Fourteen Jewish Flavored 10-Minute Plays

Here is a collection of lively, diverse plays. Each one, in just 10 minutes, captures a part of the Jewish cultural experience. The stories they tell are - in various combinations - comical, heartwarming, poignant, and ethically challenging. One is deeply tragic. The collection begins in pre-history with a re-imagining of the lives of Adam and Eve and their son Cain. The next play is set in the Middle Ages. Then, in an Eastern European shtetl in the 19th century. The rest take place in the 20th and early 21st centuries and are set in New York City; Jewish Florida; Lubbock, Texas; and anywhere USA. For each play there is a brief interpretative essay about the meaning of the play and, in many instances, the circumstances in Dave’s life or family history on which the play is based. There is also an introduction and mini-essays on such topics as Jewish ethics, anti-Semitism, the special world of Jewish Florida, the Jewish love of argument, and Jewish conceptions of the afterlife. The introduction, the plays, and the essays can be read from beginning to end as a wide-ranging but also highly personal literary work that offers many perspectives on Jewish history and culture.

Dave Farkas was born in New York City in 1947. He was raised in Lower Manhattan and the New Jersey suburbs. He holds a Ph.D. in British literature and studied and taught in Rochester, NY; Chicago; Minneapolis; Lubbock, TX; Morgantown, WV; and Seattle.