An ordinary Jew

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A very common Jew is the title of a chamber play and one-person piece by the Swiss author Charles Lewinsky . He also wrote the script for the theater and film version, which was produced by director Oliver Hirschbiegel in 2005 with Ben Becker in the title role, also under the title A Quite Ordinary Jew .

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The main character is the journalist Emanuel Goldfarb, the only son of Holocaust survivors who lives in Hamburg. When a teacher approaches him through the Hamburg Jewish Community and invites them to class so that he can answer the students' questions about Judaism , he wants to cancel.

In the formulation of the rejection, in which Goldfarb reveals his identity and his life as a Jew and German in Germany, a monologue emerges which Goldfarb speaks into a dictation machine. He is angry and aggressive:

“You see, Mr. Gebhardt, that's the only reason I don't want to accept your kind invitation. Because these cautious formulations always make me so aggressive. "Member of your religious community". "Jewish fellow citizen". That means “Jew”! Very easily. Jew. You want to talk to your students about it and their fingers refuse to type the word into the computer. "
“I am not suitable as a research object. I'm not ready for the museum yet. I don't want to be stuffed yet. Impaled. Prepared like an interesting freak "

Goldfarb works his way through the “Jewish topics” in his monologue to make his rejection plausible for the teacher - at the end of the story, however, the reader experiences him in the classroom without his actual dialogue with the students still being part of the plot.

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