Selichot/Yom Kippur Program (online) - Returning
Returning was created in the summer of 2020, and I recommend that you present it as a Zoom reading rather than an in-person experience. Like its predecessor, The Gates are Closing, it interweaves a minyan of characters varied in life stage, circumstance, and concerns. Its characters present interludes of dramatic chanting, enacting/reacting to parts of the liturgy, while sharing their individual innermost thoughts and feelings: a recently minted graduate student, suddenly frozen in time; a girl contemplating her virtual bat mitzvah amidst family anguish; an Israeli-American looking back on his life-choices; a rabbi facing hard decisions; a surgical resident struggling for courage and stamina... Some of Returning’s characters are new, others reprise as old favorites from The Gates are Closing, speaking their stories anew amidst the 2020 pandemic. For more information about presentation, sample press release, post-reading discussion guide, and costs for rights to the play and a script, email Merle Feld via our Contact Page.
Praise for Returning
Last year, the sense of panic was huge as we faced zoom services for the High Holidays, but sourcing Merle Feld's new play, Returning, solved our problems for Selichot. The play was amazing! As we watched the characters face their personal dilemmas and difficulties, magnified by the pandemic and lockdowns, we too were led to face our fears, our failures, and our challenges in this new era. It had people glued to their screens. And it was so easy to present on zoom – with one rehearsal we had a gripping drama that opened our season of teshuvah with panache and really set the spiritual tone for yom tov. A wonderful resource for the season of renewal.
- Rabbi Jackie Tabick, West Central Liberal Synagogue, London
Thank you, Merle, for creating a pandemic-ready Selichot program… and for your formidable gifts to capture the human soul through describing human experience! In the midst of such a difficult month of Elul last year, our congregational Zoom presentation of Returning was a balm for all of our souls. The thought-provoking, heart-opening stories held something for everyone who watched. And as for the actors, we engaged congregants from age 9 to 79!
- Rabbi Paula Mack Drill, Orangetown Jewish Center
The play was extraordinary, it was just what I needed and didn't know it, welcoming me into a reflective High Holiday mood. It seemed entirely different from The Gates Are Closing, although of course both are about the High Holidays and self-exploration. Those voices, those people, were authentic and deep. I felt the struggles of the characters – Murray the hazzan, Alicia – I felt tied up in their lives.
- John J. Clayton, author of Parkinson’s Blues, Many Seconds into the Future, Mitzvah Man, Wrestling with Angels
I think I cried from the bat mitzvah girl to the end of the play… I am still processing…
- Rabbi Rhonda Shapiro-Rieser