Two years ago, a group of my college friends gathered in San Francisco to celebrate Passover and the birth of one friend’s son.   October 7 had accelerated this one friend’s right-wing turn, and we planned a series of questions to change the subject if he got going.  What television was he watching?  What concerts had he seen?  Within five minutes of our arrival, he had discussed, unprompted, Shōgun and Phish at MSG.  Within thirty, he was screaming (at me), “You only use the word genocide for the one true genocide, the Holocaust.”

I suspect many Jews of my generation have stories like this.  One of them is Jonathan Spector’s Birthright, a terrific new play about six friends who meet in 2006 on the free trip to Israel and hold periodic reunions over the next two decades.  Noah (Eli Gelb) is a politics wonk who starts an influential blog; Chaya (Zoë Winters) campaigns for Barack Obama and gets a job in his White House; Alona (Molly Ranson) marries an Israeli; Izzy (Molly Bernard) becomes an anti-Zionist; Emerson (Nate Mann) struggles with addiction, and Lev (Hale Appleman) struggles to find meaning.  After disappearing midway through their Birthright trip, he spends the next two decades dropping out of rabbinical school, losing his marriage, and building a failed business.

It is a strange experience to watch a play that plays like your life, and this is both the strength (and the limitation) of Birthright.  It is funny and smart, well-acted, and its characters feel real; through their arguments it articulates complex ideas about Judaism, Zionism, and Israel without ever losing focus in the drama.  This is not a polemic or a history lesson, and Spector never shows his hand.  I could not say whether his politics are Noah’s, or Chaya’s, or Izzy’s, or those of the other three.  Most likely a combination of all of them.

Then again, Birthright does ignore the beliefs of one important group: Jewish right-wingers.  Zionists love to remind us that Israel is the only democracy in the region, and that democracy has elected and re-elected Likud.  Most American Zionists I speak to are quick to stress their hatred of Netanyahu, and these Zionists are represented in Birthright.  But there are Jews who love Netanyahu, who love Ben-Gvir, and there are Jews whose objections to these war criminals have not prevented them from casting votes for their parties.  This is something I struggle to reconcile—and I suspect the same is true of these characters.

Still, this is not a critique, just an observation.  No one play can encompass the range of Jewish reactions to Israel.  Birthright runs over three hours, and I was in no rush to leave.  In fact, I would appreciate a sequel in a few decades.

Birthright runs through August 23rd at the Newman Mills Theater.  511 W. 52nd Street.  New York, NY.  3 hours 20 minutes.  Two intermissions. Photograph by Emilio Madrid.