By Education Fellow Reva Frankel Tomorrow brings the end of
Black History Month. Most often when we discuss the Jewish
connection to this month, we think of Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel or other notable Jews involved in the civil rights
movement. Rarely do we think back to those Jews, like so many
southerners at the time, who owned slaves before the civil war,
or the small number of enslaved African Americans who adopted
the religion of their captors. Mathew Lopez’s riveting play, The
Whipping Man, explores the lives of these Jews—both enslavers
and enslaved—and I had the chance to see it in Charlotte, where
it will run through March 9th. The play is set in a dilapidated
home in Richmond, Virginia, following the end of the Civil War.
Caleb, a wounded Jewish Confederate soldier, returns home to
find two former slaves there, Simon and John, who are also
Jewish. They must rely on each other, while also figuring out
how to relate to each other as equals. The story itself is
captivating, but the larger ideas discu