For My Wanderers: Jacob and Esther

My dear ones,

Tonight, after rehearsing "The Wanderers," I write to you from an empty theatre that still holds the echo of snow falling.

The Secret I've Discovered

Jacob, you're six – the age when boundaries between real and imaginary are still soft. Esther, at twenty-one, you're living the question this play asks: How do we know which life is ours to live?

Esther, your name pulses through this play – a young woman caught between obedience and flight. Jacob, though your name isn't spoken, you're everywhere: in Abraham (the biblical wanderer from whom you descend), in the children who haunt both couples' dreams, in the future that pulls everyone forward. You are the wandering itself – from Yaakov who wrestled with angels and emerged transformed.

Between Two Mirrors

In Anna Ziegler’s Wanderers, she shows us two marriages that mirror each other across time and tradition. One couple bound by ancient law, another by modern freedom. But here's what I stage: they're having the same conversation in different languages.

The Hasidic couple speaks of bashert – the one destined for you. The secular couple searches for connection through screens, building bridges out of typed words. Both are asking: Is love what we choose or what chooses us?

I place them on opposite sides of a translucent wall. Sometimes they speak in unison without knowing it. Sometimes one couple finishes the other's sentences. Because whether wrapped in tradition or typing into screens, we're all trying to say the unsayable: I am here. Do you see me?

What Snow Knows

"Ein ba'al ha-nes makir b'niso" – we never recognize miracles from inside them.

The play breathes with this tension between what characters know and what they can't see about their own lives. Like you, Jacob, building whole worlds in our living room without realizing you're teaching me about creation. Like you, Esther, becoming yourself so gradually you don't notice the miracle of your own transformation.

I stage memory as present action – the past doesn't stay past. Letters float above like constellations that spell out different messages depending on where you stand. What one character calls prison, another calls sanctuary. What one calls freedom, another recognizes as a different kind of cage.

The Language Between Worlds

In this play, everyone is bilingual – speaking both the language they inherited and the one they're inventing. The Orthodox couple speaks English peppered with Yiddish, their words carrying centuries. The secular couple types messages that become their own coded language of longing.

But underneath, everyone is saying the same prayer: Let me be known. Let me know myself. Let me find the courage to become.

This is your inheritance too – you speak multiple languages of being. The language of your ancestors, yes, but also the language of your generation, your dreams, your particular way of seeing light.

What Your Father Does

Like the masters taught: theatre makes the invisible visible. We stage not just what happens, but what it feels like while it's happening.

Every character in "The Wanderers" creates a fiction to survive their reality. They tell themselves stories about who they are, who they married, what their life means. Some of these stories are prisons. Some are wings. Most are both.

This is what I want you to understand: We're all writing ourselves into being, one choice at a time. Every day you decide which story to believe about yourself. Choose the one that makes you brave. Choose the one that makes you kind.

Your Beautiful Exile

My wanderers, you carry Jerusalem and Boston, tradition and invention, in your very bones. This isn't division – it's richness. You contain multitudes.

The play ends with everyone walking forward into darkness, but their footprints glow behind them. This is us – each carrying our small light through the storm, leaving trails for others to follow or avoid, but never walking alone.

Remember: wandering isn't lostness. It's the courage to keep looking for what calls to you, even when you don't know its name. It's the faith that somewhere, someone is wandering toward you too.

May you wander with purpose, even when the purpose isn't clear. May you find home in unexpected places – in a gesture, a melody, another wanderer's recognition. May you discover that every tradition you inherit is also yours to transform.

The wanderers know what I know what you'll know: home isn't a place but a frequency, a note we're all humming, waiting for someone to hum along.

With all my love from this beautiful exile we call life,

Your father, who builds stages where all wanderers meet

P.S. – Jacob, you're named for the one who wrestled with mystery and won a new name. Esther, you're named for the one who revealed herself at exactly the right moment. Both of you carry the secret of perfect timing – knowing when to hold on and when to let go. That's all wandering really is.