Father-son drama revolves around synagogue history

ON STAGE What: The Original Deed Where: Congregation Emanu-El, 1461 Blanshard St. When: Nov. 15, 16, 18, 19, 8 p.m. Tickets: $15-$20, ticketrocket.co or at door

Mention the name Sid Tafler and thoughts invariably turn to his career as a teacher, CBC radio commentator and journalist, notably his tenure as editor of Monday Magazine during its heyday as an alternative weekly.

What isn’t as well-known is that the Montreal-born wordsmith, whose work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Macleans and the New York Times, is also a playwright, albeit not a prolific one. Tafler notes that it has been 20 years since he wrote his last play, the 1997 Fringe Festival hit Ghost on the Road, and it will probably take as long before he’ll write another.

While his new play, The Original Deed, is different in many ways from Ghost of the Road, about a James Bay fisherman who forsakes his own family to search for the father he never met, there are some similarities. The Original Deed, which opens Tuesday at Congregation Emanu-El, centres on the conflict that arises within a family whose patriarch, Sam Abelman, fights to save their temple from the wrecking ball.

The Holocaust survivor and jeweler finds himself battling with his son, Morris, who wants to sell the historic building to a developer and relocate the congregation to the suburbs.

According to production notes, once the father/son struggles reaches a climax, “Sam invokes the Original Deed, and a ghostly figure from his past emerges to salvage his dreams and his memories.”

While the architectural centrepiece and venue for the play, set in 1980, is Congregation Emanu-El, Canada’s oldest synagogue, it’s the father-and-son dynamics that it has in common with his previous play, Tafler said.

Tafler says it was his fascination with the history of the beautifully restored 1863 synagogue, and a nudge from Zelda Dean, Emanu-el’s theatrical wunderkind, that inspired him.

“Why don’t you write a play about the synagogue?” suggested Dean, who has staged several productions at the landmark heritage building and National Historic Site.

Tafler’s research unearthed some fascinating written archival documentation, mostly recalling the gold-rush years and colourful late-19th-century history, but not so much about its early to mid-20th century history.

There was easier access, of course, to contemporary history, when the synagogue became a “very dynamic” institution with the involvement of prominent local citizens.

It’s a story rooted in reality to some degree, said Tafler, who notes that many Jewish communities in North America have either contemplated or gone through with selling the “shul” and moving to the suburbs.

“I heard there was a time between the late ’60s to nearly the ’80s when they seriously considered selling the building before its restoration,” said Tafler, a longtime member of the congregation. “I could find very little about the discussions as to why they didn’t go ahead. Even people who were around at the time had little recollection, so I wanted to fill in those blanks.”

The potential for conflict is embodied in the story of Sam, who is so desperate to keep the temple, while his son, who heads the building committee, wants to sell it.

In the play, Morris’s hope is to sell and move to a location in Gordon Head, a desire that ignites heated conversation with Sam’s wife, Rivka, his other son Jack, Sam’s lawyer and members of the community itself.

Sam is driven in part by his own childhood memories in Germany, when he witnessed his shul being looted and burned on Kristallnacht before he was shipped off to England, never to see his family again.

Tafler, whose cast will be bringing his play to life in the synagogue’s sanctuary with the blessing of Rabbi Harry Brechner, said he considers it “a great privilege being allowed to perform it in this sacred space.”

The Original Deed has been in development in its present form since last summer, when Tafler was looking for a director and met Tony Cain, the theatre instructor and Target Theatre artistic director whose local credits include Langham Court Theatre productions. “Then he said: ‘Why don’t you direct this and I’ll mentor you?’ ” said Tafler, adding that theatre director Bev Holmes then came on board as another mentor, and Harriet Carter as stage manager. “I learned a lot from those folks, but Tony and Bev really did the directing. I did the observing and commenting.”

While the action is set in a synagogue and involves the local Jewish community, Tafler said The Original Deed is as much “about Victoria culture” and touches on universal themes all theatregoers can appreciate.