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''Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza'' is a six-page, 10-minute play by British playwright Caryl Churchill, written in response to the 2008-2009 Israel military strike on Gaza, and first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre on 6 February 2009. Churchill, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has said that anyone wishing to produce it may do so ''gratis'', so long as they hold a collection for the people of Gaza at the end. ''Seven Jewish Children'' consists of seven scenes spread over roughly seventy years, in which Jewish adults discuss what, or whether, their children should be told about certain events in recent Jewish history that the play alludes to only indirectly : The Holocaust, Jewish immigration to Palestine, the creation of Israel, the flight or expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the dispute over water, the First Intifada, the death of Rachel Corrie, the building of the West Bank barrier, the death of Muhammad al-Durrah, Palestinian suicide attacks, Hamas rocket attacks, and the 2008 bombing of Gaza. The play takes the form of a litany, repeating the phrases "Tell her", "Don't tell her" to reflect an ostensible tension within Israel and the Jewish community over how to describe events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own/Tell her again this is our promised land/Don't tell her they said it was a land without people/Don't tell her I wouldn't have come if I'd known/Tell her maybe we can share/Don't tell her that." Churchill has been particularly criticized for a monologue within the play purportedly representing a hardline Israeli view: "tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it's not her/Don't tell her that."〔(''Seven Jewish Children'' ), a production of the play by ''The Guardian'', with Jennie Stoller.〕〔 Reaction to the play has been mixed. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has criticized it as "horrifically anti-Israel," and "beyond the boundaries of reasonable political discourse," and Jeffrey Goldberg of ''The Atlantic'' called the play a blood libel, "the mainstreaming of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes,",〔"The Royal Court Theatre's Blood Libel" Jeffrey Goldberg, ''The Atlantic'' 9 February 2009 ()〕 while playwright Tony Kushner and academic Alisa Solomon, both Jewish-American critics of Israeli policy, argue in ''The Nation'' that the play is dense, beautiful and elusive, and that "()ny play about the crisis in the Middle East that doesn't arouse anger and distress has missed the point."〔 ==Description== The play is based around the increasingly urgent repetition of "Tell her," and "''Don't'' tell her".〔Higgins, Charlotte. ("Is Caryl Churchill's play Seven Jewish Children antisemitic?" ), ''The Guardian'', 18 February 2009.〕 Occasionally breaking into this pattern is the injunction "don't frighten her", three significant words〔Carol Rocamora "(The power of theater: Eight minutes about Seven Jewish Children )", ''Broad Street Review'', 16 May 2009〕 that are also the last in the play. These motifs can be seen in the opening lines of the play:
Although Churchill indicates that the scenes concern different children, thus speakers change between them, she leaves it for each production to decide how many adults take part and how the lines are shared between them.〔 ''The Guardian'', for example, has produced a version with Jennie Stoller that is a simple monologue throughout. The first two scenes concern the Holocaust, featuring one family that are hiding from Nazis and another wondering how to tell their child of the many family members who have been killed. Later scenes are about episodes in the development of the Israeli-Arab conflict: one family is migrating to Jerusalem, another wondering what to tell their daughter about Palestinian Arabs, the next discusses an Israeli victory, and the next are speaking as the Israeli West Bank barrier is being built and when a Palestinian child has been shot. The culminating scene is during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict.〔Caryl Churchill (2009) (''Seven Jewish Children'' ), p.7, London, Nick Hern Books〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seven Jewish Children」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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