
I saw a rather interesting one-man play the other day, which I thought I’d like to share about.
I guess I’ll say from the opening that I don’t know what exactly I have to say – I only saw the play once, and don’t have any images or recording from it to go back over it again, and I didn’t take all that many notes during the show. But it was an interesting performance, about an interesting topic, and so I figured I should write and post something , at least, before it all fades from my memory entirely.
The show itself was interesting, but I guess maybe I’ll start with the content, the subject matter.
The King’s Dream is a one-man show about Elias Abraham Rosenberg, an Ashkenazi Jew from San Francisco who became a trusted advisor to King David Kalākaua of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Surprising? Not so surprising? Little is known about Rosenberg, as you might expect, and I wonder if interest in him might be restricted to an incredibly niche audience – namely, Jews living in Hawaiʻi. Or might he be of some broader interest? I guess you’ll have to tell me.

Though, I’d imagine, that even if only as a point of trivia, as a matter of a weird, interesting, surprising thing, you might be surprised to hear that a Torah scroll and a silver yad (a special ritual pointer used when reading Torah so you don’t touch it with your filthy fingers) gifted to the king by Rosenberg still survive, and are today displayed at Temple Emanu-el, the only dedicated-built synagogue in the islands. I wonder how many other Torah scrolls in the world have a royal crest affixed to their cloth coverings.
The play itself was, as I suppose many one-man shows are, a bit more a matter of narrative storytelling than “acting.” Which isn’t to impugn the talents of Dr. Michael Schuster, who created and performed the piece, but just as a matter of description.
The play opens, first, with a medley of pieces played beautifully by violinist Rachel Saul, leading from traditional Jewish songs (a Yiddish klezmer dance, and the Hebrew prayer Etz Chaim) into Sweet Lei Lahua (written by King Kalākaua himself) and a Kalākaua March written in his honor, and then back to another Jewish song (Simon tov) – a striking but beautiful combination.
Schuster first comes out, playing the role of an unnamed narrator, perhaps meant to be Schuster himself. He introduces his own background somewhat, showing photos of his grandparents or great-grandparents, talking about the time and place they lived in, and if I remember correctly, that they, like Rosenberg’s parents, similarly fled persecution or violence in Ukraine or Russia. Showing images and talking about them, or using images as visual embellishments to the verbal storytelling, would be the prominent mode in this performance. Schuster is, after all, a scholar of Asian storytelling and puppetry, and an experienced puppeteer and storyteller himself – this is his mode.
He then goes on to recount the biblical tale of the Patriarch Joseph, who was taken to Egypt, imprisoned, became a sort of soothsayer or advisor to Pharaoh, interpreting the monarch’s dreams. Rosenberg would end up following a somewhat similar path.
Schuster later changes clothes several times, taking on the identity of Rosenberg and reading from a small book said to be Rosenberg’s diary, putting on a Yiddish accent to evoke the culture which Rosenberg was from. I wonder what a 19th century Jew from San Francisco, the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, might have actually sounded like. Well, in any case, it worked for me – evoked a certain era and culture beautifully. And the costume as well, with a flat cap, vest, and a certain style of shirt and trousers… matched a particular image of the 19th c. Ashkenazi peddler type beautifully.
In any case, both in this Tale of Joseph section, and as he later moved into telling Rosenberg’s story, Schuster made use of a beautiful and intricate wooden cabinet, which at first appeared to be a set piece, a lectern like one would find on the bimah, the stage at an Ashkenazi-style synagogue, from which a rabbi would lead services and from which individuals would read from the Torah. However, doors or panels on the front of the cabinet are opened to reveal beautiful pictures of scenes from the story being told, and then fold back or aside to make way for further doors to be opened again, revealing new sets of images, again and again, in a marvel of woodworking and design that, alone, was really quite impressive and marvelous. The program tells us this was designed and built by Schuster and Troy Walden, and was inspired by the Rajastani tradition of kavad storytelling. Beautiful.
Schuster uses this and several other sets of images to tell his story, reminding me of the Japanese kami shibai (“paper theatre play”) tradition, though I am sure that many cultures have equivalents.
I’m a little unclear on just how much of the play was based directly on what’s known, and what may have been a bit fictionalized to fill in the gaps. I am particularly skeptical that Schuster had a copy of Rosenberg’s actual diary, as the unnamed narrator of the play claims, and frankly I wouldn’t know if such a diary even exists at all. But, then again, if it does, I’d presume it very well might be found in the Hawaii State Archives or the Bishop Museum (which hosts one large portion of the royal family’s collections), and that Schuster therefore very well may have been able to access and read it. Even if it’s written partially, or largely, in Yiddish or Hebrew, I wouldn’t be surprised if Schuster has the language skills to read it.
In any case, I apologize for not taking the time to go read up and confirm or check the details, as to just what might be the truth of Rosenberg’s life and what might have been invented or embellished for the play, but, in a nutshell, here’s what I remember from Schuster’s narrative: Rosenberg’s father fled pogroms (violent antisemitic mobs or riots) in Ukraine to move to the US, and then some decades later, Rosenberg was living in San Francisco when he ran afoul of the police. Whether he was actually guilty or not, and of what, I’m unclear, but Wikipedia tells us he may have been illegally selling lottery tickets. In any case, he fled San Francisco in order to avoid getting arrested or imprisoned, and made his way to Honolulu.
How exactly he attracted the attention of the King, I’m afraid I didn’t quite follow. Somehow, I missed that part of the story. But, somehow, he did. Kalākaua was a deeply religious Christian man, raised in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church like other Moʻi or Aliʻi Nui (“high chiefs,” i.e. kings) before him, and was also a powerful promoter of the revival of ancient Hawaiian knowledge and traditions, including hula, mele (chants), and oral mythohistories such as the Kumulipo. So I would not be at all surprised that Rosenberg’s knowledge of Torah and Talmud, of Jewish theology and philosophy, and so forth, and the Hebrew chants, songs, and prayers, and Jewish ritual practices Rosenberg would have been able to demonstrate, could have been of great interest to the king. Kalākaua was a highly educated, talented, and culturally experienced man, as well – he was the first monarch of any country to circumnavigate the globe, visiting a great many countries; I am not sure how many languages he spoke, but he composed music, wrote and published the Kumulipo, oversaw the construction of a grand palace combining Western and Hawaiian stylistic elements (and equipped with phones and electric lighting before most other royal or presidential residences in the world) as well as designing a grand coronation ceremony for himself which did similarly in order to impress upon the Western powers that Hawaiʻi was a modern and sovereign nation, to be treated with respect and as a member of the family of nations; he also commissioned a now-famous statue of Kamehameha I, and made efforts to negotiate a grand Pan-Asia-Pacific Alliance, which, if the Empire of Japan had joined, well, who knows what might have happened in terms of repelling Western imperialism in at least some parts of the world (much of the Pacific had already been colonized by that point).
But I suppose I’m getting off-topic. In any case, I’m not really sure what to say about precisely which stories or lessons or topics or discussions Rosenberg discussed with Kalākaua, but, again, we are led to believe that his knowledge of the Bible, of Jewish values and philosophy, of perspectives and attitudes about G-d, interpretations of Scripture, and so forth were of great interest to, and were greatly appreciated by, the king. Rosenberg was at some point named kahuna kilokilo, a term which Wikipedia suggests might be translated as soothsayer, or even prophet.
Was Rosenberg indeed some kind of great scholar or sage? Who knows. Was he a mystic or otherwise in possession of some kind of particular spiritual powers or supernatural vision? Unlikely. Was he some sort of shyster, con artist, or charlatan? Well, as someone intrigued by this story of surely the most prominent Jew in Hawaiian history, I would like to think not; I would like to think more highly of him, that he’s someone worth at least some degree of looking back upon as a good person, an impressive person. But, who knows?
As it happened, Rosenberg left Hawaiʻi in 1887 just weeks before the so-called Bayonet Constitution was forced upon the kingdom, stripping the king and the Native Hawaiian nobility (the aliʻi) of much of their power and granting considerable power to prominent haoles – sugar plantation owners and others, many of them officially royal subjects (i.e. Hawaiian citizens) but essentially Americans. This was a major step in the dismantling of the kingdom, following various other stages inflicted upon the kingdom in decades prior, beginning with the introduction and rapid expansion of Christianity; the royalty themselves overturning various ancient kapu (taboos) and sacred practices and ordering the destruction of kiʻi (statues of the gods) and heiau (temples); the implementation of earlier Constitutions which granted greater political power and land rights to haoles and diminished the power of the Hawaiian people to have control over their own lands, society, economy, and destiny; and so forth. Following this Bayonet Constitution, the kingdom would be more completely occupied and placed under haole control in the 1890s, with the support of US Marines, and then unilaterally declared annexed by Congress in 1898, an act which of course has no legal basis in US or international law. Congress might as well declare England or Japan to be US territory – doesn’t make it so. It has been well-established since that the overthrow, annexation, whatever we want to call it, was illegal then and remains illegal now; Congress itself declared in an official Apology Resolution in 1993 that “the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum,” though, of course, apology or no apology, Hawaiʻi remains occupied today.
In any case, I wonder what Rosenberg saw or knew of these coming developments when he left in June 1887, just before the Bayonet Constitution was imposed. If he was close with the Moʻi, then surely he had considerable knowledge of political developments and crises; how close might he have been with the haole community, and with these prominent traitors, to have been in on their plans or intentions?
According to the play, he left when he did because he had heard that somehow circumstances had changed in San Francisco and that he would be able to return and be reunited with his wife and children without being sought after by the police. Wikipedia says it was because of his own bad health and/or because of the political unrest in Hawaiʻi. Either way, he was hospitalized soon after returning to San Francisco and died just a few weeks later. Schuster showed photos of his grave, which is in a cemetery affiliated with Congregation Sherith Israel of SF; I’d be curious to visit it myself someday, perhaps the next time I find myself in San Francisco.
Wikipedia tells us that Rosenberg was perhaps born around 1810, which would have made him around 75-76 years old when he first left California for Hawaiʻi to begin with, returning roughly a year later and dying around the age of 76-77. From what tiny bit I ever knew of him before – basically nothing except for having seen the Torah scroll and yad on display and reading/hearing that he’d been some kind of adviser to the king – I never imagined him so old. I don’t know if I thought he was in his 30s or 40s, or in his 50s or 60s when he was in Hawaiʻi, but just given the length of the sea journey, and the diseases and so forth of the time, it just didn’t occur to me that he might be that old. Kalākaua was born in 1836, making him about 50 years old when he first met Rosenberg – very much fully a mature, capable, experienced, adult, but nevertheless young enough to see a 75-year-old man as a sage-like figure, an elder, from whom he might learn. But Kalākaua himself died in San Francisco just a few years later, in Jan 1891, of disease, at only the age of 54. His predecessor as king, Lunalilo, died of tuberculosis in 1874, at the age of only 39. So, I think we have good reason to have not initially imagined that Rosenberg would be 75 already before ever first traveling to Hawaiʻi.
Schuster concluded the performance with some of this epilogue, describing what happened to the kingdom after Rosenberg’s departure. The play overall was, indeed, a rather enjoyable, and unique, experience, and I’m so glad I caught it during my brief time in Hawaiʻi. I hope that it was recorded in some fashion; even if the recording is never made widely available, it would be wonderful just to know that this distinctive event, performed only twice for very small audiences, was captured, recorded, in some fashion, and won’t be simply lost to time.
…
I of course take a particular interest in this sort of thing because I am myself Jewish. And it is because of my own Jewish background that I also take a particular interest in the histories of the Shanghai and Kaifeng Jews, and of the various Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Romaniote* communities with their fascinatingly diverse cultures and (sadly, in most cases tragic) histories all across the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, the Arab world, Iran, and beyond.
But I would think this sort of thing hopefully of at least some interest to others as well – as I said at the beginning of this post, an unexpected, surprisingly, interconnection of different peoples, different threads of history. We learn from the story of Elias Abraham Rosenberg that Hawaiian history is not 100% a story devoid of any prominent Jewish actors, and that Jewish history does not take place solely in Europe, the United States, and Israel/Palestine. Kalākaua traveled the world, meeting with the Meiji Emperor and proposing the marriage of his niece Kaʻiulani to one of the imperial princes of Japan, though that never ended up taking place. Kaʻiulani herself traveled in 1893 to Washington DC in an effort to convince Pres. Cleveland to halt or reverse the dismantling of the kingdom, and her aunts, Queen Kapiʻolani and then Crown Princess (later ruling Queen) Liliʻuokalani attended Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in London in 1887. Jews occupied prominent positions in the Ottoman and Persian courts, and Sephardic Jews from the Caribbean were among the first Jews to ever settle in what is now the United States – before any Ashkenazi Jews came over from Europe. I’ve seen Torah scrolls from China written on silk instead of deer hide, and a rubbing from a 15th c. Chinese stele from a Kaifeng synagogue. Cultural exchange and interesting, unexpected, intersections and interactions are everywhere across history. You never know what you might come across.
*Sephardic Jews are descended from those expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s. Settling in the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and North Africa, they maintained a variety of Judeo-Spanish languages, such as Ladino, down to the present day while incorporating numerous cultural influences of the places where they settled, as well as influencing those cultures.
Mizrahi is, to my knowledge, a relatively recent new term, encapsulating the Jewish communities of the Arab world and Persia, descended not from the Sephardim, from Spain, but from Jewish communities which have lived in the Middle East since before Islam. Not in any way thieves or appropriators, let alone colonizers, of Middle Eastern foods and culture, they are – as a group, if not in the case of every last family – descendants of the peoples who lived in those lands since long prior to the Arab invasions.
Romaniote Jews, a group which I myself only learned of a few years ago, are Greek Jews, also descended not from the Sephardim, from those who left Spain, but from the Greek Jews who’d been there since the Roman Empire, if not earlier. A number of the Apostles in the Christian Scriptures were Greek Jews, who spoke + wrote in Greek. Where do you think they came from, if not from this sort of origin? Certainly not from Poland and Lithuania.