Rebecca Gratz. A Playlet.
[Gratz, Rebecca]. Mantel, Beatrice T. Rebecca Gratz. A playlet. Winner of the second prize in play contest conducted under the auspices of the Department of Religion and Religious Education of the National Council of Jewish Women. New York: National Council of Jewish Women, [1929].
12mo.; yellow printed wrappers, stapled; pages 7-10 detached; very light wear.
First edition of a short play about Rebecca Gratz, founder of the first Jewish religious school in America. Mantel’s brief play is set in the early 19th-century on the day after the benefit ball for the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances. The characters include Gratz, her younger sisters Frances and Rachel, and Beatrix LaMonde, Gratz’s French friend and neighbor. Beatrix, whose lines are written in a French accent (“Dear George—he is sweet, but I would not have heem know I sink zat”), is visiting the Gratz sisters at the top of the play and they gossip about last night’s ball. When Rebecca enters, she is distressed and explains that she cannot marry the man she loves because he is a gentile:
REBECCA: (inflamed and weakened) Life and love are calling me! “A bride in my white satin gown” (sobbing). Life and love (sobbing, but seeing the bright flame of truth before her)…Judaism! The heritage of my people, would I be worthy of it if I married—one whose faith is not mine. Oh! I know I must not, must not think of it—and yet…and yet…(weeps).
Ultimately, Gratz chooses to be true to her faith, and when her lover shows up on her doorstep, she sends him away forever, and prays to God for strength and guidance. Mantel does not look up in any of the standard biographical references. OCLC and RLG locate only two other copies of this work.
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