​Simon Barazin is an architect and interior decorator whose renovation of the 20-year old Barzilay Café in Tel Aviv’s Hashmal Garden district has elevated the standard coffee shop to a new level of design aesthetics, visually redolent of Donald Judd’s geometric sculptures and Dan Flavin’s light works. Installing specially treated glass windows that optimize the changing qualities of the natural light flooding the cafe throughout the day, Barazin reconfigured its three spaces—kitchen, roasting room and seating area—to exploit the reflective surfaces of made-to-order seating, brightly colored illuminated tables and gleaming metal countertops, for a Barzilay experience that is artsy, fun and inviting. Glass partitions allow for customers in the main room to see and smell the coffee being roasted.

The owner of his own firm specializing in design and spacial experience, Mr. Barazin studied at Israel’s famous Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, where he is now a teacher.

This month, Theater J, part of the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C. has enabled audiences across the country to register and enjoy free dramatic readings of new English versions of two early 20th century Yiddish plays at https://theaterj.org/yiddish-theater-lab/.

A finalist for the 2019 O’Neill Theater Center Festival in Waterford, Connecticut, Alix Sobler’s Miriam, is a reworking of Miryam, Peretz Hirschbein’s 1905 drama about a prostitute—a frequent subject for the Yiddish stage, strongly influenced by European Realist theater in that era—originally published in Hebrew. Known as the “Yiddish Chekov,” the prolific Hirschbein (1880-1948) is best remembered for his classic Green Fields. Featuring an all-female cast, it focuses on the lives of three women, who forge a bond as they reveal their unfortunate histories and look forward to a better life. Laley Lippard directs actresses Felicia Curry, Diane Figueroa Edidi and Kimberly Gilbert. Miriam can be seen live via Zoom on Sunday, June 7, at 5:00 pm, and will available from Monday, June 8 until midnight, Wednesday, June 10.
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Allen Lewis Rickman has translated and adapted One of Those (1912) by Polish poet, playwright and author Paula Prilutski (1876-19??), which will air on Thursday, June 18 at 5:30 and will be streamed until midnight, Sunday, June 21. Its premiere performance in Warsaw was mounted by the legendary actress-manager Esther-Rokhl Kaminska, mother of Ida. Despite its grim narrative, this proto-feminist story of Judith, a rebellious young woman who suffers the dire consequences of her actions, is supposed to be very funny. Kevin Place will direct an ensemble, tba.
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Alix Sobler’s play Sheltered won the 2018 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. A graduate of Brown University, she received her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University in 2017. Playwright, director and actor Allen Lewis Rickman has adapted, directed and written Yiddish supertitle translations for New York’s Folksbiene and New Yiddish Rep. 

You’ve seen him in many guises: the Frankenstein monster, the Incredible Hulk, even as the heart-breaking protagonist of Diane Arbus’ photograph, Jewish Giant with his Parents in the Bronx. But even in his original guise, his dramatic, but very soulless persona, he just can’t be kept down. He is the Golem, whose name and brief and violent existence in the Prague ghetto continues to resonate in novels by authors including Elie Wiesel and I.B. Singer, poetry, plays, comics, operas, ballet and an early film classic whose imagery inspired several generations of those seeking to capture the monster’s persona. 
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Legends vary regarding the larger than life male creature, but one of the most prevalent attributes its creation to the 16th century by Rabbi Loew of Prague, a mystic who in at least one version of the folktale had the power to enervate inanimate clay by means of cabalistic rituals and prayers. Controlled by combinations of Hebrew letters imbued with magical powers, the super strong Golem could destroy any enemy and would be ready to do so in times of trouble. Incapable of thought, the Golem could only obey orders, that is, until it didn’t.  

Now wonderfully restored with color added, the early German expressionist cinematic feature, The Golem (1920), directed by and starring Paul Wegener in the title role (which can now be viewed on YouTube) depicts Loew as a medieval sorcerer who not only violates God’s law by creating life, but does so by calling on the devil for his help. When he loses control over the Golem, the monster violently turns against the Jewish community, wreaking havoc. Characteristic of German films of this era, the use of stylized two-dimensional sets – the endless stairs and crumbling architecture of the nearly animate ancient ghetto – is what sets this movie apart.

An actor who worked for the great Jewish theater director Max Reinhardt, Wegener had become obsessed with the Golem legend in 1913 and had based several of his films on the story.

While thousands of graphic art aficionados are familiar with the many guises of the comic book Golem, his giant form packs the greatest wallop when it can be experienced in three dimensions. California-based artist Joshua Abarbanel created his first small-scale Golem in 2013 for a Los Angeles gallery show centered around sacred texts. The multi-media artist remembered that “I spent a lot of time thinking about the subject and experimenting with Hebrew letters for both their aesthetic forms and various word associations. Eventually the Golem story came to my mind, especially the version in which the Golem is ‘activated’ and ‘deactivated’ through the power of Hebrew letters.” In this work, Abarbanel fuses the Golem’s physical and metaphysical natures; his sculpture is constructed from a dense wooden latticework of calligraphy referencing its magical birth and unique mission.
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The artist’s monumental, Golem-size version commissioned by Berlin’s Jewish Museum for its 2016 show devoted to the mythic creature will soon be on view again in the city of Worms, where it will be on display at Rashi House for SchUM on the Rhine – from Medieval Era Into Modernity, a city-wide celebration of the region’s Jewish heritage.