Indecent

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

All of the major characters in Indecent are Jewish, and many of them speak Yiddish as their native language. When any character speaks their native language, they speak fluently, but otherwise, they have a noticeable accent and sometimes make grammatical errors. Most of the play is performed in English, though there are a few lines and short scenes in Yiddish (and Nakhmen says some lines in French, Spanish, and Chinese). When Sholem Asch is a young man, writing in Yiddish allows him to connect with Jewish people and make meaningful art about his culture, even if his writing is considered controversial. Yiddish is not universally celebrated in Europe, even when Sholem is young: Freida makes derisive comments about Yiddish and about Jewish people, foreshadowing the further challenges that the characters face when they get to America.

In New York City, there is a big enough Jewish audience to stage The God of Vengeance in Yiddish, but Yiddish theater is not prestigious. To create a prestigious play in America, it is essential to perform it in English so it has a chance to make it to Broadway. Language and Jewish identity are both connected to the pressure to assimilate. Prestigious theater is necessarily assimilationist, moving away from Sholem’s initial radical roots. Actors in the English-language production must speak relatively unaccented English, which means that some Jewish actors (like Reina) are pushed out of the production to make the show more palatable to non-Jewish Americans. Actors in the Broadway production have to go even further, eschewing any scene that portrays lesbianism in a positive light. 

Speaking Yiddish is a matter of identity and culture, but it comes with consequences in America. Sholem is a masterful writer in Yiddish, but he cannot speak English. That means that he cannot communicate directly with his doctor, and he cannot defend his work in court without risking being mistranslated or made fun of. The scope of his influence as a writer is necessarily limited by the fact that English is not his first language. Sholem unkindly says that people will always make fun of how Lemml speaks, despite his best efforts to learn English. Although Yiddish is less universal than English, it is very important in both Indecent and The God of Vengeance. In the final scene of Indecent, Rifkele and Manke perform the rain scene in Yiddish. This is an important moment that indicates that despite all the repression that Jewish communities and Yiddish speakers have faced, Yiddish is still a living language that is connected to Jewish identity and culture in many parts of the world. There are around 600,000 Yiddish speakers as of 2024. The language is considered vulnerable, but it has never entirely disappeared.