SARA THE KHAZAR

A Musical Play (Theater)

Sister Sara, a blind Christian nun of Khazar origin, is the heroine of this play.
Beneath her veil, she brings forth from the past the unique Jewish identity of the Khazar nation, long forgotten by history.
For claiming that the Holy Virgin Mary appeared to her while she was witnessing a pogrom, she was accused of blasphemy and heresy.

Her statements about the Holy Mother are reported to the Holy Synod. She is then brought before a tribunal, presided over by a Judge and three accusers, and delivered into their spiritual authority.
“Under the cross of Christ, I understood the fate of my people…”, she declares to one of her accusers.
Ultimately condemned by the Church, she is stripped of her veil.
Like her Khazar ancestors who once embraced Judaism, and despite her blindness, Sister Sara — guided like a Joan of Arc by voices — rediscovers the mystery of the election of the Jewish people.

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Notes:

In Russia, tradition, culture, and religion have long favored imagination and the interpretation of dreams over reason and logic. Misfortunes and fatal events were often explained by occult forces or entities from the beyond.

During the 19th century, the upper classes — along with certain members of the Orthodox religious authority — experienced an acute crisis of mysticism. Even the Tsars themselves succumbed to religious exaltation, engaging in spiritualism, divination, and astrology. Magicians, mediums, shamans, and seers found a place not only at the Imperial Court but even within the Church itself.

Throughout the Russian dynasty led by the Romanovs — from Peter the Great in 1672 to Nicholas II, deposed in 1917 — all the Tsars viewed, often with the complicity of fiercely antisemitic clergymen, the movements aiming at the elimination of Jews (pogroms) with a benevolent eye.

The Jews were hated, persecuted, hunted down, and massacred like animals… Yet this very suffering sparked the awakening of a consciousness — one that would eventually evolve into the birth of Zionism.