Sep 4, 2008 -- The cast and writers of the off-Broadway play The Quarrel recently hosted a special performance and Q&A session for the 90 incoming students in the undergraduate honors programs at Yeshiva University. The Quarrel, co-written by Joseph Telushkin ’70Y, ’73R, ’74BR and the acclaimed television writer David Brandes, is enjoying a revival this month at the DR2 Theater in New York City. Telushkin, who was ordained by Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), and Brandes also wrote the script for the 1991 film version, which aired on PBS. Reuven Russell, an instructor of speech and drama at Stern College for Women, portrays one of the two lead characters. Daryl Roth (the “DR” in the DR2 Theater), a producer who has staged five Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, agreed when the parts were cast that the play would not be shown on Friday and Saturday evenings, due to Russell’s Sabbath observance. The shomer Shabbat schedule may be a major first for a non-Jewish theater in Manhattan at the off-Broadway or Broadway level, said Russell. The play depicts the chance reunion between two Holocaust survivors who had been great friends in their Bialystock yeshiva before the war. Russell’s character, Hersch, is a rabbinic scholar who has dedicated his life to building a yeshiva in Canada. Chaim, played by Sam Guncler, left the yeshiva after a conflict about faith with the rebbeim and has since become a secular writer at a Yiddish-language newspaper in New York. The two meet by chance at a park in Montreal 10 years after they have last seen each other in Europe, and engage in a battle of wits to forgive one another but with the issue of God’s existence in the aftermath of the Holocaust driving a wedge between them. The characters’ difference in religious beliefs ignited a lively discussion during the Q&A session, which included Telushkin, the actors and the director, Robert Walden, a veteran off-Broadway director who teaches at the New School of Drama. “Can you love someone whose views you hate?” Telushkin asked the students. One of the students responded by querying Telushkin about Hersch’s comments that the Jews must have somehow done something to deserve persecution by the Nazism which he considered to be offensive. Telushkin said that the character’s comments reflected actual views that had been expressed after the Holocaust, including those of the Satmar Rebbe in America at the time. “You are the last generation that is going to know Holocaust survivors,” Telushkin told the group of 18 and 19-year-old first-year students. “It is important for you to know that these arguments, however unjustifiable, exist, and that they are part of your cultural heritage.” The Q&A ended on a lighter note. Telushkin noted that his background as a Yeshiva College and RIETS graduate laid the foundation for a career spent processing and creating works of Jewish import. “I’ve devoted my writing to depicting and advocating Judaism,” Telushkin said.