[Libri] Play about Renaissance book-burning Jan. 20

[Prof. James Wald (der Geist, der stets verneint)]

Dear Colleagues,

Although the colleges are still on break, I wanted to call to your  
attention an event that should be of interest.

Author and translator Peter Wortsman has several times visited the  
Valley under the auspices of the Hampshire College Center for the  
Book, the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, and most  
recently, the Amherst College German Department.

On the first of those occasions, he delivered a lecture on his  
translation of German humanist Johannes Reuchlin's argument against  
the burning of the Talmud.  Mr. Wortsman then wrote a play about the  
controversy, excerpts of which the players of the Renaissance Center  
read on the occasion of a conference on Jews in the Renaissance.   
This visit in turn led to a collaboration with the Hampshire  
Shakespeare Company and the present event.

Jim Wald


DATE: January 1, 2006 – IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Hampshire Shakespeare to Stage Reading of New Play

Amherst, MA – A story of courage and dedication to the defense of  
religious rights, long obscured by the veils of history, is uncovered  
in New York playwright Peter Wortsman’s powerful drama, Burning  
Words, which will receive a staged public reading on Friday, January  
20, at 7:00 PM in the Glass Room of the Bangs Community Center in  
downtown Amherst. The reading is presented by the Hampshire  
Shakespeare Company as part of its mission to encourage new dramatic  
works. The playwright will be available to discuss the play following  
the reading. Admission is free, and parking is available in the  
adjacent lot and parking garage. For more information, call  
413-548-8118 or visit the Company’s web site  
(www.hampshireshakespeare.org).
In the early 1500s, an era marked by the lingering excesses of the  
Inquisition and the initial rumblings of protest by Martin Luther,  
Emperor Maximillian I was persuaded to order the confiscation and  
destruction of holy Hebrew texts by rabidly antisemitic forces. One  
German Christian scholar, Johannes Reuchlin, argued forcefully for  
their preservation as the foundations of the Christian faith, adding  
the "the Jew is as worthy in the eyes of our Lord God as I am." The  
play tells the story of Reuchlin’s confrontation with his church and  
his society in one of the most religiously turbulent times in  
European history.
Peter Wortsman is a playwright and author who translated Reuchlin’s  
historic defense of the Talmud and other holy books, Recommendation  
Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books for the  
first time into English. This book, on which the play is based, was  
the subject of a day-long symposium at New York University in 2001  
attended by a wide variety of scholars, clergy, diplomates and  
publishers. An earlier dramatic work by Wortsman, The Tattooed Man,  
based on interviews with a Holocaust survivor, was published in 2000.  
For the more information about this and other Hampshire Shakespeare  
Company projects, call 413-548-8118 or visit the Company’s web site  
(www.hampshireshakespeare.org).
###




413-587-9398
lucindakidder at hotmail.com
jlkidder at english.umass.edu


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