The latest production in Theater J’s 2012-2013 season is a beautifully written, precisely directed play whose theme of romance hindered may remind you slightly of “Romeo and Juliet.” Yet Israeli playwright Savyon Liebrecht’s goal in creating “Apples From the Desert” was not to simply explore the problems faced by two young people in love who are not allowed to marry.

Instead, Liebrecht aims to view a range of religious, familial, sociological and cultural differences facing a young couple in dual settings, in Jerusalem and in a kibbutz in the Negev Desert in 1980.