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      © Photo: Andrea Sacchi K.S. |
 © Photo: Andrea Sacchi K.S. |
Il registro dei peccati - Rassegna stampa A nomad of the theatreMoni Ovadia with Antonia Anania www.caffeeuropa.it He likes to define himself as Jew with Bulgarian origins, non-orthodox, with a Marxist formation, a vegetarian and, above all, with a nomadic identity"...
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Il Registro dei peccati - Press «A nomad of the theatre» Moni Ovadia with Antonia Anania www.caffeeuropa.it
He likes to define himself as Jew with Bulgarian origins, non-orthodox, with a Marxist formation, a vegetarian and, above all, with a nomadic identity"... |
 © Photo: Andrea Sacchi K.S. |
Il Registro dei Peccati - Fragments of text (...) The Jews entertain with the Messiah and messianism a relationship of spasmodic and continuous expectation, never interrupted and, in some ways, surreal.As this witz tells us: In a poor village, the poorest of all Jewish Poland, lived a boy who was the poorest of all the poor in that poorest of villages. His mother was a widow and, in order to feed her son, worked as a washer-woman who killed herself with work by washing the clothes of the rich in the frozen river during the Winter. Each evening when her son came home she covered him with insults: "You good-for-nothing idiot, can't you find yourself a job? You're vorse than your father, that drunken delinqvent!" Exasperated, one day the poor boy goes to the Rabbi and says: "Look, rebbe, I'm sick of your chattering, I don't have a job and you give me only words. Can you see the bell-tower over there, across the river? I will go over to the church and get converted, The priest will certainly treat me better than you!" "Don't be an idiot and stop saying idiocies" answered the Rabbi, "Alright, I will give you a job. The whole community council will insult me for this, but I will give you a job: I hereby nominate you as the official Messiah Sighter of our village". "But, rebbe, are you pulling my nose? Official vat???? "Nose, shmose! Vat do you mean, pulling your nose? Are you dumb? Do I have time to pull your nose? Vat do you think, that the Messiah ven he comes, he sends a telegram? Arriving at six, please expect me? The Messiah comes ven he comes! Vat do you vant, for him to catch me vith my pants down as I come out of the bathroom? I'll tell the carpenter to build you a sighting tower, you keep an eye out and ven he comes, you'll recognize Him because he's all beautiful and shining vith light, so you shout to us "Messiah, Messiah!"... We get dressed and ready..." "Vats the pay?" asks the boy, "I'm sorry", answers the Rabbi "you can have the job but the pay is small, ten groschen a week, and don't complain because that's all I can give you". "But Rabbi, it's a pittance!!!". "Listen, boy, you have job, you have pay, don't ask me for more". The boy, at least satisfied with the dignity of the job, goes home and tells his mother everything: "Mamma! Mamma! Mamma! I have job! I've become a man vith a job!". "Ah, Master of the Universe, you have finally listened to the prayers of a poor woman. Very good, dear, tell me vat job have you found?". "Mamma, your son is now the Official Village Messiah Sighter". The mother cannot believe her ears: "Vat?! You are nothing but an idiot! My son, a Messiah Sighter, vat shame, they vill all laugh at me, the Tsar from Moscow vill come here to laugh at me. Idiot! So, vat's the pay?" "Ten groschen a week". The mother is even more furious: "A pittance, that's vat it is! I vill have to vork like an animal, I vill die of vork and it vill be your fault, you mangy dog!". "Mamma, enough, enough" begs the boy, "Im sick of being insulted by you. Enough, I beg you. Alright, you're right, the job is vat it is, the pay is vat it is, but there is also a great advantage: it's a lifetime position!!". This strange Jewish messianism is one of the radiant characteristics of this world, a world in which the greatest of hungers and blackest of poverties did not stop it from living an incredible spirituality, as was rarely seen in this land of Europe. (...) |
 © Photo: Andrea Sacchi K.S. |
Il registro dei peccati - Author's notes Is the world narrated by Marc Chagall in his celebrated paintings and drawings a creation of his extraordinary artistic genius, or did it actually exist in reality? The world and the humanity which in his supreme artistic vision Chagall transfigured, really did exist. It was a real and pulsating world, made of human beings who were too human, and therefore unfit for this planet possesed by the demons of violence, of racism and of nationalist delirium.The spiritual dimension of these people of the Jewish diaspora who dressed in black and white was, indeed, highly colored; it was illuminated by the colors of their everyday estatic fervor. The most authentic language the Jews of the diaspora used to express themselves was that of Hassidism, which germinated along the borders of a crossroads where the most extreme and profound of spiritual thinking was conjugated with the deepest and never to be abbandoned pietas for even the most insignificant manifestation of the existent. Hassidism is a celebration of human frailty and of its beauty, and in that celebration is recognized the ineffable majesty of the unseen divine and its unspeakable name. Nonetheless, with the divine a relationship of familiarity and even of irreverent proximity was entertained, without having this contradiction ever fall into blasphemy. The divine within the Hassidic vision welcomes as a best-loved child he who dares to argue with the Blessed One and even he who wishes to judge Him for the evils of the world. The divine is, of course, celebrated through prayer and study, but also through song, dance and narration, and by encouraging humorism, the spirit of which was very much favored by the great masters of Hassidism who appreciated its anti-idolatric power. Moni Ovadia leads the audience by the hand towards an extraordinary world which has been extirpated from our human and spiritual landscape by the brutality of hate, but which still speaks to us and teaches us even from its absence, through an energy which resonates in those who know how to listen to it and welcome it, because they feels capable of building in themselves, for themselves and for others, a better human being, with greater dignity and awareness of its own spiritual status. The great Catholic theologian Teillard de Chardin wrote: "We are not material beings living a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings going through a material experience." The Jews of Hassidism, perhaps as no one else in the land of Europe, literally incarnated in their concrete and mystical way of life this extraordinary intuition of the great French thinker. To encounter that world, if only through the reverberation of its lost irridescence, to perceive the perfume of its soul and to hear its voice is an unforgettable experience which trascends religious hubris, sweeps away all clerical orthodoxy and unmasks the misery of bigotry. |
