Jonathan M. Hess. Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 263 pp.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage by Jonathan M. Hess Anat Feinberg Jonathan M. Hess. Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 263 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000278 Why a book about a tear-jerking melodrama that is scarcely remembered today? In his last book, Deborah and Her Sisters, which appeared shortly before his sudden and untimely death, Jonathan M. Hess makes the case for a reappraisal of one the great blockbusters of the nineteenth century: Salomon Hermann Mosenthal's play Deborah. Following its premiere in Hamburg in 1849, this play about a beautiful Jewish woman forsaken by her Christian lover took German and Austrian stages by storm. It was performed throughout Europe, the British Empire, and North America, giving rise to innumerable spin-offs. Millions of people saw the play and felt for the suffering Jewess. Hess argues that the audiences' tears should be taken seriously. He shows how the play provided both Jewish and non-Jewish theatergoers with an opportunity to develop empathy for Jewish suffering in a century in which the theatrical representation of Jews was still shaped by Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. In his introduction, Hess points to other literary and theatrical stereotypes of Jews during that period, such as the figure of the belle juive or Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's noble Jew Nathan. Subsequent chapters focus on the place of Deborah in this long theatrical tradition. The first chapter offers a close and illuminating analysis of the original text, probing the literary techniques by which Mosenthal, a successful Jewish playwright and author of opera libretti, fostered empathy for his Jewish heroine. In a rural Austrian village, Joseph is torn between his Christian sweetheart Hanna and the Jewish Deborah. The personal conflict turns into a touchstone for the entire community. As Hess notes, the power of the play derives "from tensions between Christian modes of compassion and the quest for a more secular ethos of liberal sympathy" (39). The drama of the Jewess Deborah who abandons her vows of vengeance to seek reconciliation with Christians also features the figure of a male Jewish leader, Ruben, whose praise of America as a secular paradise where Jews and Christians are joined in "brotherly love" prompts Deborah's change of mind. The transformation of an embittered, rancorous woman into a proponent of universal humanity and love gained thunderous ovations from spectators. Hess observes that the highly emotional story "was elaborately constructed around the goal of making sympathy with Jewish suffering into the ultimate theatrical pleasure, one that allowed spectators to revel in their own liberal sentiments" (61). The second chapter describes the worldwide success of the play while also considering the various adaptations of Deborah—all of which offered, as it were, variations on a theme. Mosenthal's play was translated into numerous languages and performed around the globe, including in Australia, India, and Jamaica. Augustin Daly's adaptation of the play, Leah, the Forsaken—"an even more dramatic tearjerker," according to Hess (86)—was successfully staged in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Published about a decade after Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, the play took up the themes of "bigotry, superstition and intolerance" (81). No [End Page 235] less successful was Charles Smith Cheltnam's version Deborah; or, the Jewish Maiden's Wrong. In its highly dramatic last scene, the tormented, proud Jewess is murdered by the malicious schoolmaster whom she accuses as, "Hypocrite! … Disgrace of Israel!" (96). Hess shows how both Daly and Cheltnam sought to outdo Mosenthal by giving the audience a "thrill and a good cry." In addition to these and other adaptations (including poems, operas, and even three silent movies), Hess points to a rich tradition of parodies and satires. The British Debo-Leah, premiered in London in 1864, ends with the heroine Debo-Leah marrying her nemesis Nathan, after informing the audience that she would not have done so "if this wasn't a Burlesque" (109). The original Deborah and her various offshoots owe much of...