A Minyan of One

A Minyan of One is a one-woman play commissioned by the Cantors’ Assembly, the international association of cantors affiliated with Conservative Judaism, and performed at their Annual Convention in July, 2011 as part of a ceremony held at the Holocaust Memorial at Earl Bales Park. Written by poet Deborah Sheppard and theatre director, Vincenzo Sestito, the 17-minute play describes the narrator’s family-filled childhood in Montreal, replete with holiday feasts and stories, but with a troubling undercurrent of things not always being safe for the Jewish community. A curious 10 year old, she reads a history book of accomplishments and achievements of Jews, and also of exile and persecution. She turns a page and is confronted by her first images of the Holocaust – and the world becomes a different place for her.

The story shifts to a visit many years later to her ancestral home in the Ukraine in the former Pale of Settlement where Jews were required to live. She is thrilled to find herself in the little shtetl of family lore, to see the river and the hills about which she had heard so much. She meets the wife of the one remaining Jew, is invited inside their home and is taken to see the old Jewish cemetery. She walks among the headstones of her ancestors of her family who had emigrated long before the war and bears witness to the unspeakable loss of those who stayed behind.

A Minyan of One has been performed at the Cantor’s Assembly Annual Convention in Toronto, July 2011, at Beth Radom Synagogue as part of Holocaust Remembrance Week, November 2012 and at the Papermill Theatre Toronto, March 2014.

This play is highly suitable for educational settings. It requires no set and can be performed in classrooms. Its content makes it relevant to a discussion of the Holocaust and other historical and social issues. There is an available study guide that can be used in conjunction with the play.