www.sovietzion.com

 

 Giles Howe and Katy Lipson's new musical Soviet Zion is set in an obscure region of the former Soviet Union known as Birobidzhan, an area of Siberia that was set aside in the 1920's as a homeland for Russian Jewry. It was Stalin's response to Hertzl's Zionism (the return of the Jewish Diaspora to the Land of Israel) which the Stalinist govornment at the time found enormously threatening: fearing that the several million Jews in Russia at the time would turn their back on the Motherland in favour of the percieved politically disloyal Zionism,  the Kremlin set about establishing Birobidzhan as an alternative Jewish homeland; a seular Yiddish state, as opposed to the religiously motivated Hebrew state of Zion. This happened many years before the State of Israel was actualised. The story of "Soviet Zion" looks at how the lives of three very different families who settle there intertwine.

 

Establishing the JAR (Jewish Autonomous Region) and Birobidzhan never was quite the success that many had hoped it would be, nevertheless it still exists today - a forgotten homeland tucked away on the border between Siberia and China. Most of the thousands of people who moved there out of the Ghettos and Stetls in the name of Soviet Yiddish Agriculturalistm in support of the new state ideology moved straight back to whence they came, though some still stayed and battled through the terrible Siberian conditions and the many curious dramas wrought by history.

 

The musical Soviet Zion looks at the struggle for identity and belonging, the quest for a homeland, and human hope in the face of extreme adversity. A STAGE KINDLY presented the world debut showcase of this show on October 19th at The Rosemary Branch Theatre as part of it's Branching Out festival, starring the show's compoers and also Arabella Rodrigo, Julia Buckley, and Nancy Hill. You can watch it right here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are especially interested in hearing from any Jewish, Heimishe, Zionist, Pro-Israeli, or Yiddish Cultural Heritage organisations, or individuals with an interest in these topics, who may be interested in offering their support to the project. 
 

We came here to be peasants,

To work upon the land.

We came here to be equal;

Our dreams and goals weren't grand.

Our dreams and hopes are withered

As the autumn whips the land -

It strips away the life we built,

And ruins what we'd planned.

Our faith in G-d is weaker

Than it ever was before:

It's whittled further every year...

The shavings on the floor

Are being swept about now,

And collected in a heap.

They're brushed into a basket,

Not put away to keep,

They are carried to a bonfire

And scattered to the wind;

Carried upwards in the current,

But once the smoke has thinned

They quickly fall back downwards:

Burning embers hit the ground.

Thereby my faith is cauterized

Reminders all around.

We came here to be peasants

But we're dying with that dream.

The land will live on after us;