Arizona Theatre Matters Education · Digital Engagement Toolkit

The Jewish Question Toolkit

Three people. One kitchen. A peace march outside. History, politics, family, fear, love, and argument inside.

This toolkit accompanies The Jewish Question, set in Grace’s kitchen in Venice, California, on a Friday evening as a massive peace march fills the streets outside.

Through Grace, Rebecca, and Ash, the play explores Jewish identity, Zionism, pacifism, Holocaust memory, activism, diaspora, inherited trauma, family truth, belonging, and what it means to remain in relationship through profound disagreement.

Start Here

Begin with the people

Before deciding who is “right,” listen for what each character is trying to protect.

  • What does Grace fear losing?
  • What does Rebecca need to believe?
  • What does Ash fear will happen if his position is wrong?
The goal is not to make the disagreement disappear. The goal is to notice what the disagreement reveals.

Choose Your Path

10 minutes

Listen for One Word

Choose one idea before experiencing the production:

  • safety
  • belonging
  • loyalty
  • justice
  • fear
  • protest
  • family

Afterward, identify moments when different characters gave that word different meanings.

20 minutes

Map the Argument

Choose one conflict from the play and ask:

  • What is each person claiming?
  • What history sits underneath the claim?
  • What emotion sits underneath it?
  • What does each person fear?

Then notice where the characters are closer than they sound.

45+ minutes

Stay in the Room

Use the ensemble exercise below to explore how people can speak from deep conviction while continuing to listen, question, and remain present.

The aim is inquiry, not forced agreement.

Before You Experience the Production

Belonging

Think about a community, family, tradition, or group to which someone might feel deeply attached.

  • Who gets to define belonging?
  • Can people disagree about the group and still belong to it?
  • When does criticism feel like loyalty?
  • When might it feel like betrayal?

Inherited history

Consider how events that happened before someone was born can still shape fear, identity, responsibility, and political belief.

What happens when people inherit the same history but draw different conclusions from it?

During the Experience

You do not have to decide who wins the argument. Instead, notice how the argument changes.

  • When does political language become personal?
  • When does fear appear beneath certainty?
  • When does humor soften conflict?
  • When does humor sharpen it?
  • What changes when family history enters the conversation?
  • When does a character listen rather than prepare a response?
  • What does the Shabbos table make possible that a public debate might not?

After the Experience

One position

Which argument did you understand more fully by the end, even if you did not agree with it?

One rupture

When did the conversation stop being primarily political and become something more intimate?

One connection

What keeps Grace, Rebecca, and Ash from becoming only opponents?

Activity: Map the Arguments

What is being said, and what is underneath it?

Choose one major disagreement among Grace, Rebecca, and Ash. Create four columns.

Position

What does the character explicitly argue?

History

What experience, memory, or inherited history informs the position?

Fear

What does the character believe may be lost or endangered?

Hope

What future does the character seem to want?

Reflection: Does understanding the source of an argument require agreeing with it? What changes when we separate understanding from endorsement?

Activity: The Kitchen Table

What changes when politics enters a home?

The play places enormous historical and political questions inside Grace’s kitchen, alongside food, ritual, hospitality, family memory, teasing, attraction, and grief.

  1. List five elements of the kitchen or meal that are not political arguments.
  2. For each, ask what it contributes to the scene: comfort, belonging, ritual, memory, intimacy, tension, or something else.
  3. Choose one argument and imagine it happening on a television panel instead.
  4. What would disappear?
  5. What becomes possible because these people are sharing a table?
Discuss: Can hospitality change disagreement without resolving it?

Activity: Inherited History

One history, different conclusions

Grace and Ash are both shaped by Jewish persecution and Holocaust memory, but those histories do not lead them to the same political conclusions.

  1. Identify what historical memory means to Grace.
  2. Identify what historical memory means to Ash.
  3. Identify how Rebecca receives or interprets inherited history.
  4. Notice where their values overlap.
  5. Notice where the same value leads them in different directions.
Reflection: Why might shared history fail to produce shared politics?

Activity: Family Story / Family Truth

What happens when an inherited story changes?

Rebecca carries an understanding of her father that helps organize her identity and memory. Grace reveals information that destabilizes it.

Without requiring anyone to disclose personal family history, work with a fictional or literary example.

  1. Name the story a character believes about their family.
  2. What values does that story support?
  3. What happens if an omitted fact changes the story?
  4. Does truth destroy belonging, deepen it, or make it more complicated?
Ask: What might people protect when they protect a family story?

Activity: Stay in the Room

Practice disagreement without manufacturing consensus

Choose a low-stakes fictional question first. The purpose is to practice the structure, not to force participants into personal political disclosure.

  1. One person states a position in one sentence.
  2. The next person begins by saying: “What I hear you protecting is…”
  3. The first speaker may clarify.
  4. The listener then asks one genuine question rather than offering a rebuttal.
  5. Switch roles.
  6. After both turns, each person names one thing they understand better. Agreement is not required.
Reflection: What changed when the task shifted from defeating an argument to understanding what mattered underneath it?

For Individual Reflection

A belief that changed

Choose a fictional character whose position changes during a story. What made change possible?

A belief that did not change

Can a relationship change even when a belief does not? What might make that possible?

Fear beneath certainty

Choose one moment in the play when a strong political statement may also contain fear.

What becomes visible when you hear both?

Love without agreement

What does the play suggest people owe one another when agreement is impossible?

For Educators and Facilitators

This material can generate strong feelings and deeply held convictions. A useful structure is to begin with the play rather than asking participants to defend personal political positions.

Start with observation: What did the character say? What changed? What history was invoked? What fear became visible?

Move toward interpretation only after the group has established what happened in the scene.

Keep the characters complex

Avoid reducing Grace, Rebecca, or Ash to a political label. Ask what each character values, fears, remembers, and needs.

Do not require disclosure

Participants should not have to identify their religion, family history, politics, or personal trauma in order to take part. Discussion can remain grounded in the work.

Separate understanding from agreement

A participant can accurately describe why a character believes something without being asked to endorse that belief.

Return to the scene

If discussion becomes abstract or polarized, return to a particular line, gesture, revelation, relationship, ritual, or change in the room.

Continue Exploring

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need prior knowledge of Jewish history or contemporary politics?

No. The Study Guide provides useful context. The toolkit can also begin with character, family, fear, belonging, ritual, and disagreement.

Is this play political or personal?

Both. Large political and historical questions enter a domestic space where family, attraction, ritual, grief, humor, and memory make those questions intensely personal.

Does a discussion have to reach agreement?

No. Productive engagement may result in sharper questions, greater understanding, or a more complex reading of a character without consensus.

Is this toolkit only for classrooms?

No. It can be used by educators, students, audiences, community groups, facilitators, and individuals.

What if discussion becomes tense?

Return to the production itself. Ask participants to identify a specific moment, character choice, line of argument, revelation, or change they observed before moving back into interpretation.

Need Help?

If you encounter a barrier or need help using these materials, contact Arizona Theatre Matters .