"IN THE FOREST"
A DRAMA IN ONE ACT
(A forest. The sun has set. In the foreground a large, sombre tree, with wide-spreading branches. Seated at the foot of the tree, in its lap, JOSHUA, MIREL, BORUCH, their son, and the GRANDMOTHER.)
MIREL
We shall have to spend the night in the forest. I'll make a bed of the leaves and our bundles shall serve as pillows.
Have you said the evening prayers?
BORUCH.
No, I have not.
JOSHUA.
A curse upon him, the heretic!
I have asked you not to cross your father while we are in the forest. Trouble enough with you in the village!
BARUCH, as if to himself.
He tires me with his precepts. He believes God hears prayer, but he never dreams of asking God whether his prayers will ever be heard. And prayer will never save us. If we had profited by experience, we would ask, not God, but ourselves, where are we to go now? To pray in the forest is stupid. A gun were better.
MIREL
Granny! (She will catch cold on the bare ground.) Are you asleep?
GRANNY.
JOSHUA.
He is right, Mirel. We should be thinking of where to go.
Copyright, 1908, by Louis Lipsky. Stage rights reserved.
MIREL
Our home was pleasant. There we lived, and had our share of sorrow and joy. There are the graves of our fathers, all that was dear to us, little as it was. Now, in one's old age, go seek a new life!
JOSHUA.
They have made life as wretched as it is given to men to make it, but they have left us our law, and there's our comfort. Remember, Mirel, we have a good God above who watches over us.
MiREL
BORUCH.
The Holy Torah! That is God’s eurse! It binds us to our chains and trips us up when we want to be free. How can we ever live like other people when we are doomed to drag with us volumes upon volumes of precepts that tell us what to do every moment of life? I think the words of God have been too numerous. He has been too careful of our future. Once He spoke like a garrulous woman to His people, and now, having led them into the mire, He becomes as silent as an Egyptian 1dol.
JOSHUA.
Mirel, Mirel, tell him to be silent. Let him hold his tongue! I shall surely strike him.
BORUCH.
He never wants to hear the bare truth.
MIREL, to Joshua.
They have made our young men bitter, for they do not let them become workers. Boruch should have been playing in the garden of youth, but they have made him a scoffer by their tyranny. (To Boruch.) But against God, Boruch, against God?