My maternal grandma was a tough old Jewish lady from an eastern European shtetl, the name of which is incised now on a glass wall at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Of course, she got out during the rule of the czars. I liked her quite a bit. She shared her poker winnings with me when I was little, and we watched The Monkees together every Monday night. But her position on diversity left a lot to be desired. She was particularly, shall we say, unfriendly to the notion of intermarriage. “Go to sleep with a young shiksa,” she warned, “wake up with an old goy.” And: “Marry a shiksa and one morning she’ll wake up and look at you and all she’ll know to say is ‘dirty Jew.’”
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The primal, tribal coarseness of this stuff sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? I hate to think I let my grandma’s ugly opinions influence me, but then it’s true that I wrecked a couple of very nice relationships with gentile women before marrying in the faith.
What makes that question interesting isn’t the danger of collapse itself so much as Amir’s awareness of what lies beneath the identity he’s created—and how the people around him respond to his awareness. He’s been to the world of purdah and jihad and clawed his way out, and now he’s like a recovered alcoholic, trying mightily to maintain. Jory seems to understand to some extent: as a self-made former inhabitant of what she glancingly refers to as the “ghetto,” she may recognize how much energy Amir has to expend just to preserve his adopted self. In any event, she sides with him every so often. But Emily and Isaac are classic enablers. The ways in which they manipulate Amir while excusing themselves is the real disgrace of Disgraced.
Through 2/26: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, 773-409-4125, atcweb.org, $10-$50.
