Mark Robert Gordon

A family rediscovers its cultural identity in this alternately hysterical and haunting treatment of the ties that bind generations of assimilated American Jews. The play follows a dying grandfather wrestling his agnostic beliefs against his survival guilt; his married daughter and son-in-law from synagogue Board politics to inclusion in a search for a minyan (ten men needed for group prayer) in a Yugoslavian town with a dying and minute Jewish population; one grandson from inter-religious marriage to an examination of the "Jewishness" of his dispositions toward others; the other grandson from college life to a revelation of his sexuality. The family is accompanied on their journey by a "campy" nursing home volunteer who does not let AIDS stand in the way of his humor-filled insights into the meaning of hatred and human passions, and by a former European movie star/diva who attempts to atone for her ancestors' misdeeds. In the end, R'fua is a rewarding story of hope and for better treatment and mutual respect among all peoples.