Musings on "Havurah" by Margot Connolly

Havurah Blog

The Hope College Theatre Department performed Havurah by Margot Connolly, as one of three featured productions, at the American College Theatre Festival (Region 3) in Madison, Wisconsin this past week. It was quite an honor. Our two matinees, one on Wed. Jan 7 (2:00pm), and the other on Thurs. Jan 8 (11:00am), bring a two-and-a-half-year process to a close for me.

Havurah by Margot Connolly, produced by Hope College: ACTF-3 performance, Madison, WI: Jan 2026. Photo Credit: Eric Van Tassell

Havurah is the third play commissioned by the Big Bridge Theatre Consortium, and our most successful thus far. Not only did we feature the play at ACTF this week, but early in December, The Jewish Plays Project announced Havurah as one of eight finalists for the 15th Jewish Playwrighting Contest out of 300 submissions. Pretty impressive.

I am grateful for playwrights of faith like Margot who are unafraid to lean into the world’s deepest concerns while promoting hope and peace, rather than division. It takes courage to write honestly and compassionately about how our relationships with faith can both harm and heal us. Havurah has certainly done the work of asking our students, and our community, big questions about faith, life and justice.

Havurah explores interfaith tensions on a college campus after a mass shooting at a local synagogue. “Havurah,” loosely translated as a “circle of friends” centers the faith journeys of students in the Jewish Student Club (Havurah) and the Christian Social Justice Club (CSJ) in the aftermath of the shooting. Along the way, each student struggles in different ways with the age-old questions, “Where is God in the midst of injustice?” and “What do we do when that injustice is so overwhelming?”

Mariah, the leader of CSJ desperately wants to do something good in response to the shooting. So, under her direction, the CSJ team begins to brainstorm ideas for how to help. Nolan, who is doodling during the discussion, ends up drawing a picture of a mama otter (the school mascot) holding a baby otter on its belly as it drifts down the river. The baby otter has a Star of David on its belly. The metaphor, of course, is that the college community is holding its Jewish community in love and care. When Mariah and the others see the picture, they are sure they have the solution. They post the image on their CSJ social media accounts, and, to their surprise and delight, the image goes viral to the point that the Today Show reaches out CSJ asking to interview them.

Meanwhile, the Havurah students are grieving deeply. Six community members have been killed, including their faculty sponsor, Rabbi Joshua. Eli, the leader of the group, discovers the shooter is a radicalized Christian who has written a manifesto denouncing all Jews. So, when Mariah and her team show up unannounced to a Havurah meeting to share their excitement about the image and the potential Today Show interview, things quickly spiral out of control. It becomes clear that, even though Mariah wants to involve Havurah in the interview, that the Today Show would center CSJ’s work with the image, rather than center the synagogue shooting or even the Jewish students. An argument erupts, good intentions go awry, feelings are hurt, and no one is certain how to move forward.

The rest of the play deals with the aftermath of that argument. The CSJ students wrestle with what happens when our responses to injustice don’t help or cause more harm than good. Meanwhile the Havurah team continues to wrestle with their grief, and the rifts in their little community.

Near the end of the play, Eli asks his best friend Lee, “How do we keep showing up when the injustice in the world feels so overwhelming?” Lee reminds Eli of a quote from Rabbi Tarfon (70 CE – 135 CE) that hung on Rabbi Joshua’s wall: “It’s not your duty to finish the work. But neither are you free to desist from it.” Then Lee says, “Maybe this is just – the work, man. And maybe it’s going to be hard and suck and maybe we can never find the answers, but – maybe we still have to try.”

That is really hard to do when one considers the religious violence in the world. Whether in Palestine, Bondi Beach, the United States, or elsewhere interfaith conflict continues to destroy communities and to sow hatred. Then, of course there is all the other injustice in the world, not to mention the daily rage on our social media news feeds. So … where is God in all that … and what do we do with all that information?

Ultimately, I am grateful to Margot for writing a play that addresses these concerns with grace and hope. I am grateful that our student actors got the chance to embody her words and ideas on stage as they, like Eli and Lee, did the work of wrestling with faith, and life’s, big questions. Additionally, I’m grateful that our students had the opportunity to share those concerns with our community so that we could struggle with those questions together.

Margot ends the play in prayer as the Havurah team invites CSJ to witness and share in Havdalah, the ceremony at the closing of Shabbat. All eight characters gather around sacred and ordinary objects as ancient text is sung, faith is shared, and community is built.

Maybe, given today’s political and social climate, the play’s resolution feels like an unachievable pipedream. And yet, if we don’t imagine solutions together, they will never come true. That’s what good art does. It helps us imagine and dream of better ways forward so that we can create new worlds together. And, even if those dreams feel out of reach, “maybe we still have to try” (as Lee says).

If you want to produce this play, or see it produced, at your institutions, please reach out.

May peace and light prevail,

Rhett