By Aliza Billet, Senior Arts and Culture Editor
At the corner of 42nd Street and 9th Avenue sits a door hidden under scaffolding. Through that door is an off-Broadway venue called Theatre Row, which is home to six performance spaces that various theater companies rent and put to use when producing plays throughout the year. The theaters are small and intimate, a far leap from the grand Broadway theaters located only two blocks away.
It is in one of these theaters that I sat at the end of October, tears streaming silently down my face, watching the play Hannah Senesh.
Hannah Senesh, a one-woman play written by David Schechter, tells the true story of a young Hungarian Jew named Hannah Senesh who joined the Haganah (the major Jewish paramilitary organization in British Mandatory Palestine) during World War II. Hannah was recruited by the British Special Operations Executive to help the war effort through espionage, but was ultimately captured by Hungarian law enforcement after parachuting into Yugoslavia to sneak into Nazi-occupied Hungary. Senesh was tortured, tried for treason and executed. She was 23 years old. Her story lives on through her journal entries and the poems that she wrote, including the famous Israeli song “Eli, Eli.”
I first learned about Hannah’s story while studying in Israel during my gap year. My midrasha (seminary) brought us to Har Herzl, Israel’s largest military cemetery, where we learned about and paid our respects to the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our people. One memorial in particular stood out to me. Seven gravestones on the ground formed the shape of a V, specifically placed as a tribute to seven paratroopers whose lives ended on various missions to Europe during World War II. Among them was Hannah Senesh. Hannah’s story has remained with me ever since I first heard it. It was presented as inspirational — this young woman only a few years older than ourselves became a paratrooper and risked everything to save Jews from the Nazis — but I found it devastating, rather than uplifting. Hannah was sent on a suicide mission; she never should have died that way.
Knowing this, I was surprised to hear that there was a play about Hannah Senesh. But I love all things theater, though, so when the Stern honors program procured tickets to it, I pushed my skepticism aside and did what I do best: I went to the theater.
A snapshot of the end of the night: Aliza walks herself home, quietly sobbing on the streets of New York City after watching Hannah Senesh. But I didn’t cry because of the content of the play, exactly. It was almost as if the tears were drawn forth from me by a magnet of unabashed Jewishness, of Jewish pride.
Walking into the theater, I hardly imagined that the play would elicit such a reaction from me. To be completely honest, my initial feelings were piqued curiosity and slight nervousness about the fact that it was a one-person play.
One-person plays are a bit of a misnomer, because although there is only one person onstage telling the story, many people are involved in the production. Writers and directors, set and costume designers, makeup artists, lighting technicians and musicians all come together to create the play. However, one-person plays do present a unique challenge to everyone involved, because while the whole production needs to be just as engaging as any other one in order to land an audience, at the end of the day, it is a single actor onstage who makes or breaks the entire show. When done badly, one-person plays are painful to sit through. When done well, however, they are all the more rewarding for everyone involved.
That said, one-person productions are definitely an acquired taste. It takes a kind of commitment on the part of the audience to sit down with the one actor for 1-2 hours and let them transmit a story. One-person shows therefore often utilize fourth-wall breakage, with the character addressing the audience directly, almost narrating while they go between story beats. If you’re not ready for that kind of immersion, these plays might not work for you.
Hannah Senesh utilizes a different one-person play storytelling strategy: the plot was conveyed through journal entries. Jennifer Apple as Hannah Senesh traveled through the years, beginning as a 14-year-old child and ultimately growing up to be a 23-year-old paratrooper. The staging of the play helped Apple seamlessly transition between ages and settings, incorporating costume changes into her storytelling, so that you never felt like you were waiting for the sole actor to be ready for the next scene. Apple’s line delivery was believable through all of Hannah’s ages, whether she was a schoolgirl or a soldier. The play was bookended by monologues from Hannah Senesh’s mother, and I believed Apple when she was an aged Hungarian woman, too. Although she simply delivered monologue after monologue, I was never bored because of how she embodied every word of playwright David Schechter’s excellent script.
Schechter wrote Hannah Senesh in 1984. 40 years later, in 2025, it contains newfound meaning. At one point, a grown Hannah Senesh declares that she has decided to become a Zionist, and that she’s moving to Mandatory Palestine. This was the moment my tears unexpectedly started to pool. Upon examination, I realized why.
In 2025, the word “Zionist” carries many connotations for people who don’t know what it means. Those of us who identify with the word, and for whom it retains its denotative definition — “the belief in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland of Israel” and the affirmation that Jews, like all people, “have the right to live in safety, dignity, and sovereignty in a nation of their own” — are used to shrugging off accusations of being genocidal, racist child-killers. But it was only when the tears were rolling down my face and my breath was catching in a theater full of strangers that I realized that eventually, the hatred actually does weigh on you.
It is an awful feeling, knowing that there are people out there who don’t know you, but who assume that your belief in the Jewish people’s right to safety and self-determination in our ancestral homeland means that you are actually an advocate for the murder of children. It becomes worse when such blatant slander leads to a dramatic global rise in antisemitism. I will not be so bold as to claim that every person who is critical of the Israeli government is an antisemite, but it is also undeniable that after October 7, antisemitism is at an all-time high.
At Hannah Senesh that night, all of this crashed together in my heart more than my mind. During the talkback hosted after the show, Apple reflected on what it was like to rehearse the show in this post-October 7 world, particularly on the anniversary of the attack and during the release of the last living hostages; it all impacted the way she viewed her responsibility to the story she was telling. I was astonished to hear someone outside of my little bubble of the world mention our hostages unprompted, openly and publicly. Then I was sad that I was shocked, and then I was shaking and crying all over again (did I mention it was an emotional evening?).
After the talkback, I approached Apple. I needed to thank her for putting her name to this story. I am sure that must have been a decision she had to grapple with when accepting the role of Hannah Senesh. Since October 7, the theater community — which claims to be inclusive of all people — has not been particularly welcoming to those of us Jews who feel the existence of Israel is a core tenet of our identities.
Apple’s name had actually been a pleasant surprise to spot in the playbill. In high school I was in a local production of a musical no one has heard of, and my role was one she originated. I didn’t know then what else we had in common. The discovery of a Jewish, unabashedly Zionist woman in the theater industry was embarrassingly emotional for me — I opened my mouth to introduce myself and all that came out was a broken voice and more free-flowing tears. I’m very grateful that Apple took the time to listen to and empathize with me, and honestly provide me with a lot of chizuk (strength). It was an important reminder that I am not as alone as I might think, and that there is a place in the theater world for us Jews who do not wish to renounce our homeland.
Hannah Senesh’s life ended in tragedy. The play tries to spin her final mission as one that inspires hope and heroism rather than as the suicide mission it really was. I wasn’t convinced that her sacrifice was worth it, but a glimmer in the darkness of her story is the revelation it gave me in October 2025, so many decades later. There are many kinds of resistance. Jewish voices are powerful. In moments when the world doesn’t want to listen, we have the ability — and responsibility — to make it hear us.
Photo Credit: Aliza Billet