Study Circles and a Play on Identities and Disguises

Ran Huri

One day, when I was a child, my mother asked my father: David, please don't call me Frekha outside the house. 

My father was puzzled: What should I call you? Frekha is your name.

My mother replied: Fanny, Pirkhia, but not Frekha. In Israel Frekha is not a nice name*.

My father has a butcher shop in the market. In those days, my mother used to help my father in the shop. One day, my mother finished helping my father and left the shop for the bus stop.

As my mother walked off, I heard my father calling after her: Madam, Madam, you forgot your purse. My mother recognized my father's voice but didn't stop. After a few minutes my father caught up with her. Why didn't you stop, ha asked angrily, didn't you hear me calling you?

My mother replied in embarrassment: I heard you call but I didn't think it was me you were calling. Since when am I a Madam?

My father replied: You asked me not to call you Frekha in the market...
Years went by.

My brothers and I would laugh at the event. Until about ten years ago, when I chanced upon Sammy Shalom Shitrit's poem, Frekha is a Nice Name.
Then I only cried.

My mother Frekha, who was born 72 in Dimnat, brought only joy to her seven children and to those surrounding her. With true kindness towards each and everyone she met. Always with sound advice in every field and at every stage of life. Always pushing ahead for our education and studies. In her daily observance of commandments for social responsibility, with few definitions, with much humbleness and with great faith.

Rachel Abuhasira

Some one hundred and thirty men and women, education students, pupils and teachers at the Kedma School, social activists and residents of the Katamonim neighborhood met just before Purim for "Between Screens and Masks", a unique Purim event produced under the leadership of Kol Israel Haverim: The Kerem Institute for Humanistic Jewish Education and the Memizrach Shemesh Beit Midrash.

The event opened with study circles led by Kerem Institute students and Memizrach Shemesh facilitators. The study session, entitled "I don't like it when they change my name", dealt with names, identities and disguises. The animated discussions raised many questions: What is the importance of our personal identity? What benefit – and at what price – is to be gained from adhering to personal identity?

How does society view the unique identities of its members?
Together the participants discussed the process undergone by Queen Esther, who did not initially divulge her name and identity; the People of Israel in Egypt, about whom it was said that they were redeemed by virtue of their having kept their names; Almog Behar's poem that speaks of Grandmother Frekha (Simcha) who died yesterday in the Katamonim neighborhood and whose granddaughters who are called frekhot at school and remain silent.

Loaded with insights that surfaced in the study circles, the participants entered the auditorium where the play Frekha is a Nice Name, directed by Hannah Vazzana Greenwald, was presented. The unique play exemplifies – through dramatized interpretations of songs of protest and pain – the oppression and exclusion experience of the "others" in Israeli society through the stories of mizrachi women. One of the play's repeated motifs, for example, has women who are exploited by their employers in a sweatshop sewing cloth on which racist expressions uttered by some of the great figures of Zionism appear. During the play the women speak about their daily difficulties, comparing them to their past experiences, and about their relationships with the members of their families, their anger and pain interwoven with the dramatized poetry.

The experience was very moving, which was also evident in the intense discussions the audience members held with the actresses and the director. At the end of the performance many of the participants expressed their experiences, a few days before Purim.

"We waited sixty-eight years for this play", said one of the participants on her way out of the auditorium, along with many other moved participants, as the play Frekha is a Nice Name ended.

The event was produced in collaboration with the Kedma NGO and the Neshima organization, as part of the Public Domain (Rashut HaRabim) initiative – the Jerusalem forum for Jewish renewal organizations – that produces cultural events for Jerusalem's general public.

* Frekha, a very common women's name among the Jews in Morocco, took on a demeaning connotation in Israel, to the point of becoming a racist slur.

During the seminar summing-up, the principals mentioned that they were glad to have had an educational "break" that allowed them some respite from ongoing activities and provided them with an opportunity for an overall view of matters, while learning and sharing with their colleagues. They also mentioned that through the seminar's different activities and content concerning the role of school in shaping identity in a multi-cultural reality they acquired a deeper understanding concerning their role as partners as those responsible for the process in school.