A Flag Is Born - The Play

The Play

The play had three principal characters, though several other actors played bit roles. Paul Muni and Celia Adler, major stars at the time, played Tevye and Zelda, survivors of the Treblinka death camp who are attempting to travel to the Land of Israel, and Marlon Brando, who played David, an angry young concentration camp survivor.

The play opens as the older couple halts for the night and Zelda lights Shabbat candles on a broken tombstone. Tevye recites the Shabbat prayers, then dreams of the town where he was born, as it was before it was destroyed by the Nazis. He then dreams of King Saul at the battle of Gilead, and has a dream conversation with King David after which, in his dream, he stands before the council of the United Nations, Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, and pleads for the formation of a Jewish State. They ignore him.

When Tevye awakens, he finds that Zelda has died during the night. He recites a traditional Jewish memorial prayer, Kaddish, and welcomes the Angel of Death who has come for him. As the young hero, David, considers committing suicide, three Jewish soldiers appear and promise to take him with them to the Land of Israel to fight for Jewish independence. In the play's stirring finale, David delivers a moving Zionist speech and marches off to fight for Jewish freedom holding a Zionist flag made out of Tevye's prayer shawl.

Although Marlon Brando had already been voted "Broadway's Most Promising Actor" for his role as an anguished veteran in Truckline Café, the play was not a commercial success and Brando was still young, relatively unknown and impecunious. Nevertheless, he explained that he desperately believed that the survivors of the Holocaust deserved to have their own land where they could live free from oppression and the anti-Semitic tyranny of the outside world, and accepted only the Actor's Equity minimum payment, enabling the play’s proceeds to go to helping create the state of Israel.

In promoting the play, the Bergson Group emphasized the parallels between the American and Jewish struggles for independence and the Jewish fighters in Israel to the heroes of the American Revolution. Ads portrayed Irgun fighters as "modern-day Nathan Hales," denounced London's policy of "taxation without representation," quoted Thomas Jefferson's memorable phrase, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God," and used the motto, "It's 1776 in Palestine!" When Tevye speaks in his dream to the council of representatives of Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, he compares Palestine in the 1940s with the American colonies in the 1770s. The cover of the program was sketch of three young Jews, one with a gun, one with a hoe, and one with a Zionist flag, and in the background the famous illustration of three figures from the American revolution playing drums and flute.

"A Flag is Born" played in six North American cities and raised more than $400,000 for the ALFP, the largest block of funds it ever attained.