Ellis Samantha - Cling to Me Like Ivy

Samantha Ellis CLING TO ME
LIKE IVY NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk For my family Introduction In May 2004, when Sheitel-gate began, I was working part time in Josephs Bookstore in Temple Fortune in North London. It started with a rumour that many of the sheitels the wigs worn by married Orthodox Jewish women might contravene Jewish law. A London-based rabbi had discovered that the hair for these wigs came from a Hindu temple in India, and since Orthodox Judaism considers Hinduism to involve idol worship which would make the wigs questionable in Jewish law he had gone on a fact-finding mission to the Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh. From there he went to Jerusalem to make a decision that would affect Jewish women all over the world. And in the meantime, no one knew what to do. I saw women wearing rubber swimming caps, or synthetic fright wigs.

There were bonfires of wigs on the streets of London, Jerusalem and New York. The New York Times called it an emotional upheaval within [the] Orthodox Jewish community and thats how it felt to me. The bookshop was full of women wanting to discuss it, and the debates were fierce and passionate. A lot of the press coverage excluded the womens voices but it was the women who interested me not just the Jewish women covering their hair from their wedding nights onwards, but the Hindu women who tipped their heads forward for a barber to shave them with a few deft strokes of a straight-edge blade, fulfilling pledges that if their rice crop was successful, perhaps, or if their child recovered from typhoid, they would sacrifice their beauty. I read that at the train station in Tirupati, you could tell who was arriving and who was leaving because the women who were leaving were all bald. And their hair might travel right across the world to a woman in Temple Fortune, a bride perhaps, nervous and excited about getting her first sheitel .

The hair seemed like a communication between these two women and after all they were both doing it (the shaving and the covering) for their faith. I knew I wanted to turn this into a play when I read that Victoria Beckham had inadvertently sparked the whole crisis. Asked if her hair extensions came from Russian prisoners forced to shave their heads, shed joked that she had half Russian Cell Block H on her head. In the resulting fuss (inevitably called Extension-gate) it emerged that vast quantities of hair in the international hair trade came from the Tirupati Temple, which auctioned off four hundred tons of hair a year. I loved the idea that Posh Spice had unwittingly created havoc and that shed also enabled the Jewish community to start talking about hair covering in a really liberated way. And I couldnt resist the image of an Orthodox rabbi reading OK! magazine.

This was the first big crisis in Jewish law to play itself out online. For two heady weeks, Jewish blogs and web forums went wild. It felt like everything was being questioned, and it seemed possible that the laws on head covering might radically change. When a total ban on human-hair wigs was announced, many communities found this too stringent, and made their own decisions. I wanted to write about how diverse Jewish law is, how fabulously contrary. The best thing about writing this play was feeling that I was connecting to another long history of Jewish storytelling.

All the Jews I know are full of stories. One of my earliest memories is of sitting under the kitchen table, aged four, pulling the leaves off parsley stalks for tabbouleh, while the grown-ups told stories above my head. I know Baghdad, where my family is from, entirely through stories. I know who I am because of those stories. One of the books I picked up at Josephs was Avivah Gottlieb Zornbergs The Beginning of Desire . I had always thought the Talmud was a book of men arguing about the law, but Zornberg made me realise it was also full of stories.

I love that the sages sat around like Hollywood screenwriters, looking at the stories that didnt quite make sense to them, filling in the gaps a bit of backstory here, a new character there. They even wrote dialogue. The plays title comes from a midrash on the Book of Ruth. Its Boazs chat-up line to Ruth, as imagined by Rashi. Its a much better line than anything Ive ever made up. Samantha Ellis Thanks Thank you to Shona Kundu, Lucy Michaels, Phil Pritchard, Dov Stekel, Chitra Sundaram, Andy Whiteoak and all at Gali Wigs for helping with the research for this play.

Thank you to Caroline Jester for supporting the play from the seed of the idea, to Robert Anasi, Robin Booth, Stephen Brown, Gordon Haber, Paul King, Dominic Leggett, Matthew Morrison and Ben Musgrave for reading drafts and saying useful things, to Clare Lizzimore for directing an early reading, and to all the actors who read the play. Thank you to Nick Quinn for steadfast support, Emma Ayech for pop-culture expertise, and friendship, to Miranda Cook for cheerleading, to Naomi Alderman for stiffening my spine, to the MacDowell Colony where I wrote the first draft, and to all at Josephs Bookstore where I had the idea. And a huge thank you to Sarah Esdaile for bringing it to the stage. The writing of this play was supported by a grant from the European Association of Jewish Culture. Characters SHMULEY ( short for Shmuel ) , fifties, is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and a widower RIVKA , twenty-one, is Shmuleys daughter, a nursery-school teacher DAVID , twenty-three, is Rivkas fianc, an optician MALKA , seventies, is Rivkas maternal grandmother, born in Whitechapel, the daughter of Russian immigrants LEELA ( short for Leelavathi ) , twenty-one, is Rivkas best friend, a medical student, a Hindu who was born in India and emigrated when she was five PATRICK , twenty-five, is a tree-sitter The actors playing David and Shmuley also play security guards Setting The play is set partly in the kitchen of Shmuleys house in North London, and partly in a wood in Hertfordshire, in the spring of 2004. ACT ONE Scene One A Sunday afternoon in May 2004.

SHMULEY s kitchen in North London. A door leads to a hallway, where the telephone is, and also to the front door and the rest of the house. The kitchen is tatty but spotless, with two sinks and colour-coded crockery and cutlery. A Jewish festivals calendar hangs on the wall. A huge saucepan of soup is bubbling on the hob. Sun is coming through the window, shining on RIVKA , who is standing on a wooden chair in her wedding dress and socks, her arms up; occasionally she nervously touches her hair.

There is something odd about it, though we dont yet know what. The dress is long-sleeved, high-necked, white and austere, but beautiful. MALKA , her mouth full of pins, is pinning it to take it in. LEELA sits at the table, with OK! magazine open in front of her. LEELA. Cos skinny women dont have daughters.

Look at Victoria Beckham. Shes got Romeo, but wheres her Juliet? Shes got Brooklyn but wheres her? RIVKA. Chelsea? LEELA. Yeah. If youre too thin your body thinks theres going to be hard times so you get boys. MALKA. MALKA.

Did you get this from your doctor class or OK! magazine? RIVKA. Whens Victoria Beckham got hard times? MALKA. Well, whats-his-face is having an affair. RIVKA. Is he? LEELA. Where have you been, Riv? Underwater? RIVKA.

Whos he having an affair with? MALKA ( sniffing the dress ). Does it smell like mothballs still? RIVKA. Not that Page Three Girl again? LEELA ( sniffing the dress ). No. MALKA. He had an affair already and she didnt divorce him? I suppose you cant blame him.

Whats-his-face. He probably just wants a zaftig girl, some flesh to squeeze. LEELA. Shes put on weight; they dont call her Skeletal Spice any more. MALKA. Shes still a ferkrimpter .