Sheva Zucker’s late mother Miriam was still attending a women’s Yiddish reading group in Winnipeg until just a few months before she died last January at age 97. So, even before her mother passed away, Zucker knew what the best way would be to memorialize her.
“My mother was never a shul-goer, and davening is not the fullest expression of my Judaism, either,” Zucker, executive director of the League for Yiddish, told The Arty Semite. “I wanted some way some other than just saying Kaddish that was more meaningful for her and for me.”
That desire led Zucker to create a blog titled “*Liderlikht,” or “Candles of Song,” within weeks of her mother’s passing. The blog, on which she posts Yiddish poems about mothers, went live on February 9. Each week, she posts a different poem in its original Yiddish, with English translation and transliteration. She also includes a brief biography of each poet.
“Candles of Song” comes from a line in the first poem Zucker posted, “Frum” (Piously), by Rashel Veprinski: “Piously as my mother the waxen wicks / I light my candle of song.” Veprinski (1896-1981) came to New York from Ukraine in 1907, and began writing poetry at age 15. She was first published in 1918 in the journal “Di Naye Velt,” and she went on to write several books of poetry, as well as an autobiographical novel, short stories, and many articles for Yiddish periodicals. From the 1920s she lived with the famous Yiddish writer Mani Leyb, until his death in 1953.
Drew Lovejoy proves that you don’t need to be Irish to excel at Irish dancing. Lovejoy, a 17-year-old American biracial Jew, recently won his third consecutive All Irish Dance Championship, the oldest competition in the Irish dance world. He was also the 2010 Irish dance world champion in his age group.
Growing up the only Jewish youngster in Greenville, Ohio, Lovejoy had an unconventional childhood. A profile of Lovejoy in The New York Times published in March brought him a lot of attention, but he said that the piece misrepresented what it’s like to be a Jew, and particularly a Jew of color, in the Irish dance world. He set the record straight and shared more about himself in a recent phone conversation with The Arty Semite.
Renee Ghert-Zand: Can you tell us about your family and your Jewish identity?
There’s a good chance you’ve seen Noam Galai’s face — even if you’ve never heard of him. That’s because a 2006 photo he took of himself screaming has been copied and used without permission by people, groups and companies around the world. “The Stolen Scream,” as the photo is called, has gone viral, appearing on t-shirts, magazine and book covers, and as political graffiti everywhere.
Galai, 27, is a New York-based Israeli photographer whose day job is in advertising design at AOL. In just a few short years, Galai has gone from an amateur self-taught photographer to an accomplished professional, shooting celebrities like Jay-Z, Leonard Cohen, Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder in concert and the studio. A big sports fan, he has also gravitated toward photographing major games and matches in the U.S., Europe and Israel.
The Arty Semite recently spoke with Galai on the phone about his burgeoning photography career and an exclusive shot he took of Gilad Shalit on a recent under-the-radar visit to New York.
Renee Ghert-Zand: Was there a specific moment when you went from being an amateur photographer to a professional?
Image courtesy of Freeman, Kaplan, Shiff
When Mordecai Manuel Noah, the most influential Jew in the United States in the early 19th-century, tried to establish a refuge for Jews called “Ararat” on Grand Island, New York, he failed miserably. Efforts to establish the colony in 1825 went no further than a big kick-off event in Buffalo, which was followed by a resounding lack of interest and support by American and international Jews. Now, 187 years later, three art professors are bringing Ararat to life — at least virtually.
“Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homeland Project” is the brainchild of multimedia artist and University of Toronto professor Melissa Shiff, her husband Louis Kaplan, a cultural historian at U of T, and John Craig Freeman, a new media expert from Emerson College in Boston. The project will be part of “Where To?” a group exhibit opening April 28 at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon.
Recluse? What recluse? All we needed was the 1940 census to tell us where the uber-private J.D. Salinger lived that year. Trouble is, we didn’t have access to the 1940 census until yesterday. On April 2, the government opened up the personal details of 132 million people, after keeping them confidential for 72 years.
Gothamist has used the online search tools offered by the National Archives and the New York Public Library to determine that Jerome D. Salinger was living at 1133 Park Avenue in Manhattan in 1940. Salinger, best known for his iconic novel “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951), as well as “Nine Stories” (1953) and “Franny and Zooey” (1961), moved to Cornish, New Hampshire in 1953. Uncomfortable with the scrutiny brought by his literary success, he became more and more reclusive until his death on January 27, 2010 at the age of 91.
Gothamist’s may be patting itself on the back for using the newly released census to find out where Salinger was living in 1940. However, it really didn’t have to go to all that trouble. It turns out that the information wasn’t such a secret after all. Wikipedia has all along noted his address, and even has a photo of the building in its entry for the writer.
Watching the documentary “The Island President” is like watching a political thriller — only its story is not fictional and the cast is not made up of movie stars. Most important, the stakes are very real. In fact, they are so high that the existence of an entire country hangs in the balance.
The underdog hero of this drama is 41-year-old Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected leader of the Maldives, a Sunni Muslim nation of 1200 islands in the Indian Ocean. This would have been enough to intrigue San Francisco-based filmmaker Jon Shenk, but there was more.
During his time in office Nasheed, a former political prisoner and exile, not only promoted democratic and transparent governance in his country, but also fought for its very survival. Armed with scientific evidence that his barely-above-sea-level country is sinking into the ocean, he worked tirelessly and creatively to convince the international community to take action to reverse climate change.
Anyone who has been following The Groggers’ rise to Jewish pop-punk stardom knows that the band likes to push the envelope. But they may have pushed it too far with their latest video, “Jewcan Sam: A Nose Job Love Song.”
Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a 40-year-old Miami plastic surgeon is under investigation by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for professional ethics violations resulting from his having commissioned the music video from The Groggers. Salzhauer claims that he was only trying to reach out to the social media-savvy younger generation, and that the ultimate message of the video — that no one should undergo plastic surgery to please someone else — is actually positive.
Notwithstanding the doctor’s assertions, there is much to question about “Jewcan Sam,” which plays out a story of a yarmulke-wearing male high school student who, despite his fears of going under the knife, has his shnoz “circumcised” to please the girl he likes. In the end, the girl of his dreams rebuffs him despite his new, less “Jewish” sniffer. To his dismay, the young man’s hot teacher hits on him, instead.
“Up From The Stacks” is musical theater, but like no other performance that you may have seen.
The show, which originally appeared in 2011 in New York and had its West Coast premiere February 23 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, tells the story of college student Lincoln Cabinée, who has a part-time job as a page at the main building of the New York Public Library. As we watch Lincoln retrieve books from the stacks below, we encounter a cast of characters populating the catalogue and reading rooms above. Given that the play is set in 1975, decades before 42nd Street was made family friendly, it all takes place against a backdrop of seedy shops and porn palaces.
The offbeat stream-of-consciousness libretto, written by cartoonist Ben Katchor and sung by his collaborator, composer Mark Mulcahy, itself renders “Up From The Stacks” unusual. But what makes the libretto stunning is the perfectly timed projection of Katchor’s colorful panels onto a huge screen hanging above and to the right of Mulcahy and his three-member band. Although there is motion in some of the scenes, it’s not quite what you would call animation.
“It’s Hollywood in the shtetl.” That’s how playwright Nicholas Wright summed up his new play, “Travelling Light,” now at London’s National Theatre. He pretty much hit the nail on the head with this pithy description as he spoke to the audience in a talkback following the production’s worldwide simulcast on February 9.
Imagine “Fiddler on the Roof,” only with a young man let loose in the village with his early model motion picture camera. Also imagine a pushy producer and a young ingénue in the movie’s leading lady role. Finally, imagine that the young man with the camera runs away to America to become a Samuel Goldwyn or Jack Warner. Motl Mendl of the shtetl morphs into Maurice Montgomery of the studio.
Wright jokingly called himself “an assimilated Gentile” as he sat on stage with the play’s Jewish director Nicholas Hytner and Jewish film critic Jason Solomons. For Wright, the play’s through-line is Motl’s inability to ever fully become Maurice. “He carried the shtetl with him always,” Wright explained.
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, Senior Scholar at Holy Blossom Temple, died February 8 in Toronto at the age of 99. Holy Blossom, a Reform Synagogue, is the oldest congregation in Canada’s largest city. Rabbi Plaut was the longtime senior rabbi there, from 1961 to 1977.
Plaut was born in Munster, Germany, the son of Jonas and Selma Plaut. After earning a law degree in 1935, he fled the Nazis and went to the United States, where he was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1939. After serving as a chaplain in the American military during World War II, Plaut took pulpits in Chicago and St. Paul before moving to Canada.
The late rabbi’s name is most familiar as the author of “The Torah: A Modern Commentary” the Chumash used widely by Reform congregations.
We all know the answer to the old question, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” is to “practice, practice, practice.” But the Israel Chamber Project has also gotten there by cultivating an appreciative New York audience in the four years since the ensemble’s inception.
“It’s the right time for a Carnegie Hall debut,” the group’s executive director, pianist Assaff Weisman, told The Arty Semite about the performance scheduled for February 1. “It feels in some way like an arrival… there is nothing quite like a Carnegie Hall debut to solidify your reputation.”
ICP, an ensemble of eight accomplished Israeli musicians in their 20s and 30s, has gained the interest of chamber music fans in Israel, Europe and the U.S. The group comes together several times annually for intensive tours and concerts at prestigious venues like Symphony Space and The Colburn School’s Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Recently they also recorded their first CD, which is forthcoming.
Jews in the U.K. have been wondering what’s up with Waterstone’s, the country’s largest bookstore chain. While some of the company’s actions have aroused suspicions of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, other Jewish customers are simply questioning Waterstone’s business sense.
In May 2011, Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut acquired Waterstone’s from HMV for £53 million.
Last month, the Jewish community was shocked to see Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” promoted by Waterstone’s as a “perfect” Christmas present. In a statement Waterstone’s Head of Communications Fiona Allen made to The Arty Semite, she admitted that this was a mistake. She emphasized that it was limited to one branch only, that the company had issued an apology, and that “the bookseller [was] given words of advice on his error of judgment.”
That’s not just vibrant color peeking out through artist Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik’s papercuts — that’s Flash Gordon, the Green Lantern, Spiderman and Wolverine. Brynjegard-Bialik, whose “Paper Tefillah” exhibition opens January 10 at Temple Israel in Memphis, Tenn., combines the traditional art of papercutting with the power of comics to explore prayer and the human striving for connection with God.
Temple Israel commissioned Brynjegard-Bialik to create 16 works exploring the Jewish liturgy, covering the key components of the prayer service, from Barchu to Aleinu. Brynjegard-Bialik, 39, poured himself into studying the texts and reflecting on his own prayer experience. He looked through genizot to salvage pages from worn out siddurim, and raided his childhood comic book collection for the right colors and images to convey the ideas and feelings that were percolating in his imagination.
Photo by Elise Warshavsky
Not every singer-songwriter can sing lyrics like, “You got a big heart, sweet like a Pop-Tart, bigger than Walmart” and hope to be taken seriously. But Chana Rothman can, and she does so on the bouncy first track of her new album, “Beautiful Land.” That track, somewhat reminiscent of Kimya Dawson (whose songs were featured in Jason Reitman’s powerful film “Juno”), is called “Shine.” The object of Rothman’s complimentary lyrics is a young person whom the singer is encouraging to grow up strong and proud of her individuality.
The Rothman we hear on “Beautiful Land” is clearly recognizable from her debut album, “We Can Rise,” but here she goes in new musical and lyrical directions. Her earlier music, though accomplished, was heavy-handed politically and religiously (there was no mistaking her left-leaning opinions), while her new songs leave more to the listener’s interpretation. If the former was a form of musical activism, the latter is a show of increasing artistry.
Listen to ‘Shine’:
In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
By Erik Larson
Crown, 464 pages, $26.00
It is just about impossible to find a negative review of Erik Larson’s latest bestselling book, “In the Garden of Beasts,” about American ambassador William Dodd and his family in 1930s Berlin. The worst I could find was by Matt Nesvisky in The Jerusalem Report. He called it “history lite” and “nonfiction beach reading.” He also wrote that “’In the Garden of Beasts’ is hardly an indispensable text on the Nazi era,” but he gives Larson credit for doing extensive archival research and putting out a real page-turner.
Now the film rights to “In the Garden of Beasts” have been optioned by Universal for Academy Award winner Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman to produce though their Playtone production company. Hanks is considering starring in the film.
It has been 25 years since David K. Shipler published his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land.” Shipler wrote the book following a five-year stint as Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. He has also worked for the Times as a reporter in Saigon, Moscow bureau chief and Washington bureau chief diplomatic correspondent. His new book, “Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America,” is forthcoming in March 2012. Shipler spoke with The Arty Semite about his thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 25 years after publishing “Arab and Jew.”
Renee Ghert-Zand: Why did you decide to examine stereotypes and views of “the other” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Naomi Jaye does not speak a word of Yiddish, but that is not stopping her from making the first contemporary Yiddish-language feature film in Canada, and only the second in North America.
The 38-year old writer, director and producer is busy with pre-production on “The Pin,” which will begin filming in March 2012 in Toronto and the Ontario countryside. It tells the story of an embittered elderly shomer (a person who watches over dead bodies until they are buried) who fatefully encounters the corpse of his long-lost first love, Leah. The story flashes back to when the shomer and Leah hid together in a barn in Lithuania, fighting for survival during World War II. By encountering Leah this final time, the shomer, after a lifetime of regret, is able to fulfill a promise he once made to her. Terrified of being buried alive, she had asked him to prick her hand with a pin when she died to make sure she was really dead.
Michael Rice grew up hearing stories about his mother’s early life as a dancer in New York City, but they never meant all that much to him. “I paid attention, but it was just my mom…my brother and I had a different life,” the now adult Rice reflected.
But when he and his wife Jane unpacked a long-forgotten box his mother, Paula Yasgour, had left behind following her death from cancer in 1993, he realized how significant those stories were. In the box he found the unbound pages of a scrapbook chronicling Yasgour’s career during the nascent years of modern American dance, from 1928 to 1933.
Programs, clippings, photographs and other memorabilia relating to Yasgour’s dance career are now on display at the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Jewish Community Library in San Francisco until February 23. “A Dancer’s Scrapbook” is a glimpse into the life of the young Yasgour at a time when Jewish women fought on various fronts to take part in this new American art form.
Wherever we go this time of year, we can’t escape hearing Christmas songs — be they on the radio, sung by carolers, or piped in as Muzak in stores and public spaces. It gets to the point at which it seems there is an audio loop of holiday classics running non-stop in our heads.
What many people may not realize is that many of these classic Christmas songs were written by Jews. For instance, “White Christmas” was written by Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser wrote “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and “Silver Bells” was by Jay Livingston (born Jacob Levison). Given their authorship, it is not surprising that these songs were heavy on the cold weather, family and friends, and devoid of traditional Christian religious iconography.
Visitors to “A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs 1910-1965,” a travelling exhibition showing until December 22 at the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Jewish Community Library in San Francisco, can learn about these and other Jewish composers and lyricists who dominated on Broadway and in Hollywood during the middle decades of the 20th century. The exhibition, curated by David Lehman, was developed by Nextbook, Inc. and based on Lehman’s 2009 book of the same name.
Brooklyn-based Israeli-American producer Jonathan Dagan’s J.Viewz multi-genre electronic music project has been nominated for a 2012 Grammy Award. Dagan is being recognized in the Best Recording Package category for J.Viewz’s latest album, “Rivers and Homes.”
Dagan collaborates with diverse musicians and vocalists in the studio, creating a unique blend of Breakbeat, Jazz, Folk, Old-Nu Wave, R&B and others genres. J.Viewz puts out original compositions, but is also known for its remixes of work by such artists as Moby, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd and Depeche Mode.
“Rivers and Homes” blends electronica with live instrumentation and features guest performers Noa (Achinoam Nini), Joshua James and Kelly Scurr. The album was financed, produced and distributed through a pre-order model, with Dagan releasing tracks as they became ready. Once the album was complete, Dagan distributed it in physical form to his subscribers. Fittingly, the album was originally called, “Work In Progress.” According to NPR, “the result is a collection of quirky tunes, each of which stand on their own.”
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