Racheli Schuraytz - "Two Jews Walk Into a Deli"

“Chaim’s Love Song” is Marvin Chernoff’s only published play and is the basis for YULA Girl’s production of “Two Jews Walk Into A Deli”.  During a recent interview in his Westlake Village home, Mr. Chernoff explained that “Chaim’s Love Song” is really his family’s story.  The play tells the life-story of Chaim Shotsky, a 78-year-old Jewish man living in Brooklyn with his wife.  He meets Kelly Burke, a young Irish Catholic girl from Iowa and proceeds to share his philosophy of life, marriage, parenting, and love with both her and the audience.  The inspiration for Chaim’s character was Chernoff’s cousin Morris Baron who worked as a furrier and later a seltzer deliveryman.  Although neither of his parents were Holocaust survivors, Chernoff was very much influenced by it as a child.  Specifically, the character of Chaim’s wife, Tzwarah, came from Chernoff’s sister-in-law, a survivor of Auschwitz.

But many of the emotions in Chernoff’s plays are closer to home.  For example, Chaim’s wife Tzawarah expresses a deep desire to visit Israel and then live there.  For Mr. Chernoff, it was also “love at first sight” when he was in Israel from 1984 to 1985.    Kelly’s character is none other than Mr. Chernoff’s first wife.  Just like Kelly in the play, Elaine was a devout Catholic school-teacher from Iowa.  Ironically, after their divorce, Elaine married another Jewish man; this time she converted to Judaism.
Chernoff’s other short stories involve even more personal stories.  In his well-acclaimed book, Howie Learns America, and the accompanying play, The Howie Monologues, Chernoff tells his own childhood story about growing up in Glen Falls, New York.

When asked if he would ever consider turning “Chaim’s Love Song” into movie, Chernoff chuckled.  So far, the only adaptation of the play has been an attempt at a musical.  With eighteen song numbers, the musical version seemed to lose the emotion of the stage play.  But even though the musical never spread beyond its premiere in Toronto, Chernoff is willing to try again.  If life has taught him anything, Chernoff believes, it has taught him to adapt.  That definitely rings true for a man who began writing at age six and stopped to pursue a career in psychology, only to return to writing at age fifty.  Now a retired educational psychology and counseling professor at CSUN, Chernoff spends much of his time writing.  But most of his ideas come in chunks as he does not schedule his writing.  Instead, he will sit up all night, every night for a week or so and then forget the manuscript for another two.  In fact, earlier in his career, Chernoff wrote almost an entire play working eighteen hours a day for three weeks.

Today, Chernoff lives in the West Valley with his second wife, Sharon Bloom.  The two are honorary members of “The Not-So-Young Reader’s Theater,” a group of seniors that get together to present short plays in a variety of venues.  Chernoff is also working on revising all of his unpublished works that include more full-length plays, multiple one-acts, and some short stories.  Although “Chaim’s Love Song” is currently Chernoff’s only published play, that fact might change in the next few years.  But at 78 years old, and after suffering from over eleven years of Parkinson’s, it is enough that Chernoff is still an active writer.  The trick, he says: “surround yourself with writers,” as they are often “more interesting than reality.”