The Rehearsals by Vladimir Sharov

The Rehearsals by Vladimir Sharov

Author:Vladimir Sharov [Sharov, Vladimir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910213612
Publisher: Dedalus Limited
Published: 2018-01-31T16:00:00+00:00


Subsequently their lives alternate between clearly distinguishable periods of calm, stable existence (externally, at least) and periods of discord and persecution. The former are protracted, lasting for thirty to thirty-five years; this is the time of ordinary peasant labour, intense rehearsal, dignified and resolute waiting for Christ’s arrival, and the certainty that the wait is almost at an end, for soon He will come. During these periods, the community does not stray from Sertan’s teaching in spirit or letter, as if he really were still alive, still with them. Then, a clean break. Sertan’s play is discarded and for several months everything he did is destroyed and dies; the crisis usually peaks in late autumn, winter or the start of spring, but never lasts longer than half a year.

It would be wrong to think of these crises as some kind of mass cyclothymia; no, these are the times when the exiles’ own notions hold sway, their own understanding of what they have to do for Christ to come. And just when it seems that their path, their interpretation has won out for good, that the play, as Sertan planned it, has been destroyed, never to return, that is when it begins to be restored. But there is nothing to restore it from, and no one to do it, so the process of getting back to what was there before can take a generation or even two.

The exiles’ decision to live strictly by family – each in its own home – is a burden for Jews and Christians alike, who once again find themselves grouped together under one roof. Frequent conflicts are, needless to say, inevitable, after all it is no easy task to share your life with people of a different faith, to run a household with them day after day, year after year. Even such simple matters as cooking, sharing a meal and celebrating Saturdays or Sundays are all but insoluble, and anyway, what is the point of trying to resolve them? Why not separate and live in different homes? After all, they are only together for the sake of appearances. But the exiles continue to live together in the same way generation after generation, and my own explanation for how this was even possible is that they were so deeply absorbed in their own roles, in the rehearsals. There is another, related question that particularly fascinates me: did those chosen to play Jews ever become genuine Jews, at least in the sense that they began to think and feel like actual Jews (circumcision was not practised among them, that much I know), or not? In his quest for absolute authenticity of performance, Sertan, whether or not he meant to, had certainly pushed them in that direction with the stories he told them about the Torah and the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, about the Jews of Tulchyn, the Gaons and Ruvim, but did he succeed?

Later, after the three partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, when



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