Press

FACTOR THE MATTER
April 1, 2005
By Jay D. Homnick

The subject of creativity within Orthodox Judaism has been front and center in recent weeks, with a number of debates raging about works of fiction and non-fiction alike. A particularly interesting one centered around Wendy Shalit's omnibus survey in the New York Times Book Review of novels by Orthodox or formerly Orthodox writers, virtually all women. She bemoaned their tendency to score cheap drama points by having their characters drift away from piety into temptation. This feeds into the easy copout that religious behavior is an ideal beyond the reach of mere mortals.

Then along comes Rachel Factor out of nowhere - or even worse, Hawaii - and knocks all those comfortable presumptions right out of the box. It turns out that the way to have real fun is not by going from bad to worse but by going from good to better. And along the way you can find love, expand your talent, have babies, meet interesting people and look beautiful enough doing it to make grown women cry into their overpriced Diet Cokes during intermission. Darn it, if you didn't love her so much you would have to hate her.

Who's Rachel Factor, you ask? Ouch, you must be the last member of Western Civilization to get the news; shame on you. Run right out and buy a ticket to her spectacular one-woman show, J.A.P., and then come back to read the rest of this article. Quick, before your neighbor, Miss Queen-Of-Trendiness, buys them all out to impress her bridge club.It's embarrassing enough that you were the last person on the block to buy a personal computer.

Rachel Factor is a Japanese-American woman who grew up in Hawaii sporting the first name of Christine. Today she is an Orthodox Jewish woman living in Jerusalem with her husband and two sons, the older of which was circumcised by noted lecturer Rabbi Paysach Krohn. The younger brother had the distinction of being held at his bris (sondek) by the most revered Orthodox sage of our time, Rabbi Elyashiv. How did she get from here to there? She knew that you were curious but too polite to ask, hence she tells the story in the show. She and her devoted family are tooling across the fruited plain in their Winnebago, packing houses wherever there are Jews. From Aden to Zimbabwe well, perhaps not quite that far. But Denver and Cleveland and Savannah and Las Vegas and Miami and San Diego and Jacksonville, absolutely.

Your fearless reporter, however, was barred from attending by the strictures of Jewish law, which does not allow men to hear women perform as musical vocalists. Indeed every one of the tens of thousands who have flocked nationwide to this performance has been of the female persuasion. And if Legal hadn't warned me about a possible lawsuit, I would be allowed to tell you that this is a tough crowd to please. But please she has, and pleased they are, as they all gushingly assure me in breathless cascades of superlatives.

"You don't understand," a Miami woman begins" (No surprise there, men never do.) "She is performing at a peak of talent. She acts with utter authenticity. She writes fabulous lyrics and she sings them like an angel." Wait, do angels have passion? "And she sings with such passion." Okay, I suppose they do.

"I felt like her story was my story," says one woman who grew up as a Reform Jew and moved toward Orthodoxy in her twenties. "She captures perfectly all the self-doubt of the younger years, compounded by the secular experience of wading through the swamp of user boyfriends looking for someone who really cares for YOU, who really listens to YOU. Then the steps of learning to commit both to the man you love and to a whole new way of living." My appetite is whetted; isn't there some special dispensation for men with Press cards?

Chana Appel is the Director of NCSY, a nominally Orthodox youth organization that has a broad range of membership, for Cleveland, Ohio. I track her down in Washington D.C. where she is leading a huge tour of young people, to cull her impressions of the show. After telling me how much she loved it personally, she describes the profound impact that it had on the young women under her care.

"They were thoroughly impressed by the way in which she had fully utilized her talent within a full religious observance. They were profoundly moved by the fact that she had freely chosen their way of life. They were blown away by the incredible quality of the production. They were just amazed by the beauty of her commitment and the poetic way that she expressed it. They were so dazzled by the fact that she went on the road together with her entire family so that her moment in the sun would not come at their expense but rather be shared by all of them and experienced as a family unit." I think that means they liked it.

Yet of all the people that I interviewed about their experience in the audience, the one who sent a perfumed arrow to touch me deep in my jaded journalist's heart was Leslie Sartor of Denver, a splendid writer in her own right whose screenplay, Cry Of The Dove, about the exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel, is currently in pre-production. Leslie brings a unique perspective to this spectator sport, in that she remembers Rachel Factor from her days as Tina, when she was traveling with the troupe of Miss Saigon.

"When I saw the beginning of the play, I immediately recognized Tina. I was transported back and I remembered her so vividly, her wit and her grace and her gentleness. Then when she reached her first prayer as a Jew, I could not believe my eyes. I literally watched her morph into a new person. I saw Tina become Rachel before my very eyes. And I saw the two personas melding into one whole woman, a woman who has found true joy, who is so very happy!"

Well, that's enough sentimental goo for me for one day; time for me to return to being my curmudgeonly old self, the hard-bitten reporter who would push aside my grandmother just to get the story. But for a minute there, I kid you not, I had a strange feeling at the corner of my eye. Almost, you might say, a sort of moisture. Heck, it must be raining or something.

The last word goes to Rachel herself, this from the lyrics to one of her numbers:

"I find the answer is not a choice
It's simply where I walk,
And dreams are for the young
And my life is here at last."