Asaf and the members of the audience are the unwitting protagonists of Itamar Moses’s “The Ally” which is currently running at the Public’s Anspacher Theater. Asaf Sternheim (a well-meaning but uncommitted Josh Radnor) is Jewish, a writer, and an adjunct professor of writing at a prestigious American University in a struggling American city where his Korean American wife Gwen Kim (Joy Osmanski) is the University Administrator for Community Relations and External Affairs.

Gwen (a committed yet uncertain Joy Osmanski) is Asaf’s primary antagonist and serves as the narrator of Moses’s challenging new play. Although her attempts to abate the university’s encroachment on the neighborhood and broker more low-income student housing are not as successful as hoped, Gwen believes in her work and has learned much about the need for compromise in the academic community. Although Asaf is teaching one writing course at the University, Gwen wonders “if maybe you should try to get more…involved. Locally, like join an activity or something.” She even suggests he visit the local synagogue or call his college ex-girlfriend whom she learns has moved back into town as a community organizer. “Double, double toil and trouble.”

Turns out Asaf is already “on it” and has a meeting with Baron Prince (persuasive and persistent Elijah Jones), one of his writing students to help him finish his script “an autobiographical story of a black kid from a rough neighborhood that abuts a prestigious University, which he then ends up attending.”  But Baron has a different agenda: he wants to share the story of Deronte Lee’s death after an all too familiar event involving police brutality. During their meeting, Baron discovers that his professor has not watched the video of Deronte’s death and invites Asaf to sign the manifesto about the death drafted by the activist group “Voice to Action” run by “this local organizer lady Nakia Clark (an unshakable and perceptive Cherise Boothe).” Nakia is Asaf’s ex-girlfriend he hasn’t seen in twenty years. “Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

The remaining characters in “The Ally” are Asaf’s secondary antagonists and serve effectively as the Chorus: Rachel Klein (a sensitive yet committed Madeline Weinstein), 20, Jewish, a college junior; Farid El Masry (a committed and unwavering Michael Khalid Karadsheh), 20, Palestinian-American, a college junior; and Reuven Fisher (an impatient and immovable Ben Rosenfield), 29, a PhD student in Jewish History and Judaic Studies. This well-orchestrated Chorus shake Asaf’s white, male Jewish-atheist façade of liberalism to its core.

The Everyman protagonist is confronted with his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza and the genocide of the Palestinian population, his liberal yet uninformed understanding of systemic white racism in America, his denial of his difficulty in relationships, especially with women, and his lack of full understanding of his latent xenophobia. Members of the audience are likewise confronted with our positions on these matters and encouraged to take stands. It is only through Asaf’s encounter with the local Rabbi that he finds the serene and Eastern path to resolution and commitment.

Rarely have playwrights been able to successfully present all sides of important religious-political topics without taking sides themselves. Itamar Moses is the exception to that generalization and his “The Ally” leaves the audience with the important task of critical discernment and decision-making amid controversy. Lila Neugebauer directs with razor sharp skill.

The sparse yet effective scenic design by Lael Jellinek, the costume design by Sarita Fellows, the lighting design by Reza Behjat, and the sound design by Bray Poor more than enhance the power of Itamar Moses’s challenging and important script.

The Public’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis’s Note in the program summarizes it succinctly. “At its best. The theater allows us to get some distance from our own position, empathize with the feelings of others, and break the habits of thought and belief that keep us at each other’s throats in the world outside the theater.” So be it.