May 28 – 29, 9:30 pm – 5:00 am
Alma Tikkun Leil Shavuot
The JCC in Manhattan
It’s year five of the Alma Tikkun Leil Shavuot at the JCC, the Upper West Side’s most spectacular holiday celebration, an updated version of the ancient festival of Shavuot, when the ancient Israelites stayed awake all night at Sinai anticipating the revelation. We will again offer a variety of traditional and innovative programs, including study, film, music, dance, yoga, meditation, cheesecake, and more, throughout the building, throughout the night, and into the early morning. Be part of the communal happening; come for an hour or seven!
Julie Subrin's photo for Nextbook
In celebration of Shavuot, we direct you to this charming interview about cheese and the upcoming holiday on Nextbook (which also has a good primer on the holiday for those who need a little refresher). Food, after all, is an integral part of any – but especially Jewish – culture.
Check out Filmmaker’s Collaborative’s upcoming event, Making Media Now 2009. The Collaborative was founded by our grantee Ellen Brodsky (At Home in Utopia) and conference panelist Sandi DuBowski (Trembling Before G-d) is also a grantee.
Filmmakers Collaborative is proud to present Making Media Now 2009, a full-day conference (9am – 6:30pm) for film and media makers of every skill level. Held on June 5th at Waltham MA’s Bentley University, Making Media Now 2009 will continue its tradition of providing the New England film and video community with the latest information and workshops around the media making. Participants will have access to leading national industry experts, demonstrations of cutting-edge products and the opportunity to network with colleagues from around the region, including one-on-one consultations with special guests.
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Application Deadline: July 15th, 2009
Summer Photography Program in Jerusalem!
Established in 1906, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem is Israel’s foremost academy of the arts and one of the top art and design schools in the world. Starting in 1981, Bezalel’s photography department began awarding its students with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Since then, the department has seen many of its alumni become leading artists in Israel and throughout the world. Among them: Michal Rovner, Elinor Carucci, Adi Nes, Sharon Yaari, Yigal Shem-Tov, Yossi Berger, David Adika, Rona Yefman, Sharon Bareket and others.
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It used to be unspoken that there was a tough, stinging style of humor that Jewish comedians aimed at Jewish audiences (who, like any ethnic group, loved being tweaked for their own idiosyncrasies when nobody else was around to hear) and another, less rough-edged style you brought out for mixed company. With those distinctions eradicated and Jewish comedy now dominated by a generation that never felt like the embodiment of otherness, is there still a home for old-world comedy?
- Mark Harris
Check out New York Magazine’s article on Woody Allen’s latest film, Whatever Works, starring Larry David of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The article provides an interesting discussion not only of Allen’s films, but of Jewish-American comedy in general.
June 3 – 7, (June 3-5 at 8pm; June 6 at 2 & 8pm; June 7 at 5pm)
Rat Bastards (Tutti Stronzi)
Dixon Place, 161 Chrystie Street, NYC
Rat Bastards was written by Julia Pearlstein, an alumna of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and will feature original scenery designed and painted by her father, the realist painter Philip Pearlstein. The play, which was inspired by American human rights violations at Abu Ghraib, was first developed during a 2007-2008 Mabou Mines/Suite Residency under the guidance of Ruth Maleczech. (more…)
Classical composer Eric Zeisl had a tough time living in mid-20th century Los Angeles.
The somber, heavy-browed Austrian, who left Nazi-dominated Europe in 1938, stated that the two things he hated most in this world were Hitler and the sun. He was able to flee the Anschluss, but what nearly did him in was Southern California weather. Exposed to its relentless rays, Zeisl’s pale skin broke out in a rash. In photographs he peers out from under sombreros and parasols — looking mightily displeased.
50 years after Eric Zeisl wrote the music of “Jacob and Rachel,” the ballet will finally have its premier, performed by the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony and the Body Traffic dance troupe. Read more about the life of Zeisl and the history of this interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times.
“When I heard that the ACLU had made a formal challenge to the patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2, held by Myriad Genetics, I was in between my bi-annual MRI screening for breast cancer and packing to attend the Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered (FORCE) conference in Orlando, celebrating 10 years of advocacy around issues affecting the BRCA community.”
- Joanna Rudnick
Our grantee, the filmmaker Joanna Rudnick, repsonds to the ACLU challenge to Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents to the cancer-causing mutations BRCA1 and BRCA2. Joanna’s article, which appears in the Huffington Post, also contains a clip from her film, In the Family, which traces her own experience with breast cancer and the BRCA1 mutation.
Filed under: Events | Tags: documentaries, Film, grantees, music, talk, theater, visual arts
May 19 at 7:30 pm Four Seasons Lodge (preview screening!) JCC Manhattan
Join us for a summer of special Catskill events, kicking off with a sneak preview of this award- winning film. From the darkness of Europe’s death camps to the lush mountains of New York’s Catskills, Four Seasons Lodge captures the final season for a community of Holocaust survivors who come together each summer to celebrate their lives. Followed by Q&A with director. $8.00 Member, $10.00 Non-Member
May 21 at 6:30 pm Conversation & Screening: Imagining the Shtetl The Jewish Museum, NYC
Scholars Jeffrey Shandler and Alisa Solomon join filmmaker Eleanor Antin to consider how shtetl life has been portrayed in film, literature, and popular culture. The evening will include a screening of Eleanor Antin’s film, The Man Without a World. This Yiddish post-modernist creation encompasses the full cycle of shtetl life, complete with abduction, seduction, dybbuks, exorcism, weddings, pogroms, and even the Angel of Death.Member Prices: $10 General: $15; Students / Over 65: $12
May 31 at 1 pm Scenes from Green Violin The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Fransisco
The friendship and artistic collaboration between Marc Chagall and actor Solomon Mikhoels, the guiding force behind Moscow’s groundbreaking Yiddish theater (GOSET), is at the heart of the museum’s current exhibition Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949. This friendship is dramatized in Green Violin, a musical conceived by Rebecca Bayla Taichman and Elise Theron with music by Frank London. As part of this special, free event, director Rebecca Bayla Taichman will be in conversation with Daniel Schifrin, the museum’s director of public programs and writer-in-residence, about her inspiration for Green Violin, as well as the connections between theater and politics in both Russia and the United States over the last century. Free with admission to the Museum
June 4 at 8:00 pm J. Edgar Klezmer The JCC in Manhattan
“J. Edgar Klezmer: Songs from My Grandmother’s FBI Files” premiered to a sold-out house at Dixon Place last year and became a Time Out New York Critics Pick. A musical documentary theater piece based on declassified documents, the show is set on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, examining the life and Cold War time capsule of Dr. Adele Sicular, grandmother of Metropolitan Klezmer & Isle of Klezbos drummer/bandleader Eve Sicular. Combining myriad archival finds, oral history and family gossip, this piece uses theater, multi-media projections, original music and lyrics to investigate the dealings of government agents and Eve’s pianist/psychiatrist/activist grandma. Tickets $15 JCC members, $20 Non-Members
June 15 at 7:30 pm Theodore Bikel: The First 85 Years Carnegie Hall, NYC
85th Birthday Celebration with Friends and Colleagues
Throughout an extraordinary career as a legendary actor, musician and activist, Theodore Bikel has played an influential role in the shaping of American theater, folk music, film and television, culminating in remarkable contributions to the landscape of Jewish culture. On June 15th, he will be joined by Arlo Guthrie, David Krakauer, Peter Yarrow, Alan Alda and others at this celebration presented by the Juvenile Law Center. Tickets from $30 – $500
May 14 – June 21
Paintings and Collage by
Shanee Epstein at the 404 Gallery
Brooklyn NY
“Rage is a perfectly sane response to the Israeli occupation. And all art is political in the end. It’s just that politics is not the be all and end all of art.”
– Michael Kimmelman
This week we point you towards another New York Times article, Michael Kimmelman’s “In Belgium, Samson Gets a Makeover.” He addresses a controversial performance of the opera Samson et Dalila in Belgium.
photo by Annemie Augustijns for the NYTimes
Check out Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu in collaboration with the electronica duo Crystal Method.
May 13 at 9 pm Three Weeks (part of LABA) 14 Street Y, NYC
The early stages of Yoav Gal’s brand new opera, “Three Weeks” is featured at LABA. The opera traces the events surrounding the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, c. 70 AD. The sources for this narrative come form the Talmud and Jewish legends. Music and Design by Yoav Gal, Libretto by Ruby Namdar, Video Projections by Mirit Tal
May 14 at 6:30 pm Painted Memories: A Conversation with Artist Mayer Kirshenblatt The Jewish Museum NYC
Self-taught artist Mayer Kirshenblatt is joined by his daughter, noted scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, for a conversation with Dave Isay, Founder and President of StoryCorps, about the role of memory in the creative process. The conversation will also explore how nearly forty years of father and daughter interviews resulted in the exhibition They Called Me Mayer July. Member Prices: $10 General: $15; Students / Over 65: $12
(Read the review of Kirshenblatt’s book, also titled They Called Me Mayer July, on Nextbook)
May 11 – May 17 Not God Montclair, NJ
A play in verse by renowned oncologist, Marc J. Straus, which documents the shared journey through illness of a doctor and patient. The harrowing, eloquent poems form a remarkable dialogue revealing their unspoken yet sacred relationship and the full range of secret hopes and fears, victories and defeats.
May 11 – May 17 Tzelem: Likeness and Presence in Jewish Art Stanton Street, NYC
An exhibition of the Jewish Art Salon about the notion of Tzelem/Likeness, in conjunction with the LABA festival, is taking place at the Stanton Street Shul.
May 19 at 7:30 pm Four Seasons Lodge (preview screening!) JCC Manhattan
Join us for a summer of special Catskill events, kicking off with a sneak preview of this award- winning film. From the darkness of Europe’s death camps to the lush mountains of New York’s Catskills, Four Seasons Lodge captures the final season for a community of Holocaust survivors who come together each summer to celebrate their lives. Followed by Q&A with director. $8.00 Member
$10.00 Non-Member
May 21 at 6:30 pm Conversation & Screening: Imagining the Shtetl The Jewish Museum, NYC
Scholars Jeffrey Shandler and Alisa Solomon join filmmaker Eleanor Antin to consider how shtetl life has been portrayed in film, literature, and popular culture. The evening will include a screening of Eleanor Antin’s film, The Man Without a World. This Yiddish post-modernist creation encompasses the full cycle of shtetl life, complete with abduction, seduction, dybbuks, exorcism, weddings, pogroms, and even the Angel of Death.Member Prices: $10 General: $15; Students / Over 65: $12
May 14 – June 21
Paintings and Collage by
Shanee Epstein at the 404 Gallery
Brooklyn NY
May 17, 1 – 4 PM; Opening Reception
Warren Hoffman, a current theater grantee for his play The Last with the InterAct Theatre Company, Philadelphia, PA, shares with us a few thoughts on his new publication The Passing Game, available on all major online book stores.
“If asked to name an example of “queer Jewish American culture,” most people, if they think of anything at all, typically say Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play was indeed a watershed in terms of gay Jewish representation, but contrary to popular belief, it was hardly the first American text to look at the intersections between Jewish and queer identity. Yet, in a post-Stonewall world, it’s texts such as Angels in America, Trembling Before G-d, Kissing Jessica Stein, and Torch Song Trilogy that people often call to mind as a “canon” of queer Jewish texts. What existed before all this?
This is precisely the question that I wanted to answer in my new book that was released last week The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture (more…)
“The resulting strain is almost bipolar, with the building aggressively screaming about apocalypse as its exhibition affirms harmonious universalism, with neither making its case.”
- Edward Rothstein
Oliver Hartung for The New York Times
Check out this article, which appeared last Friday in the New York Times, on the merits and shortcomings (mainly the latter) of the Jüdisches Museum Berlin. Displaying Jewish history and culture remains a challenging task.
May 5 at 7:30 pm Taking Back God; American Women Rising up for Religious Equality Washington DCJCC
Join Leora Tanenbaum a in conversation with Mary E. Hunt and Asra Q. Nomani. With the explosion of women in this country rising up and demanding the same meaningful spiritual connections enjoyed by their brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, these three women, a Christian, Muslim and Jew will expose the conflicts in each of their religious faiths. $10, Discounted Member Price, $7
May 6 at 7 pm Steve Cuiffo does Lenny Bruce Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC
Actor Steve Cuiffo channels controversial comedian Lenny Bruce, performing a selection of Bruce’s most biting satires – verbatim – in this critically acclaimed one-man show last seen at Joe’s Pub. Followed by a Post-performance Q&A with Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Ecology, NYU. $15, $12 students/seniors, $10 members
May 13 at 9 pm Three Weeks (part of LABA) 14 Street Y, NYC
The early stages of Yoav Gal’s brand new opera, “Three Weeks” is featured at LABA. The opera traces the events surrounding the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, c. 70 AD. The sources for this narrative come form the Talmud and Jewish legends. Music and Design by Yoav Gal, Libretto by Ruby Namdar, Video Projections by Mirit Tal
May 14 at 6:30 pm Painted Memories: A Conversation with Artist Mayer Kirshenblatt The Jewish Museum NYC
Self-taught artist Mayer Kirshenblatt is joined by his daughter, noted scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, for a conversation with Dave Isay, Founder and President of StoryCorps, about the role of memory in the creative process. The conversation will also explore how nearly forty years of father and daughter interviews resulted in the exhibition They Called Me Mayer July. Member Prices: $10 General: $15; Students / Over 65: $12
May 4 – May 17 Not God Montclair, NJ
A play in verse by renowned oncologist, Marc J. Straus, which documents the shared journey through illness of a doctor and patient. The harrowing, eloquent poems form a remarkable dialogue revealing their unspoken yet sacred relationship and the full range of secret hopes and fears, victories and defeats.
May 4 – May 17 Tzelem: Likeness and Presence in Jewish Art, Stanton Street, NYC
An exhibition of the Jewish Art Salon about the notion of Tzelem/Likeness, in conjunction with the LABA festival, is taking place at the Stanton Street Shul.
May 14 – June 21
Paintings and Collage by
Shanee Epstein at the 404 Gallery
Brooklyn NY
May 17, 1 – 4 PM; Opening Reception
