Indecent

Content Warning: This section contains discussion of antisemitism, anti-gay bias, and the Holocaust. 

At the beginning of Indecent, Lemml and the members of the troupe shake dust from their clothes before beginning their story. At the end of the play, when they die in the Holocaust, the stage header reads: “Ashes to Ashes: The Troupe Returns to Dust” (87). This echoes Chapter 3 of Bereshit (Genesis), the first book of the Torah, which says of mortal humans, “[F]or dust you are, and to dust you will return.” Having Indecent begin and end with dust speaks to the cyclical nature of the play. It is a story where the characters can never really die; they rise again from the ashes like phoenixes to keep telling their story. The Holocaust was an attempt, on the part of the Nazis, to literally reduce the Jewish people to dust. The characters in Indecent prove that although many people died in the Holocaust, the Nazi project was ultimately unsuccessful. 

In writing Indecent, Paula Vogel celebrates Sholem Asch’s exploration of Jewish Identity and Language. The ideas in both Indecent and The God of Vengeance are immortal, as are their characters. Today, Jewish culture and the Yiddish language continue to flourish, reborn from the ashes of a genocide. When Esther says her accent is “like the dust of Poland” (66), she worries that her speech marks her as different. However, on a metanarrative level, the “dust” in her accent is a powerful force that connects her to her people and her culture. Despite pressures to assimilate in America and the horrors of genocide in Europe, these parts of her identity will not go away.