Israeli Actor Explores Immigrant Experience
15 Minutes with Tzahi Moskovitz

Intimate Apparel opened at the Alliance Theatre on April 19. The play explores the life of Esther, the daughter of slaves, who works as a talented seamstress in New York at the start of the 20th century.

The story parallels the family of playwright Lynn Nottage, whose grandmother worked as a seamstress in New York and, like the play’s heroine, corresponded with and married a Panama Canal laborer.

Tzahi Moskovitz plays Mr. Marks, an Orthodox Jewish immigrant and fabric salesman whose life interacts with Esther’s in haunting ways. He spoke with reporter Suzi Brozman.

Q. What can you tell us about your character in the play? Does it have any personal significance for you?

A. Mr. Marks is the only Jewish character. It’s a beautiful role. The story is primarily about Esther. She is single, about 35, an African-American woman with a successful career. That would have been a big deal back then. Lynn chose to put in her story an Orthodox Jewish fabric salesman from Romania. I’m Romanian too. He used Romanian words. I had to ask my mom about some of them, like the word kirnat, a Romania sausage.

Q. How do you research a role like this? What does your Jewish background enable you to bring to it?

A. Lots of Jews came from Eastern Europe and settled in the Lower East Side. There’s a tenement museum in New York. I found out that Jews were among the few to do business with African-American people, simply because they didn’t have any type of prejudice toward them. It made sense. From my character’s point of view, he was a man who came on his own, his family was still in Romania.

In reading, I found there was a pogrom in 1901 in the town my family came from. Immediately after that, there was a big wave of immigration of Romanian Jews to the Lower East Side. I knew very little about my family, and here was this character talking about what they went through, the pogrom they must have experienced.

Since I’m not religious and the character is, you try to be honest, to find out what the behavior is and why it’s kept. Esther asks Mr. Marks why he wears black. He explains he wears his father’s suit. This is a sign his father is dead. He says this black fabric is his favorite; it reminds him he lives with a relationship with God and his ancestors. I come from a secular family, but I can relate to his reasons, even though they aren’t mine. In their first scene, Mr. Marks sells Esther a very special piece of fabric. She reaches for his hand, and he pulls away. He can’t touch her. It’s obvious as the play progresses they want to touch, but his religion won’t allow that.

Q. What is the relationship between these two people? How does their interaction inform the progress of the play?

A. Esther has a deep and profound relationship with this Jew who sells her fabric. Because of the time, the place and his religious belief, there is no possibility of anything happening, but these two people relate and understand each other very well. It’s an interesting choice for a playwright, when you think of the history, stories that went untold, the people who came here and lived here in the early 20th century, working-class, ethnic people. The histories are lost so often. We know little even from our own families. This is what Lynn talked about. She found a picture of her own grandma, and she knew nothing about her, what her life was like, what did she really do. Like so many families, nobody would or could talk about it.

Q. Are there other parallels between their lives?

A. Of course. He is engaged to a woman he has never met, arranged by a shadchan, or marriage broker. He is working on Orchard Street, trying to earn the money to bring his fiancée to this country. Esther too is engaged to someone she has never met except through letters. He comes to New York, and they marry. The story continues with the idea of romance and then what happens with her husband.

Q. What is your personal background?

A. I am originally from Haifa, Israel. I am 30 years old. In high school, I worked at a theater and did Israeli TV shows. After the army, I came to America to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. I never really planned to stay here for this long, but I really enjoyed school and started working and have been here ever since. I’ve played Avigdor in Yentl — the play, not the musical — off Broadway. I just finished a role in The Murder of Isaac at Center Stage in Baltimore. That’s an Israeli play about the murder of Rabin. As I said, I come from a secular family. My mom lights Shabbat candles. Her parents were Orthodox, but they died in the Holocaust.

When I’m not acting, I do a lot of yoga. I love New York, its streets, parks, the museums, the theater. And I’m enjoying Atlanta very much. I try to get home at least once a year. Because of the play, I couldn’t get back for Pesach, so my mom and sister are coming here to visit and see Intimate Apparel.

Q. What do you want people to know about the play?

A. This play has been done all over the country, in diverse theaters in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Syracuse. It has had a great impact wherever it plays. The story is so universal. It talks about all of us, our lives, our parents and grandparents, since we are a nation of immigrants. Lynn Nottage could have made the characters stereotypical, but she didn’t. They are real and honest. She wrote beautifully about real people with real emotions, a man who has a deep relationship with his God, his religion and his family, really trying to find a way to fit all these ideas he came with into a

- The Atlanta Jewish Times 2006