The opportunity to review this riveting theatrical experience for BSR meant a great deal to me, especially at this dangerous time.

Our Ancestors Were Immigrants, Too
Curio Theatre Company presents Hannah Moscovitch’s Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

By: SaraKay Smullens for the Broad Street Review

As a Jewish woman, I approached opening night of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, now getting its Philadelphia premiere at Curio Theatre Company, with trepidation and a heavy heart. Could I objectively assess this love story about a young Romanian man and woman who meet on Canadian shores, seeking refuge from the horror of the pogroms?

Especially as Passover descended, I wondered if I would have rose-colored glasses for the Curio artists and Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch, who is a descendent of her play’s female protagonist. Once again, the world has gone mad: sympathy for the Palestinians has evolved into justification for the actions of Hamas, and condemnation of Israeli policies has morphed into the latest worldwide epidemic of antisemitism. Would I lose my concentration to an internal scream of hold on, be strong, cling to each moment of life, embrace reason, and communicate hope, despite all?

An immigrants’ Our Town

In the first moments of Old Stock, an utterly non-syrupy love story, my anxieties about objectivity evaporated. I saw clearly that it’s beautifully, authentically written and portrayed. It’s like a profound, disorderly, delightful, fun, spirited Jewish rendition of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Our Town—which, like Old Stock, underscores the preciousness of life through a wise, ever-present narrator who weaves together both tragedy and hope. Here our narrator is The Wanderer, in a deep, mighty, intriguing performance from Paul Harrold. He uses the joys of punk Klezmer (written by Ben Caplan and Christian Barry) to tell the story of Chaya (a talented, versatile Alana Kopelove) and Chaim (an endearing, multifaceted Jack Taylor).

The story of Chaya and Chaim is not about a couple who fall in love because they see each other as perfect—and then, if their marriage is to survive, learn to face that each surely is not. The couple meet in a special line for immigrants suspected of illness: he may have contracted typhus, which he plays down as a rash; and she may have tuberculosis (her sister has it, but Chaya is sure her own ailment is only a cough). Death and profound loss have been their only constant, and yet they live. Chaim is immediately attracted to the older Chaya, but she is initially barely responsive, having lost her husband and their baby from starvation on their treacherous journey. As a further deterrent, she is open about her every flaw.

Chaya had a strong attachment to her husband and remains in profound mourning for him and their child. Chaim, who lost his entire family in the pogroms, is alone. Although this theme is not well-developed, not only is Chaim attracted to Chaya, but also to her large, caring family. He persists in his marriage proposals and Chaya finally acquiesces. Their wedding night is a fiasco of jealousy and displaced, understandable pain, yet they cling together. Because neither is mean-spirited or unkind, and both are giving, their relationship thrives. They grow to love, and many children are born.

Remembering our immigrant ancestors

With the “Old Stock” reference in title and text, director Rachel Gluck highlights resistance to immigrants in Canada, a reality seen internationally. She hopes that the hunger and loss portrayed here will strengthen our resolve not to “succumb to the forces of nationalism and xenophobia that seek to dehumanize each new generation of immigrants and asylum seekers.” She notes the rejectors have “perhaps forgotten that their ancestors were immigrants as well.”

The show boasts an impressive set design by Curio artistic director Paul Kuhn, known for his devotion to reused materials, in the company’s black-box home in the lower level of Baltimore Avenue’s Calvary Center for Culture and Community. The space has some acoustic limitations: it was easy to hear Kopelove and Taylor as Chaya and Chaim, but some musical lyrics floated into oblivion, especially when The Wanderer’s back was turned. Some may find the lyrics lewd. I found them a delight.

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is a moving and uplifting production, especially meaningful during the Passover holiday, where repeated stories continue to provide insights and offer hope. Gift yourself with tickets.

To the Editor:

Peggy Noonan’s commentaries on events that highlight America’s newly faced realities and accompanying challenges are impeccable. Yes, O.J. Simpson’s explanations that he could not have killed his wife, Nicole, for he "loved her too much” illuminated what those (like myself) who work with abused and battered women know to be manipulative, seductive, and even delusional. And yes again, the reaction to being found innocent in Simpson's juried criminal trial for killing Nicole and 25-year-old Ron Goldman, whose devoted friendship most likely got her through many terrified nights, did fall along racial lines, documenting opposing beliefs in our criminal justice system. As a Philadelphian, I closely followed reactions at our two major law schools, the University of Pennsylvania, largely White, and Temple University, largely Black. The student body at the former was aghast, while the student body at the later cheered.

These astute observations noted, Noonan was incorrect in stating that the notoriety brought to Simpson's attorney and longtime friend, Robert Kardashian led to his shrewd former wife Kris's ushering in “the first reality-TV family.” This distinction belongs to the sensational “An American Family,” a PBS documentary produced by Craig Gilbert, which aired over 12 one-hour installments in 1973. “Family” mesmerized viewers, privy to the upscale Santa Barbara lives of a Pat and Bill Loud and their five children. We were there when Pat tells her philandering husband to get out and “take the Jag," and when their son, Lance, who later contracted HIV and died of AIDS, became one of the first openly gay figures to appear on television.

SaraKay Smullens

Philadelphia

Submitted to The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2024

The preceding Inquirer letter shows why many deeply committed to their work leave the child welfare field.

by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

     Alarmed by the numbers of mentors, friends, and colleagues leaving social work “burned the hell out, actually fried,” more than ten years ago I began research into this complex, often misunderstood phenomenon. Most focus concentrates on professional burnout. However, in digging into hundreds of studies, I found additional arenas where burnout originates and festers, intensifying others: personal, relational, and physical, with the body as readout for stress and trauma. 

     But there was a further arena not yet identified - societal burnout. We are overburdened by a perfect storm of unresolved, threatening societal challenges and a fiercely divided electorate. We are overwhelmed by the moral distress of war as we watch those in positions of power and influence skillfully pit citizens against each other, intensifying fear and anxieties to gain and maintain power and control.

     Although in their groundbreaking 1970 book, Future Shock, Alvin and Heidi Toffler did not use the term “societal burnout,” they warned of the impact of the breathtaking pace of our technological revolution, in which the illiterate of the future would no longer be those who can’t read or write, but those unable to keep up with the demands of rapid change, and subsequently yearn for the impossible, to turn back the clock (the italics mine, not the Tofflers’). Today’s unsettling dangers and discord were precisely foreshadowed, as was the importance of preparing for increased crime and intense divisions awaiting us.

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