What does it mean to be Jewish?

Daniel Goldfarb, a playwright, has written a play called The Retributionists. It is a story based on a historical event - a plan by a group of Jews in 1946 to take revenge on the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

You can read more about the play here at the Playwrights Horizons site.

Goldfarb has written other plays, all examining the question of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.

An interesting article about both the play and the playwright appeared in the NY Times this past Sunday. You can access it through the link here - At Ease In His Own Pigeonhole

The last paragraph of the article reads as follows:

"He said his goal is not to provide answers so much as raise questions. When pressed to take sides [about the characters in and subjects of his plays] he demurs: 'I am a big proponent of: Write what you're confused about. Being Jewish provides endless confusion.... If you are in the process of trying to figure out what it means that you're Jewish, then you're Jewish.'"

What a wonderful quotation to bring to our students in high school and perhaps middle school.

How to do this? Please share your suggestions here so we can all learn from each other.