Delanie Valencia

Professor King

Theater 1

18 February 2024

Anonymous Lubavitch Woman

The anonymous Lubavitch woman is a preschool teacher in Crown Heights recalling a

memory with a young black boy. She is entertaining and confident during the interview and chats

as if she is speaking to an old friend. But, compared to the rest of the characters, she really

emphasizes humor in the face of a daunting subject (the events in Crown Heights in the 1990s)

and in fact, doesn’t even mention the disturbance once. Her humor can almost be interpreted as a

defense mechanism that works to avoid any real and burdensome thoughts or feelings and

potentially problematic opinions to come to light. Oftentimes, this defense can be seen through

her tendency to avoid eye contact with the interviewer. Specifically in the beginning of the

segment, she repeatedly glances off to the side or to the clothes in her hands and this comes

across as a nervous habit that perhaps she is unwillingly performing out of a fear of not coming

across as her funny, unproblematic self that she portrays externally.

The aforementioned clothes in her hands come from the laundry that she is handling and

adding on to the nervousness or anxiety of her external self, the fidgeting with the clothes

appears to be an effective mechanism to simultaneously keep her hands busy and also distract a

little attention from the conversation. Performing a physical act is quite distracting to both the

person doing it as well as the person watching and when the focus is not completely on the words

being said, there is less pressure to have everything you say be correct or perfect. The

anonymous woman outwardly portrays herself as laid back, humorous, and at times through her
voice and hand gestures, even theatrical. However, sometimes this appearance slips and through

her tendency to keep herself busy and active as well as her focus on humor, there appears to be

avoidance of the topic at hand in the rest of the play.

As she recalls the story about needing to ask a non-Jewish individual to come turn off the

radio, her hand gestures and facial expressions are quite large. This further builds on the idea of

distractions as she is such an effective and entertaining storyteller that it doesn’t exactly bother

the viewer that there is no direct, deep, or opinionated comment on the Crown Heights situation.

There is a moment that her confident, performance-like mask slips when she suddenly pauses,

stops moving for one of the first times, and just looks down with a frown as she doubts her

explanation of Jewish rules during Shabbat. She verbalizes this doubt stating that she “hope[s]

[she] has the law correct” and is seemingly uncomfortable with silence by the short length of her

pause and her fillers of “ohs” and “ums.” But, as soon as she remembers exactly what she

wanted to say, she snaps right back into her composed, smiling character immediately. This

self-doubt and uncomfortability with awkwardness does not line up with her external portrayal of

the entertainer she was acting on earlier. Moreover, this internal doubt and external self-assured

personality conflict in subtle yet interesting ways throughout the segment that build on her

avoidance of direct mentions of the disturbances in the neighborhood.

That being said, in her story she mentions how she went out to find a non-Jewish person

and she finds a black boy and she states while shaking her head that they did not know each

other and follows by saying “not Jewish” which although not direct or detailed, comes across as

an internal division of Jewish people and black people. Mostly because she had already stated

that she specifically went out looking for someone who wasn’t Jewish. So, for her to mention

that he was not Jewish again and then say that “he was black” to some people may convey the
idea that black people cannot be Jewish. However, she seems to realize this and just like she has

been the entire segment, she continues to avoid any bold opinions or controversy and clarifies,

“you can be Jewish if you were black” to settle this and clear the possibilities of offending

anyone. She also mentions that she gathered that he wasn’t Jewish because he wasn’t wearing a

yarmulke and shrugs with a smile while explaining that due to his race and lack of yarmulke that

she “figured” he was not Jewish. This very, very subtly builds on the divide between the two

groups that she seems this entire time to attempt to avoid and the face she makes while shrugging

almost conveys a “you can’t really blame me for assuming” message before she smiles again to

jump right back into the innocent, silly woman she has been playing the rest of the segment.

I mostly summarized her internal vs external throughout the segment as I felt this was a

harder, less direct character to analyze and although challenging, it was interesting to interpret

the things she didn’t say through the things she did. I felt she shared a lot of conversational habits

as a lot of people including myself that we do not always realize we are doing so it was also

fascinating to give these a purpose or reason that collided with what she was saying or trying not

to say.