Allein unter Briten

As a playwright and founder of the Jewish Theater of New York, Tuvia Tenebom has always appreciated good theater. And where do the best plays get performed? In Great Britain, of course! Reason enough, then, to pay the island a visit once again, especially at a time when the big Brexit play is being staged. Is it a comedy? Is it a tragedy? Or simply absurd theater? he wanted to know from the British. At least that was the plan. But: Man thinks, and God laughs, as the saying goes. His journey - which took him through the United Kingdom over many months and during which he took a nap in Winston Churchill's room, played cat and mouse with Jeremy Corbyn, smoked forbidden tobacco with Nigel Farage, ate a monster and stalked a ghost - turned out to be very different from what he had expected. Most islanders only wanted to talk to him about Brexit to a limited extent, but they were willing to talk about other topics - topics that were close to their hearts, such as the omnipresent anti-Semitism. The conversations Tuvia Tenenbom had with lords and ladies, political pros and pub philosophers, the haves and the have-nots, intellectuals and clergy, gangsters and beauty queens, anti-Semites and Palestine romantics, and many more, not only paint an illuminating picture of the mood of English society, but also show that it is deeply divided and fiercely fighting for its identity and its future.