A Flag Is Born is a 1946 play that advocated the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in the ancient Land of Israel—at the time of the play's release Mandatory Palestine, under British administration. With a cast including Paul Muni, Celia Adler and Marlon Brando, it opened on Broadway on September 4, 1946. It was written by Ben Hecht and directed by Luther Adler, with music by Kurt Weill. A Flag Is Born was produced by the American League for a Free Palestine, an organization headed by Hillel Kook (known in America by the anglicized name Peter Bergson), to raise money for Zionist causes. Synopsis A Flag Is Born has three principal characters, with other actors playing bit roles. Tevye and Zelda (played on Broadway by Paul Muni and Celia Adler, major stars at the time) are survivors of the Treblinka death camp who are attempting to travel to British-administered Palestine, the ancient Land of Israel. David (Marlon Brando) is an angry young Holocaust survivor. The play opens with Tevye and Zelda ushering in the Jewish Sabbath on a Friday night somewhere on their journey. Zelda lights candles on a broken tombstone. After reciting the Sabbath prayers, Tevye dreams of the town where he was born, as it was before the Nazis destroyed it. A dream sequence follows in which Tevye has visions of the biblical kings Saul and David, then imagines himself standing before the United Nations Security Council pleading for the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine; he is ignored. Tevye awakens to find that Zelda has died in the night. He recites kaddish, a Jewish memorial prayer, then welcomes the Angel of Death, who has come for him too. He bids David farewell. As David considers committing suicide, three Jewish soldiers (representing the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi) suddenly appear and implore him to join them: "Don't you hear our guns David? We battle the English, the sly and powerful English. We speak to them in a new Jewish language, the language of guns. We fling no more prayers or tears at the world. We fling bullets. We fling barrages ... We promise to wrest our homeland out of the British claws." In the play's finale, David delivers a fiery pro-Zionist speech, moves across a bridge into Palestine, and with the mixed sounds of "Hatikvah" and gunfire in the background, raises Tevye's prayer shawl as