It was by chance that the Jewish Theatre Ensemble of Rhode Island and Mixed Magic Theatre, the new ethnically diverse local troupe headed by veteran black actor Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, came to stage Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry's sweet sketch of a play about a crusty Jewish widow and her black chauffeur set in Atlanta during the days of the civil rights movement.
Pitts-Wiley and the Jewish Theatre Ensemble's Toby Marwil, a Providence pediatrician, bumped into one another at an annual Martin Luther King celebration held at Temple Emanu-El on the East Side of Providence. The two talked of a collaboration. One thing led to another.
Now it looks like the production, which opens Thursday at the Jewish Community Center, might get people in this community talking about some weighty social issues. A public forum is slated for Nov. 20 after a 7 p.m. performance.
"For the first time in a long time, blacks and Jews will get a chance to dialogue," said Pitts-Wiley.
The local Black-Jewish Alliance, which has been fairly low-profile in recent years, has gotten behind the project as a co-sponsor, and will take part in a public talk about the state of black-Jewish relations with playwright Uhry and Brown University education professor Fayneese Miller.
After decades of cooperation, American Jews and blacks have weathered some stormy times in recent years.
Indeed, the local alliance was formed in the 1980s, after the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was then running for president, uttered an unfortunate ethnic slur in off-the-record conversations with reporters. Jackson, who is black, referred to New York City, home to many Jews, as Hymietown. The derogatory term Hymie is derived from the Jewish name Hyman, or Chaim.
At the same time, black clergyman Al Sharpton, a current presidential candidate, was calling Jews "diamond merchants," while the media contained the anti-Semitic rantings of Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan.
Alarmed that Jackson's slam might cause further damage to increasingly fragile ties between the two communities, local black and Jewish leaders banded together to hear one another out.
Since then the alliance has gone through several incarnations. But now, it seems to have re-energized itself, even though there are few hot-button topics on the table.
"I'm hearing from people," said Pitts-Wiley, "who are saying this is less about controversy, and more about opportunity, a chance to explore the future."
Last year, the alliance booked a touring exhibition on Jackie Robinson, the baseball great who broke the color barrier in the late 1940s when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and opened the way for other blacks and Hispanics.
The exhibit, from the Simon Wiesethal Center's Museum of Tolerance, drew almost 2,000 students to the Bryant College Campus.
"We felt it was a shame we didn't work more on projects such as this," said lawyer Norman Orodenker, co-chair of the alliance.
Blacks and Jews have a lot in common, he said. They both have a history of slavery, have both endured their own holocaust, and both have suffered at the hands of discrimination.
Looking for other projects, the alliance got involved with the annual community sing at Temple Emanu-El honoring King.
The group then learned that Marwil and Pitts-Wiley were looking for sponsorship for Miss Daisy. With money left from the Robinson exhibit, the group threw its support behind the project, along with the Rhode Island Foundation and the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities.
It could not have found a more ideal vehicle to air black-Jewish relations.
Uneasy allies
The play, made into a popular movie starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, is based largely on Uhry's own childhood, growing up a Jew in Atlanta.
When we first meet Daisy Werthan, she's 72 and has just destroyed her new Packard, along with a garage and tool shed. Boolie, her businessman son, hires Hoke Coleburn, a gentle, doting black man, to chauffeur her about -- a decision that Miss Daisy takes some time getting used to.
In one of the play's more memorable scenes, Miss Daisy learns from Hoke that her temple has been bombed.
"Who would do that?" she implores.
"You know as good as me," sighs Hoke. "Always be the same ones."
"Well, it's a mistake. I'm sure they meant to bomb one of the Conservative synagogues, or the Orthodox one. The temple is Reform. Everybody knows that."
"It doan' matter to them people," adds Hoke. "A Jew is a Jew to them folks. Jes' like, light or dark, we all the same nigger."
The play seems to suggest that Hoke and Miss Daisy, who become close friends, find themselves in the same boat, that Jews and blacks are allies and not adversaries on either side of a racial divide.
After all, northern liberal Jews were very involved in the Civil Rights movement, traveling to the South to march at the side of blacks. Of the three young civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in the 1960s -- Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney -- two were Jews, one was black.
Pitts-Wiley questions the bond.
"Alfred Uhry's play explodes the myth that Jews and blacks in the South were somehow less bigoted" than the rest of the population," he said. "Automatically, we think Miss Daisy is this sweet old lady. But read it carefully and you can't romanticize these events."
It is not so easy to see Pitts-Wiley's point, because the racial issues in the play are couched more in employee-employer relations, in things such as money, status and power, not name-calling and ill treatment.
And, given the times, it was not unusual for whites in America to hire black servants, points out Fayneese Miller, who'll be joining Uhry on the 20th for the public forum.
If there is anything romantic about the play, said Miller, who grew up in the South, it's that Hoke was willing to stand up to Miss Daisy. When, at the last minute, Daisy invites Hoke to accompany her to a dinner honoring King, stumbling over excuses, Hoke snaps, "Next time you ask me someplace, ask me regular."
Moving forward
Looking back, Daisy and Hoke lived in tranquil times.
In simple terms, the black-Jewish alliance of the 1960s, when the two groups banded together to form the NAACP and the Urban League, fractured in the 1980s, hitting a low point with the Crown Heights incident in 1991. Violence broke out when an Orthodox Lubavitcher Jew struck and killed a black child with his car in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
Orodenker feels things have since improved, but he is concerned that blacks and Jews renew their relationship as equals.
"African-Americans no longer see Jews as big brother. After the schism, they have come back together as partners, which is much healthier."
In Driving Miss Daisy, said Orodenker, Hoke is "always the hired hand."
"Those issues are bound to come up" in the public talk, he said. "That's one night I plan to attend."
Orodenker says the alliance has put together a steering committee to discuss how the two factions can begin working together on such issues as jobs, housing and affirmative action.
"We hope to be involved in more projects like this, and do more than talk," said Orodenker.
Driving Miss Daisy runs though Nov. 23 at the Jewish Community Center, 401 Elmgrove Ave, Providence. Tickets are $12, $10 elderly and children under 12. Showtimes are this Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., and Nov. 20 7 pm. Tickets this Thursday are 2 for price of 1.
The panel discussion with playwright Alfred Uhry follows the 7 p.m. performance Nov. 20.
Call 861-8800, voicemail 189.
