Reading Hebron


In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler from the West Bank, put on his Israeli army uniform, walked into a mosque and opened fire on a roomful of Muslims at prayer. Thirty were killed and many more were injured. The Israeli government inquiry, though asking some tough questions, concluded that the massacre was the work of a madman; no one was to blame but him. Yet the proceedings revealed that policies were in place which had allowed the "madman" to carry out his mission.
Reading Hebron

Jason Sherman's play, Reading Hebron is about the Hebron Massacre. It is also about Israel: what it is to a Jew who doesn't live there, and how a Jew living in the diaspora responds to the country of the Jews. Reading Hebron opened at the Factory Theatre in Toronto in November of 1996 - not two years after the Hebron Massacre - stirring up both rave reviews and outrage.