Student Matinee Series Learning Guide - The Kansas City Repertory ...

Before the Civil War, there were 150,000 Jews in America; by 1920 there were more than 2 million immigrants
who fled their native Europe to find safe harbor in this country (my grandparents and great grandparents among
them.) The Jewish family depicted in this play was representative of small but flourishing communities that
settled in the United States in the early 19 th century, and Richmond and other major Southern cities had a number
of prominent Jewish families in their ranks. One in five Southern Jewish families owned slaves, though more
typically a small number to support an urban household rather than the hundreds or thousands owned by
plantation owners. In fact, as a character in The Whipping Man points out, the slaves of the DeLeon household
had never seen a plantation and lived lives in close quarters with their masters.
For the fictional DeLeon family, those close quarters led the family to impart their Jewish religion to Simon, John,
and Simon’s wife and daughter. That the slaves clung to their Jewishness with fervor makes sense, as so much of
Jewish religion focuses on the narrative of the freeing of the Israelite slaves in Egypt by Moses. Our play begins
just days after Simon and John have been freed because of the end of the war. In the storm of history in which
they are caught, these two former slaves and their former owner come to terms with the new reality of what the
terrible legacy of slavery has cost each of them, and what it means to be delivered from bondage to freedom – the
most profound explication of the annual ritual of the Passover Seder and its instruction that we must each believe
that we personally were freed in the Exodus from Egypt.
Directing this play is a real source of joy for me, and working with these three astonishingly great actors has been
especially meaningful. I hope you enjoy Lopez’s play and these performances, and I hope the play’s larger
questions inform your celebrations of the rituals of spring, both ancient and new.
My very best,
Eric Rosen
Artistic Director
3