IMPASSE

"Prayer for the French Republic" comes to Broadway.

- HELEN SHAW

In 1791, France became the first European country to fully emancipate its Jewish population, and for more than two hundred years French rabbis have spoken a special Sabbath benediction. “May France enjoy a lasting peace and preserve her glorious rank among the nations,” they recite; the congregation replies, “Amen.” For centuries, Jewish identity in France—despite the Dreyfus case, despite Vichy collaboration, despite waves of hate crime—has been tightly linked to the state. But in Joshua Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic,” now on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, that contract shows signs of strain.

It’s 2016 in Paris, and the Benhamou family is wondering if they should leave an increasingly hostile France. Since the twenty-six-year-old son, Daniel (Aria Shahghasemi), has begun wearing a yarmulke, he has been attacked twice, and the Benhamous ask if they—like eight thousand French Jews the previous year—should immigrate to Israel. Daniel’s father, Charles (Nael Nacer), whose family fled antisemitism in Algeria in the sixties, says leave; his mother, Marcelle (Betsy Aidem), whose great-grandparents the Salomons miraculously survived the Nazi occupation of Paris, says remain. Daniel’s brittle twenty-eight-year-old sister, Elodie (Francis Benhamou), takes no position—or, rather, she takes many positions, all of which counter the blundering political forays of their visiting American cousin, Molly (Molly Ranson). “I had no idea Israel’s occupation of Palestine was so problematic. Thank you so much for that,” Elodie says, her voice dripping acid.