Free Women's Minyan by Naomi Ragen

and come back for when you feel like it.
     
    SHEINHOFF : May Hashem watch over us. Frume!
     
    FRUME : [ furious. ] Everything she was taught she had to question. “Why can’t I go to a school that prepares for matriculation exams?” Imagine, going to college, a religious girl! “Why do men thank God for not making them a woman?” Always, she had to be smarter than everybody else. So smart she was she couldn’t find her way to the bathroom at night. [ to CHANA .] You swore to tell the truth, so tell them how you wet the bed until you were practically Bat Mitzvah….
     
    CHANA : [ supported by ZEHAVA .] Was it any wonder after all those beatings? Lying in bed, afraid more would come. And they came, the beatings…even though I washed your floors, and polished your silver, and peeled your potatoes to win your love—all I ever got was the belt.

     
    ADINA : What cruelty!
     
    CHANA : No, Adina. Cruelty is when you take a child’s hand [ takes FRUME ’s hand ] and lead her out into the street in her soaked nightgown, stopping neighbors to complain how stupid she is, and how wonderful her older sister is. [ she looks down at her hand. ] While the child stands there, trying to convince herself she’s a piece of wood, without ears or eyes or a heart….
    FRUME , embarrassed, confused, throws off CHANA ’s hand. BLUMA , SHAINE RUTH stare at FRUME , appalled.
     
    FRUME : Shame makes us fear sin. I did to you what my mother did to me, and her mother did to her. My husband refused to punish his pretty daughter, so I was forced to teach her some self-discipline. Your father just spoiled you. He was weak.
     
    CHANA : You were always jealous of the love he gave me. Behind your back, he sent me signals…encouragement. I only survived because of him.
    The circle moves in the opposite direction. BLUMA suddenly enters the circle facing CHANA .
     
    BLUMA : What does any of this have to do with us ? With what you did to us ?
     
    SHAINE RUTH : Bluma, don’t!
     
    BLUMA : [ hugging her sister, but undeterred. ] You tell us that Granny Frume was a terrible mother? She didn’t give you things? She hit you? Well, you were much worse. You ran away! Who do you think had to take care of your children while you went looking for happiness? We did, the “older” girls…Older…
    SHAINE RUTH tries once again to make her stop, and is repulsed.
     
    BLUMA : I was seventeen years old. I still needed a mother. Instead, I had to become one for ten children. You always taught us we had to make choices in life. But you didn’t give us any. You were a grown, educated woman…. You had a choice, yet you chose to abandon us, to blacken our name. You chose to ruin my chances to marry the man I wanted, a scholar, Joseph Graetz. And now you’ve come back to ruin Shaine Ruth’s chances. [ to SHAINE RUTH .] Tell her! Say something! [ to CHANA .] This was your choice, Ima . So, now I get to choose. And I choose not to know you. You are nothing to me anymore. A stranger.
     
    CHANA : [ in pain. ] It wasn’t a choice, Blumaleh. It was a matter of life or death. But how could you have known…? I did everything to hide what was happening between me and your father….
     
    BLUMA : Don’t you dare blame Father! You ran and he stayed. For Father, the Torah is his whole life, yet he took care of us instead of you. Father is a model of righteousness! [ returns to the outer circle. ]
    Outside, MEN’S VOICES are heard praying. Their presence seeps inside the room full of women, a constant, dominating force that surrounds them.
     

Scene two
     
    The circle turns and stops. Memory comes and retreats. CHANA is alone.
     
    CHANA : The model of righteousness. Yes…When I met him, he was [ beat .]…Yankele Sheinhoff, the brilliant Talmud scholar. The first time we went out alone, he said he wanted to touch me. I knew it was forbidden to say such things. But I thought: How wonderful. He’s studied so much. He knows the truth outside the rules. He’ll