What happens when the world’s most powerful and most tolerant nation is overtaken by religious fanaticism?
That is exactly what happened in the year 1263 in Barcelona, when the fledgling Holy Inquisition began to flex its newfound power there. A public disputation – a show trial along the lines of the McCarthy hearings or the Stalinist Purge kangaroo courts – was convened in Barcelona with one objective: to put an entire religion on trial. Judaism was publicly attacked and vilified by the Church with its well-prepared prosecution, while its court-appointed defender, the famous rabbi and physician Moses Nachmanides (The Ramban), had to answer by himself and without notes. In the balance was his very life, the safety of the holy texts and of the community, and the future of religious freedom.
Based on extant versions of the disputation, one written by the Church in Latin and the other in Hebrew by Nachmanides himself, the play examines theological questions that are still relevant today: Is there only one Truth? What if one’s conscience contradicts religious law? Can and should different religions find common ground in order to work together?
ALL MUSIC IS A CAPPELLA (no instrumental music) and somber, in keeping with the subject of the play and the Omer.
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