciousness unique among humankind. But to do this is, again, to distort what Churchill wrote."Kusher, Tony and Solomon, Alisa. "Tell her the truth, The Nation, 26 March 2009.
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardians chief arts writer, defended the work by writing: The play did not strike me as antisemitic.... I cleave strongly to the view that it is possible to be critical of Israel without being antisemitic, and I do not believe that Churchill is making or otherwise implying universal claims about the Jewish people in this play.Higgins, Charlotte. The Guardian, 18 February 2009 Is Caryl Churchill's play Seven Jewish Children antisemitic?
Criticism Condemning the play for its "straitjacketed political orthodoxy", Christopher Hart of The Sunday Times criticized Churchill's "ludicrous and utterly predictable lack of even-handedness" that is typical, he said, of the "enclosed, fetid, smug, self-congratulating and entirely irrelevant little world of contemporary political theatre".Hart, Christopher. "The Stone and Seven Jewish Children: A Play For Gaza, The Sunday Times, 15 February 2009 Theatre critic Jan Dalley of the Financial Times described the play as "agitprop" harking back to long-discredited revolutionary ideas;"Reality bites the idealists", Jan Dalley, Financial Times 13 February 2009 this negative assessment was echoed by Bret Stephens's criticism in The Wall Street Journal, and by Susannah Clapp's criticism in The Observer."Say it, but not so loud, The Observer, 15 February 2009 Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic also called the play a blood libel and said that "the mainstreaming of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypesfor instance, that Jews glory in the shedding of non-Jewish bloodis upon us"."The Royal Court Theatre's Blood Libel", Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic Monthly 9 February 2009 Columnist Melanie Phillips wrote that the play is "an open vilification of the Jewish people... drawing upon an atavistic hatred of the Jews" and called it an "open incitement to hatred". Patrick Healy from The New York Times wrote that the play "at times paints heartless images of Israelis."Healy, Patrick. "Workshop May Present Play Critical of Israel", The New York Times, 17 February 2009.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, invited to preview the play, accused Churchill of being "Anti-Israel".Walker, Tim. Caryl Churchill is accused of 'anti-Semitism'", The Daily Telegraph, 13 Feb 2009. Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, called the play "a libellous and despicable demonisation of Israeli parents and grandparents" and expressed fear that it would "stoke the fires of antisemitism". He added that the play is a modern blood libel drawing on old antisemitic myths."Outrage over 'demonising' play for Gaza," The Jewish Chronicle, Leon Symons, 12 February 2009
A letter from 59 well-known British Jews was published in the Daily Telegraph claiming that Seven Jewish Children reinforces "false stereotypes" and demonises Israel by depicting Israelis as "inhuman triumphalists" who teach their children "Arabs must be hated", and further that it is "historically inaccurate" since it "fails to say that the Six-Day War was a defensive war" and doesn't contain Israel's "withdrawal from Gaza in 2005" or the "more than 6,000 rockets" launched indiscriminately by Hamas. Signatories included Professor Geoffrey Alderman, the Michael Gross Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham; Maureen Lipman, the actress; Ronald Harwood, the Oscar-winning screenwriter; and the actress Tracy-Ann Oberman."Prominent Jews accuse Royal Court play of demonising Israelis; A coalition of prominent British Jews has condemned the Royal Court Theatre for showing a play that is said to demonise Israelis," Martin Beckford, The Daily Telegraph, 18 February 2009
Playwright Israel Horovitz, who wrote a play in response to Churchill entitled What Strong Fences Make, argued that while it is possible to criticize Israel without being antisemitic and to criticize Palestine without being anti-Arab: "Those who criticize Jews in the name of criticizing Israel, as Ms. Churchill seems to have done in her play, step over an unacceptable boundary and must be taken to task."Israel Horovitz, Jerusalem Post, 19 April 2009, Why I wrote 'What Strong Fences Make'
The Independent has pointed out that the play does not include the words "Israel" or "Zionist" but does reference "Jews" in several places.
Royal Court Theatre