The 1994 Hebron massacre in which a Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein opened fire on a group of Muslims at prayer, murdering 29 of them before he himself was killed, prompted bitter debate in the larger Jewish community. Were Goldstein’s actions inexplicable and irrational, or were they a tragic – but predictable – consequence of Israel’s settlement policies?

Jason Sherman’s new play, Reading Hebron, takes the latter analysis, but lays out the argument in vaudevillean fashion. Sick puns (“There’s no business like Shoah business”) and freewheeling guest appearances by figures like Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and Steven Spielberg flow into sombre, poetic recreations of witness testimony before the Israeli government’s inquiry into the massacre.

At the center of this carnival is Nathan Abramowitz, the hero of Sherman’s earlier The League Of Nathans, still assailed by doubts about his own Jewish identity, still wondering what it means to be a “good Jew.” Earnest and reasonable, Nathan is no radical, but his own informal investigation into Hebron begins to trouble him: Is he culpable in the actions of Jewish extremists? What happens, he wonders, when an oppressed people can’t admit that they’ve become oppressors? Nathan’s feelings of guilt intensify, even as the Jews closest to Hebron tell him that, as a North American, he has nothing to do with the massacre and cannot possibly understand it.

Sherman packs an enormous amount of information about Hebron into the play (which is very helpful to readers unfamiliar with the roots of the conflict), and doesn’t attempt any neat explanations. Nathan gets American writer Cynthia Ozick to state her theory of “mutual contrition” game-show-style in 30 seconds or less. He visits the offices of “Mr. Big,” a Chomsky-inspired character who controls the world economy. But the playwright doesn’t stack the deck against them. Ozick is given the opportunity to make her point, as is Chomsky.

Perhaps ambivalence is the only emotion Sherman can honestly feel about Hebron, and his play is stronger for it. Reading Hebron, in which Sherman practically splits himself in two, half sage and half tumbler, is a triumph. Improbably, it makes his – and Nathan’s – ambivalence both moving and dramatic.