Covenant (or . . . bagels and butchery)

(The small bedroom of a New York apartment. DAVID, early thirties, lies on the bed, traumatized. After a moment, his wife, LIZ, enters. She stands there a moment. A beat.)

DAVID He’s cross-eyed.

LIZ Yup.

DAVID A cross-eyed mohel.

(LIZ nods. A beat as this fully sinks in.)

DAVID Seems like for a man who cuts penises for a living, a basic requirement would be, you know, sight .

LIZ Shhh, he’ll hear you.

DAVID As precocious as we expect our child to be, I think he’s still prelingual.

LIZ I mean the mohel will hear you.

DAVID So?

LIZ So, what’s worse than a blind mohel?

DAVID . . .

LIZ A blind and offended mohel?

DAVID That was funny. You sure you’re not Jewish?

LIZ Only by osmosis.

(A beat.)

DAVID What a lesson for our eight-day-old child.

LIZ What is? That your own parents will send you to slaughter? Or that bagels and lox are the perfect dish when witnessing disfigurement?

DAVID Some choose herring.

LIZ Let’s cancel.

DAVID Everyone’s waiting out there.

LIZ There’s another lesson for him. If there’s peer pressure, honey, you just go ahead and commit an act of barbarism. Be part of the crowd.

(A beat.)

DAVID I thought we settled this.

LIZ I thought so too, but you seem un settled.

DAVID I am.

LIZ You open the door again, this is what you get. We’re canceling. I’m going out there, tell everyone go find another public mutilation for their bagel munching.

DAVID OK. Wait, no. I don’t know.

LIZ You know the only thing I enjoy less than thinking about what will happen out there is having the same conversation about it. Again and again and again and again .

DAVID You married a Jew.

LIZ So?

DAVID So, having the same conversations again and again comes with the territory.

LIZ And you married a WASP, so while you sit here gorging on your own neuroses, I’ll swallow three gin and tonics and tell everyone to get the fuck out.

(LIZ starts off.)

DAVID Stop . It’s . . . it’s emotional, that’s all.

LIZ I would hope so.

DAVID Well maybe that’s, you know, part of it. For me. I mean being circumcised. Some studies say that an eight-day-old experiencing that kind of pain creates a kind of increased sensitivity to pain later in life.

LIZ You mean to tell me a drop or two of wine isn’t a proper anesthetic? Shocked.

DAVID Don’t knock it, getting him drunk is preparing him for your side of the family.

LIZ So in one fell swoop we create the perfect hybrid: an alcoholic pansy.

DAVID Are you calling me a pansy?

LIZ If the shoe fits.

DAVID Well better he be a pansy than a complete dick.

(DAVID waits.)

Get it? He’s being circumcised so not a complete dick.

(LIZ says nothing.)

DAVID It’s a long tradition.

LIZ So is rape, murder, female genital mutilation—

DAVID Bad puns. I mean bad puns are a tradition.

(A beat.)

DAVID You know what I did yesterday?

LIZ Torture yourself with this decision?

DAVID Well, that, and . . .

(DAVID reaches into a nightstand drawer and pulls out a small piece of rubber.)

LIZ The hell is that?

DAVID What does it look like?

LIZ A piece of rubber.

DAVID That resembles what?

(LIZ looks a moment, then gets it.)

LIZ Oh my God, you have got to be kidding. For what? Like a memento? Here, honey, a little piece of fake foreskin to honor the day.

(DAVID reaches back into the drawer and pulls out an envelope, tosses it on the bed. LIZ opens it, pulls out some cash.)

LIZ . . .

DAVID I had it all planned out. Put this fake foreskin over Eddie’s penis, then bribe the mohel to pretend it’s the real thing.

(DAVID holds up the fake foreskin, pretending to be the mohel.)

DAVID Mazel! And the boychick didn’t even cry. What a brave, decidedly nonpansy boychick we have here.

(LIZ just looks at him.)

DAVID Just an idea.

(LIZ just looks at him.)

DAVID What?

LIZ I don’t know, just a crazy thought. That if you’re willing to bribe a mohel and fake a circumcision you might just, you know, go the path of slightly less resistance and absurdity, and just cancel the damn thing.

DAVID I can’t. I want to but I can’t. I can’t.

LIZ (pointed, direct) Why?

DAVID I don’t know. I thought maybe it was the importance of tradition. My father, my father’s father, his father . . . but that’s not it.

LIZ So it’s not tradition. And it’s certainly not religion.

DAVID Maybe it is.

LIZ Are you fucking kidding me? You and your friends at Seder, staring stupidly at one another, clinging to your liberal replacement texts because no one can remember any Hebrew?

DAVID Supposedly God reunites you with your foreskin after death.

LIZ After it’s been buried? Here’s what happens after it’s buried. Worms and beetles devour it in less than a—

DAVID OK stop, I just vomited in my mouth a little.

LIZ Well?

DAVID God made a covenant with Abraham: cut the foreskin to identify yourself as a Hebrew.

LIZ You are not religious! You tell me you want to raise him on bad puns, on neuroticism, on bagels, on social conscience, on sneaking food on Yom Kippur, that’s fine. But don’t give me any God stuff now. Our first date, our very first date, what did you say? “I’m not much of a believer. In anything. Except maybe the Force. That’s me, Yoda over Yahweh.”

DAVID Sweetheart, you remembered.

LIZ Who could forget.

DAVID (getting up) We’re going to do it. We are. Let’s go.

LIZ Why? I need a reason.

(DAVID stands there a minute, searching for it.)

DAVID Faith.

LIZ Jesus Christ.

DAVID Also circumcised.

LIZ I want a divorce.

DAVID I mean it. I don’t think I realized until . . .

LIZ Until talking about it ad nauseam? Faith in what? In God?

DAVID No. In . . . I don’t know. In people maybe. That they won’t . . . that it will never . . . happen again. We mark this child because we believe the world has changed. That’s an act of faith isn’t it? Kind of.

(DAVID looks at LIZ, vulnerable, hoping she’ll validate. LIZ approaches him, sweetly, stands close, perhaps strokes his hair.)

LIZ Bullshit.

DAVID No, it’s—

LIZ Bullshit. You think I don’t know you better than that? You are sensitive, yes, and though I give you shit about it, I love you for it. But you are not some woo-woo optimist. You are informed, my incessant NPR quoter. “Listen to this, Liz, according to FBI crime statistics . . .”

(A beat.)

LIZ (prompting again) Finish or I’ll cancel our monthly contribution, return the tote bag. “According to FBI crime statistics . . .”

DAVID Anti-semitic violence continues to outnumber any other religious-based hate crime by a large margin.

LIZ You can keep the tote bag.

DAVID Though hate crimes across the board for any group who—

LIZ Save the liberal platitudes and spit it out. Now. The real reason you decided to do this. The real reason that’s lurking under there. I don’t know what it is, but something inside you, something strong, made me agree to this in the first place. Agree to have your father hold him down while some stranger, some relic from the Old Testament, cuts him and—

DAVID Defiance. It’s an act of defiance.

(Putting it together for himself.)

That’s what it is. It’s not saying that . . . that I believe that they’ll never come for us again. It’s saying that . . . that we are not afraid if you do. Even us, even those of us who are secular, who are agnostic, who question Israel’s militarism, who are ambivalent to the point of neuroticism. Even we cut the dicks of our newborn sons. And you know what else? We stand around and nosh on bagels and make stupid jokes while we do it. No big deal. So you think about that. If you want to come for us. Because that’s how we do. And if that day comes again, my boy and I will drop our jeans and we’ll say this , this is who I am. And I am not afraid. And you will never, never make us disappear.

(Pause. LIZ holds out her hand.)

LIZ Shall we?

(DAVID nods. He takes her hand. Before they exit . . .)

LIZ And by way of pre-emptive strike—cross-eyed, yes, but you did personally contact the last twenty families who used him.

DAVID Twenty-five. And who knows, it could be an advantage. Being crossed-eyed. Focus him on a central point.

LIZ There you go. Now let’s go eat some herring and butcher our child.

(They exit.)