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Digging for Jewish Roots in ‘Palestine, New Mexico’

It seems out of character — to say the least — when Richard Montoya expresses concern about how his new play, “Palestine, New Mexico,” might be received at the Mark Taper Forum. Montoya, after all, is the irreverent front man for Culture Clash, the mostly left-leaning, often Chicano-themed political cabaret that has cheekily taken on multiculturalism for a quarter century in productions such as “Chavez Ravine” and “Water and Power.” No subject has been too sacred for its vaudevillian brand of humor — early sketches featured Latino “superheroes” such as “Busboy Man” and “Lawnblower Man” — and even Latino idols such as Che Guevara were fair game. “We didn’t realize until we read in a textbook out of New York University that we had heroically resurrected Che, but then killed him again,” Montoya said with a laugh.
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December 16, 2009

It seems out of character — to say the least — when Richard Montoya expresses concern about how his new play, “Palestine, New Mexico,” might be received at the Mark Taper Forum. Montoya, after all, is the irreverent front man for Culture Clash, the mostly left-leaning, often Chicano-themed political cabaret that has cheekily taken on multiculturalism for a quarter century in productions such as “Chavez Ravine” and “Water and Power.” No subject has been too sacred for its vaudevillian brand of humor — early sketches featured Latino “superheroes” such as “Busboy Man” and “Lawnblower Man” — and even Latino idols such as Che Guevara were fair game. “We didn’t realize until we read in a textbook out of New York University that we had heroically resurrected Che, but then killed him again,” Montoya said with a laugh.

But the 50-year-old writer and performer becomes serious when discussing “Palestine” that he gives off a cartoon-ish snore every once in a while as if to apologize for being so, well, serious and, to his mind, boring. “I’m supposed to entertain you,” he tells a reporter. Is his new play too tame, too offensive, too … Jewish?

The story revolves around the phenomenon of Crypto-Jews — Latinos descended from Sephardim who fled the Inquisition to secretly practice Judaism in the new world. Montoya may be a poster boy for the Chicano artist, but he has long suspected that his own father’s family, which goes back generations in New Mexico, may have Sephardic roots. “Palestine, New Mexico” was inspired by his deep desire to connect with that history. 

But if the piece is his most personal to date, it also may be perceived as his most politically incorrect — at least in some quarters. “So many members of the early progressive movement who influenced Culture Clash were Jews we knew in the Bay Area,” he said. “But when I recently went back to perform some of ‘Palestine,’ some of those friends were like, ‘Why are you trying to be Jewish?  You know, you’ll never be like us.’ And my really pro-Palestinian friends went, ‘Why are you bringing this up now,’ as if I were intending to drive an Israeli tank on Bunker Hill to the Mark Taper Forum. They’re nervous that a guy in Culture Clash might actually end up being or trying to claim that he’s Jewish.”

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There are no Israelis, nor Palestinians, for that matter, in “Palestine, New Mexico.” Rather, the play begins as a female U.S. Army captain arrives at the New Mexican reservation home of Pvt. Raymond Birdsong, searching for answers as to how he died while under her command in Iraq — and why he asked for a rabbi on his deathbed. Her presence as an Anglo, a woman and an officer stirs tensions that eventually exhume long-hidden secrets about the tribe.  

Montoya plays Top Hat, the “half-breed” from Calabasas who is never quite accepted on the reservation yet remains its staunchest truth-teller. When the Native Americans refuse to acknowledge possible Jewish ancestry, he brandishes a rosary affixed with a Star of David and cries, “Some people around here, tucked in those hills there, hid Passover songs inside Mexican border corridos [ballads]. Mezuzahs were embedded behind Virgin Mary statues…. If people didn’t know how to advance the rosary beads, the whispers in all the little churches from Chilili to Escabosa would begin, Mata Christos, mata Christos [Christ-killers].

“The cactus practically grows in the shapes of menorahs around here,” Top Hat adds. And, in fact, during an amazing sequence that represents the captain’s peyote trip, an 8-foot-tall Cactus Golem chases actors around the stage, wearing a giant Star of David necklace. The Golem references an Ashkenazi monster legend, but Montoya learned about it from the Taper’s founding, now former, artistic director Gordon Davidson — who first brought Culture Clash to that theater — and decided to include it in the play.

Montoya, like his character, is a walking culture clash. He grew up in a Latino family near Sacramento, but his maternal grandfather is Syrian. Then there is the Sephardic mystery heritage: Much of Montoya’s family lived in New Mexico for generations, and as a child there were hints about Jewish connections, even artifacts — perhaps a menorah — hidden in an attic. “My dad looks like he could be Steven Spielberg’s brother,” Montoya said. These observations may seem superficial, he admits, but he has a strong intuition that he shares roots with the professed Crypto-Jews he met while roaming New Mexico two years ago, collecting stories for his play. 

“He went gonzo,” Culture Clash member Ric Salinas recalled of that trip. “Richard will get into his SUV and sleep in the car and drive 12 hours a day,” Salinas added of how Montoya researches his plays. “He’ll jot notes and even bits of dialogue.”

The Jewish issue is “something deep in the veins of Richard Montoya,” Salinas added. The troupe has played with Jewish imagery in past works, referencing mezuzahs under layers of paint on Latino family homes in the former Jewish enclave of Boyle Heights, for example. “I’m a Jewish comedian trapped inside a Chicano body,” Montoya has proclaimed on stage. “I was circumcised with a machete.” 

In person, Montoya talks about the Passover seders he has attended; jokes about being “un-friended” on a Jewish dating site; and recalls how progressive friends tried to pressure him to withdraw from the Fiesta Shalom festival at Boyle Heights’ Breed Street Shul last May because the Israeli consulate was an organizer. Instead, he says, he emceed the event and made a comment about “a peaceful two-state solution between Montebello and East L.A.”

He feels both lucky, and conflicted, about being a member of so many tribes. “What I share with Top Hat is that there are times in my life I’ve never felt Chicano enough, or American enough, or certainly not white enough, and in some cases, when I have such an interest in Jewish culture and have that feeling that I’m not Jewish enough. And it’s a silly thing and a terrible thing because you can go your whole life not feeling enough and trying to satisfy others. Hopefully at the end of the play Top Hat’s just going to be comfortable being whatever the hell he is.”

And Montoya as well. “My justification for the piece is that this history is worth an investigation and a journey,” he said. “I’d like to try to answer some questions so my children will know that their great-great-grandfather might be from Damascus but your great-great-grandmother may have lit Shabbat candles on Friday night. That takes the issue off the newspaper headlines and the lefty blogosphere so that I can take a beat and a moment and explore this question of my family. It just surprises me that so many people don’t want me to do that.”

“Palestine, New Mexico” continues at the Mark Taper Forum through Jan. 24, 2010. For more information, visit centertheatregroup.org.

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