​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.

 If your budget, work schedule or other circumstances have put a damper on that bike trip on the continent, a great sightseeing holiday is not out of the question for anybody these days. Jewish history in all its glory comes to you via three websites reviewed below.

Sponsored by the Council of Europe under the umbrella of its “Cultural Routes” program, (www.AEPJ.org), the website of The European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage is supported by a consortium of 21 organizations, including B’nai B’rith Europe. Claude Bloch, B’nai B’rith Strasbourg and historian of the Jewish community of Alsace, who founded the association and developed its annual European Day of Jewish Culture, is now its honorary president; its current president is B’nai B’rith leader Françoise Moyse. Visitors to its pages are able to hop from country to country, exploring both restored and unrestored synagogue landmarks housed in an ever-growing group of European countries, from the United Kingdom to Turkey; the journey is augmented by three themed sections charting modernist currents (spanning Art Nouveau and Art Deco through Expressionism), surveying the construction of Polish wooden synagogue buildings and locating places where important Jewish women left their mark. Through their beautiful and detailed photos, even those who possess an expertise in subject matter connected to 19th and 20th century art and history will come away with new insights that recontextualize Judaism’s significant contribution to, and inspiration from, the evolution of European culture.

Far from stagnant, the AEPJ website is continually introducing and developing new methods for expansion and education through its “incubator” pages, recent additions to the site that outline opportunities for those who wish to create, develop, learn or teach. Innovations in technology meld the past with the present on a sister website, Parallel Traces: a new lens on Jewish heritage, (https://paralleltraces.eu/), where award-winning entries of cutting edge multi-media works and pictures shining the light on Jewish life and history by European artists and photographers can be viewed. Through this site, those interested can also download three apps devoted to different aspects of Jewish heritage.

AEPJ has recently entered into a collaboration with Ruth Ellen Gruber, coordinator of Jewish Heritage Europe (https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/), a site sponsored by the Rothschild Foundation, which includes the latest news about resources for restoration support and recently opened heritage sites. Here, a series of exhibits describe and document imagery and symbolism specific to Jewish architecture, liturgical objects and decoration, folk art and monuments, including gravestones, located throughout the continent. Similar to the presentation on the AEPJ site, a series of photo galleries are devoted to the art and architecture of specific countries. This joining of forces will surely foster the continued appreciation and renewed understanding of such important and literally eye-opening subject matter. To be sure, there is much that remains unexamined.
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For those inclined to venture closer to home, but who still want to thrill to some amazing sights, the website of The Shapell Collection (https://www.shapell.org) has much to offer. There, everyone can see and learn about actual letters written by Jewish Civil War Soldiers or tour curated exhibits which spotlight Jewish legends like Albert Einstein or investigate the lives of President Abraham Lincoln and the writer Mark Twain, historic figures impacted by their encounters with the Jewish community here and abroad, all presented in the letters and manuscripts they left behind.

​Woman in Gold
Honored for her starring role in Woman in Gold, a 2015 film about American émigré Maria Altmann’s ultimately successful legal efforts to reclaim a painting – stolen decades earlier from her family by the Nazis –  from the Austrian government, Dame Helen Mirren has continued to speak out on behalf of Holocaust restitution. It was her involvement with the movie that raised her consciousness and helped to catalyze her empathy for this cause.
 
Testifying before the U.S. Congress in support of expanded legislation in June 2016, Mirren noted that “what was so extraordinary specifically about Maria Altmann's world, the Viennese world… this glorious time in Vienna that was so full of culture and art….  And being in Vienna and shooting the film and seeing those beautiful houses that were built by the Jewish community, I realized it was a Jewish culture. It was – [the perception that] this beautiful memory of Vienna and the music and its painting was actually created by the Jewish people.”
 
#AnneFrank.Parallel Stories
Intended to appeal to the social media generation, the 2019 Italian documentary #AnneFrank. Parallel Stories now being screened at Jewish film festivals and movie theaters in the U.S.,  brings Dame Helen into the spotlight again. Filmed in a setting resembling the Frank family’s hiding place in Amsterdam, Mirren provides historical background, reads excerpts from Anne’s diary, and introduces filmgoers to the stories of other young women who experienced persecution during those terrible times. A modern retelling of Anne’s story, the movie celebrates her legacy during her 90th birthday year in what is described as “profound new ways.” 
 
Resistance
Playwright/actor Jesse Eisenberg portrays legendary mime Marcel Marceau in the new movie, Resistance. Born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France, he was the son of a kosher butcher, who turned to the stage in his adolescence and joined the French resistance in Paris during the Nazi occupation at age 16 in 1939. He was tasked with assisting other Jews to hide or  escape the country. In an interview about Resistance, Eisenberg said that “[Marcel Marceau] was asked to save these kids who his cousin was saving. He is reluctant at first, but then realizes that the way to save their lives is to use his art [to entertain and keep the children quiet].” The film, which premieres on March 27, will be shown in theaters as well as On Demand.
 
Shared Legacies
On its opening night this month, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival screened the world premiere of Shared Legacies, Shari Rogers’ documentary about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, in which she focuses on how the bond between Jews and African Americans was shaped by Old Testament narratives and texts, often quoted by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and a mutual history of oppression. After a visit to Detroit’s Charles Wright Museum of African American History, Rogers asked  King’s attorney and speechwriter, Clarence B. Jones, to talk about Jewish participation in the fight against prejudice in the south and what he told her inspired the movie, which seems especially informative to people under the age of 40, who Rogers says knew nothing about this relationship.

Revealed through though archival materials and interviews with celebrities who lived through those times, including Louis Gossett, Jr. and Harry Belafonte, as well as historians and scholars like Hebrew Union College-Cincinnati historian Gary Zola, Jews –  civil rights workers, attorneys, rabbis, and other Jewish people from all walks of life –  were fully committed to, and sometimes lost their lives for the cause of racial justice. 

The film also includes a segment on the first public, integrated dinner in Atlanta honoring King after he had received the Nobel Peace Prize, hosted by activists Rabbi Jacob Rothschild and his wife, Janice, who married David Blumberg, B’nai B’rith’s president from 1971-78, after she was widowed.
 

Even after nearly a decade, the still-surprising success and readers’ continuing adulation of the award-winning 2010 memoir The Hare with the Amber Eyes (historian and ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s reflections on a long-past world, and his search for his own Jewish family, the Ephrussis, wealthy aesthetes and art patrons steeped in the literary and visual culture of late 19th c. Paris and Vienna) is at least partly responsible for his high visibility in the art world.

This is a very good thing for those who know at first glance that de Waal’s reputation is well-deserved. Through his groupings of pottery, housed in beautiful vitrines of his own design, as well as site-specific installations intended to interact with the environment or its purpose as a library, chapel, concert hall or gallery, multi-leveled layers of meaning emerge. In these, the pottery whose dimpled imperfections, subdued monochrome color and minimal shapes—referencing his grasp of Oriental decorative arts and philosophy – are transformed, becoming vessels of suggestion, that impress and move. 

A great-grandson of the Ephrussi patriarch, the banker and financier Viktor, grandchild of English novelist Elizabeth Ephrussi, and the son of an Anglican clergyman, de Waal has inherited his ancestors’ rarefied taste and passion for Japanese art and crafts—embodied by the exquisite little carved hare in the now famous family collection of 264 netsuke, ivory and wood figures that adorn the kimono sash or obi.

Despite tremendous wealth, assimilation and erudition, the Ephrussis could not escape from the continually escalating cloud of anti-Semitism which enveloped Europe from the turn of the 19th century.  In 1938, its Viennese home, the Ephrussi Palace, with its books, furniture and art, was seized by the Nazis, while the family scattered to all continents, losing awareness of its past.  It was “The Hare with the Amber Eyes” that brought them together again. 

And what of the netsukes?  Hidden by a servant, the collection survived intact through the war.  As a student in Japan, the young De Wall saw them displayed in the home of his uncle Iggie, who had settled in Tokyo, and who would bequeath them to the young man.

Complimenting the 2019 museum installations of de Waal’s own work in Madrid, Venice, New York, Berlin and Dresden—all touching on the themes of exile and immigration—will be the display of 157 of the netsukes themselves, as part of the exhibition called “The Ephrussis: Travel in Time” at Vienna’s Jewish Museum through March 8, 2020, opened last month by Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, and attended by 41 Ephrussi family members. The show’s contents focus on selections from the donation made to the museum last year by Mr. de Waal and includes archival documents, photos and souvenirs. 
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Another highly desirable acquisition has just been made in America, by the University of Texas at Austin’s amazing Ransom Center, whose holdings now include the complete archive of 20th century master, playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005), author of such classics as “Death of a Salesman,” “All My Sons” and “The Crucible,” works that changed the course of the American theater. Despite their settings, either in the post-World War II era or in a time that calls up the pressing issues of the 1940s and 50s, younger audiences can still identify with their themes of generational conflict, and the moral imperative that must be adhered to—even by the most ordinary of people.

Along with prior gifts from Miller himself, this now-unified 300 box collection of his personal and professional papers is considered the primary record for research and study into his life and work, from his earliest writing as a son of poor immigrants at the University of Michigan to the drafts and scripts for his last theater works, including materials which have not been previously known or examined. Its dovetailing with the subject matter of dozens of other Ransom archival collections enhances the university’s reputation as one of the foremost institutions for the study of theater history in general, and 20th century American drama in particular.

Sacred texts, prayer books, centuries old archival documents and even a defunct electric bill have provided the inspiration for theater, film and museum exhibits in 2019, a veritable collective celebration of the written and printed word. While many examples might be added to this compendium, here are just a few highlights of innovative artworks, all of which take a fresh approach to the way Jewish culture and social life has impacted history and civilization. 

Long-deceased members of a prominent Jewish family come to life onstage in Angela J. Davis’ award-winning new play, “The Spanish Prayer Book,” which premiered in September in California by North Hollywood’s Road Theatre. The time-traveling contemporary drama focuses on a cache of long-hidden religious manuscripts and deals with topics including the changing narrative of Jewish-Muslim relations through the centuries, the commodification of the spiritual—in this case, a collection of valuable prayer books—and our obligation to preserve and protect that which is most precious.

Lilach Dekel-Avneri, a participant in the Washington, D.C.-based Israel Institute Visiting Artist Program, gave an improvisatory, free-form take to her direction of Maya Arad Yasur’s “Amsterdam,” whose script encompasses both the Holocaust and today’s immigration issues, all catalyzed by an unpaid electric bill, mailed to its recipient in 1944 and discovered by the work’s protagonist, a violinist based in the Dutch city of the title. It premiered on Oct. 10 with a three-person cast of students from the University of Southern California’s School of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, where Dekel-Avneri was based this fall. The director, who characterizes the work as a theater piece, rather than a work with a linear narrative, has noted that “It has no hesitation in combining storytelling, using personal facts about the artist, with the aid of imaginary images, and soundscape, in order to enable us to rise anarchistic and funny performative energies from the pseudo-documentary text.”

The Cairo Geniza—inscribed whole and fragmented pages and artifacts whose content, meaning and function include everything from account ledgers and religious tracts to love letters and music scores, never discarded, but preserved for hundreds of years in the storeroom (geniza) of an Egyptian synagogue and now dispersed among 70 institutions worldwide—takes center stage in “From Cairo to the Cloud,” Michelle Paymar’s award-winning documentary which has been screened at numerous Jewish film festivals this year. Translated into multiple languages and reconstituted as one linear entity through the “miracle” of the internet, the collection opens new insights into a myriad of topics, including the ways that Jews, Muslims and Christians interacted in the region. Those who see the film will be impressed by its superb cinematography, underscoring the stunning visual beauty of the documents. It’s now being shown at film festivals in Europe.
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And finally, Washington’s Museum of the Bible, an institution which has hosted some terrific displays of rare Jewish books from Holland and elsewhere, unveiled on Nov. 7 the Washington Pentateuch, a torah dating to the 10th century and described as one of the oldest, intact Hebrew bible manuscripts in the United States. In addition to the torah itself, the exhibition features an introduction by Harvard professor David Stern and images of seven other Hebrew Bible manuscripts, with explanations of how they impact modern editions and translations. 

“Is it the memory of times long gone, or a presentiment of times to come? Does this old animal perhaps know more than the three generations that foregather in the synagogue each time?”

With so many brief but sublime sentences packed into the short passage comprising Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel “In Our Synagogue,” it is indeed difficult to choose just one excerpt to quote. The reader learns about the stealthy rodent living for years in the narrator’s house of worship, whose coat of fur has acquired the blue-green color of the building’s ancient walls. Well-known to the congregants, especially its women, the animal is not concealed by its faulty camouflage. 

Completed in 2016, “In the Synagogue,” named Best Short Film at this year’s Odessa Film Festival, is inspired by the existing content of Kafka’s story. Director Ivan Orlenko shot portions of his 30-minute black and white movie with Yiddish dialogue in Kiev and inside the mid-19th century Khust synagogue—in use throughout World War II—in southwestern Ukraine.  Conveying an elegiac sense of loss, as well as tragedy, the visual impact of these places amplifies the original tale, now experienced through the hindsight of the Holocaust. As the director notes of this region: “…now only a few preserved synagogues and neglected cemeteries are left…This picture of devastation, the forgotten world, made me film in Yiddish. It is this sense of a long-lost time that predetermined that maximum attention would be drawn to the signs of that time, language and everyday life. Time running indifferently and inexorably, only sometimes allowing the story to finish, is probably what my film is about…”

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The impact of Jewish life on European culture was felt centuries before the dawn of the modern era. The Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park is presenting “The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy,” an exhibition which shines a light on some of the rare and important medieval Judaica on loan from Paris’ Cluny Museum, almost all of which has never been seen in the United States.
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Discovered in 1863 in the wall of a confectionary located in the Alsatian town of Colmar, The Colmar Treasure dates from the mid-14th century and includes an inscribed dome-shaped Jewish wedding ring, rings and other jewelry embellished with gems and semi-precious stones, and buttons and coins rendered in silver and gold, as well as accessories like belt fragments and headpieces. Among the household items is a tiny, meticulously designed silver key, presumably kept by the lady of the house.

It is assumed that these valuable items were owned by at least one family and were hidden for safekeeping during the time before the town’s Jewish community, who were believed to have poisoned the wells to spread plague, was immolated en masse.  Thereafter, Jews did not return to Colmar for a quarter century.  The installation of The Colmar Treasure is supplemented by the Cloisters’ illuminated books, manuscripts and decorative arts, and includes objects borrowed from the Jewish Theological Seminary and private collections. The show is on view through January 12th, 2020.
 
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The legacy of Europe’s Jewish culture has become key to combatting the rise in anti-Semitism that has occurred worldwide.  Noting this on its website, the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (www.jewishheritage.org) sponsored by B’nai B’rith Europe and other Jewish organizations in cooperation with the National Library of Israel has announced that its European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC) will be designated as a celebration honoring its 20th anniversary.  Held each September, wide-ranging programs organized under a unifying theme are produced by local communities in more than 400 cities in 28 countries.
 
Yale University Press will release another entry in its excellent “Jewish Lives” series of books intended for the general reader on November 19th.  A biography which underscores the continued relevance and vivacity of his songs and musicals, “Irving Berlin: New York Genius” by James Kaplan examines the life of the composer (1888-1989) and his musical output through the history of the frenetic, ever-changing kaleidoscope of the city where he spent most of his life.

​In Jesse Eisenberg’s recently opened comedy “Happy Talk,” suburban New Jersey do-gooder Lorraine (Susan Sarandon) tackles a new role—that of matchmaker—in both her life and her art.  Fretting about her recalcitrant daughter and contending with a disabled husband and aged mother, Lorraine certainly needs a respite, and gets it when she is cast as Bloody Mary—the Pacific Islander woman and singer of “Happy Talk” —who brings her lovely daughter together with a romantic American naval lieutenant in her community theater’s production of the World War II musical “South Pacific.”  And then, as if she doesn’t have enough on her plate, her mother’s Serbian health aide, Ljuba, asks Lorraine’s help in finding her a suitable husband. 
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In this play, award-winning dramatist, writer and movie star Eisenberg reveals the myriad attitudes of the affluent, as well as those who are paid to serve their needs, and the lengths the privileged will go to assuage their guilt. The show is being performed by The New Group at its theater on 480 West 42nd Street through June 16th.
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Matchmaking is still alive and well at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art, founded by early 20th century European artists and craftsmen who settled in Israel, is still associated with the stunning Art Nouveau objects created by its faculty and students more than a century ago. Lately, artisans and designers have been reaching out to forge exciting partnerships with international companies, including iconic Danish toymaker LEGO and Ferrero, the Italian maker of Kinder Surprise, a chocolate and cream egg with a bonus, an often- kinetic trinket housed in its center. Taking several years to develop a concept and then to produce protypes and trials, the LEGO collaboration was the inspiration of former Bezalel student Yoel Mazor, a long-time LEGO fan. They yielded some especially successful results, which have not yet made their debut.
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Consumers of Kinder Eggs, typically children younger than 8, need toys with simple parts that do not present a choking hazard. The Bezalel models, constructed by students enrolled in the toy design class of Professor Yaron Loubaton, were tested out on the kids who lived in his kibbutz. Several of them—like the LEGOs, still top-secret — scored a hit, and, it is thought, will also delight the many adults who enjoy eating the candy as well as putting together and playing with the toys, which have become highly collectible items in the years since Kinder Eggs’ “hatching” in 1974.  (Wikipedia states that 30 billion of them have been sold during that time.)

​Speaking of good things to eat, congratulations to Philadelphia’s Zahav (Gold), the recent winner of the James Beard Award for outstanding American restaurant, a prize considered the Oscar of the food world. Opened in 2008 by chef and previous Beard Award recipient Michael Solomonov, Zahav, whose name references Jerusalem as a city of gold, maintains its mission of “bringing the authentic flavors of Israel’s cultural heritage” to patrons. Specializing in grilled meats, small plates and a large list of Israeli wines, the restaurant is especially known for its varieties of hummus, paired with an array of delicious breads baked by Chef Solomonov.  

​Nothing drinkable remains in the creations of Beth Lipman, a maker of impressive, and often haunting, glass and mixed media objects and installations, who is slated for a 2020 retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Art and Design on 59th Street.  Visitors to the Jewish Museum, among numerous other institutions like Florida’s Norton and Ringling Museums where her works are included in their permanent collections, have stopped to spend a good amount of time experiencing the ghostly, dreamlike 2012 commission “Laid Table with Etrog Container and Pastry Molds.” While some critics have channeled the inner raucousness of her art—they write about sharp, fragmented shards of containers and glassware, smashed during an out-of-control party or even a bacchanal—others have been struck by their evocation of sustained silence, and the palpable absence of imagined imbibers, their bodies symbolized by the broken, un-mendable vessels—now forever cut off from drunken exuberance, and from every other pleasure.

As the 48-year-old Pennsylvania-born artist, the daughter of a craftsperson, has written: “The hand-sculpted glass compositions are portraits of individuals and our society through inanimate objects.  Every object created, whether broken, ‘flawed’ or ‘perfect,’ is incorporated into the final composition, literally capturing a moment in time.  The process of creating defines the final composition.”

Manuscripts, diaries, Torah binders, menorahs, amulets, coins, notary stamps, wedding dresses, Yiddish theater playbills: all of these and much more, from nearly every country and every century, are defined as “Judaica.”  Many of these works will always be mysterious; it will always be impossible to know who made and owned them, or their country of origin, since Jewish craftsmen were itinerant and largely self-taught.  Making things more complex, non-Jews would sometimes create Jewish works.  Yet collectors and scholars appreciate Judaica’s diversity and cherish it as a connection to the past.  Found in homes, synagogues and temples, objects that were part of Jewish life for thousands of years are still relevant today.

Housed at Cincinnati’s Skirball Museum, the B’nai B’rith Klutznick Collection contains some fascinating examples of Passover Judaica from all over the world. Some tell us a lot. Stamps punched into the back of a Passover plate made in the city of Arboga, Sweden, in 1779 reveal the initials of its maker, pewter smith Baltazar Rokus. A second set of initials may be those of the engraver—perhaps there was more than one—and/or the owner. Bold Hebrew calligraphy engraved on the plate’s lip references the order of the Seder, while a Paschal lamb—an ancient sacrifice—prances between two spring blossoms on top of the banderole.

The illustration on the early 20th-century Cup of Elijah was etched in the crystal by an anonymous but skilled artisan from Bohemia, renowned for glass-making.  Here, the prophet blows his shofar for the Messiah, who rides a donkey. Similar images are found in 17th-century Italian Haggadahs, while its biblical source is from the book of Zechariah: “Rejoice Daughter of Zion! See your king comes to you…triumphant and victorious, lowly, riding on an ass.” Glimpsed at right is Jerusalem, whose high castle turrets come straight out of medieval Jewish and Christian illuminated manuscripts.
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A Seder set inspired by…Japan?  Completed in 1969, this silver Seder “compendium” does double duty as sculpture and ritual artifact.  Clean geometric shapes of the bowls for the ritual foods are offset by their undulating stems, including one decorated with a gingko leaf addition, that reference 19th-century Japanese art.  Mr. Fishman, a Guggenheim-winning fellowship winner on the faculty at Brown University since 1965, is known for his three-dimensional works in a wide-ranging variety of media, which have been exhibited worldwide.

Ongoing since late February, “Migrations: The Making of America” celebrates the all-encompassing transformation of New York City’s cultural landscape through the vibrant heritage of those foreign to its shores. Its organizers at Carnegie Hall reached out to forge partnerships in all five boroughs, including theater and music venues, museums, libraries and arts centers. Almost 100 events -- concerts, some of which were broadcast locally, and virtual and on-site museum exhibitions augmented by courses, tours, lectures and panel discussions-- mainly focus on how the city’s cultural milieu was defined by a wide-ranging panoply of ethnic groups and how this process continues in our own time. Later this year, the opening night concert of Irish, Scottish and American folk music featuring award-winning composer and banjo great Béla Fleck will be heard on public radio stations across the country.

Unsurprisingly, the creative legacies of Jewish composers, performers and even a choreographer or two supplied the content of a good proportion of festival offerings. Many events were held at the Center for Jewish History on West 16th Street. It was there, on March 3rd, that silent film aficionados reveled in Molly Picon’s sprightly portrayal of a Jazz Age flapper who falls for a yeshiva student in “East and West,” with live orchestral accompaniment. Rarely or never-heard Yiddish songs from radio, film and theater were performed by members of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene during a March 10th concert at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. 

On March 27th, America’s premier interpreter of The Great American Song Book, Michael Feinstein, was onstage at Carnegie Hall for his one-man show of standards by the composers that he knows so well, including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Harold Arlen.

While the festival continues, there’s still time to enjoy some of its programs. One of the most opulent, to take place on April 15th at Carnegie Hall, might be described as a multi-generational, star-studded survey of repertory spanning klezmer to classical, all of which emanated from the Jewish presence in New York, and which continue to transform the city today. “From Shtetl to Stage: A Celebration of Yiddish Music and Culture,” a gallimaufry of theatrical sketches, production numbers, instrumental music and song will showcase violin virtuoso Gil Shaham, Klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, pianist Evgeny Kissin and vocalists, including Katrina Lenk, the Tony Award--winning actress from the hit Israeli musical, “The Band’s Visit,” and Yiddish theater veterans Mike Burstyn and Eleanor Reissa, (the latter is also the show’s director).
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A Yiddish and Ladino recital will be performed by Sephardic artist Sarah Aroeste and Ashkenazic specialist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell with piano and accordion accompaniment at the West Side’s Marlene Meyerson Manhattan JCC on March 31st. On April 1st, the King Juan Carlos I Center of Spain will screen “A Brivele Der Mamen (A Letter to Mother),” one of the last Yiddish movies made in Poland. On April 7th, Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center will present “Music in Color,” a St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble concert devoted to music by Gabriela Lena Franks, a contemporary Lithuanian-Peruvian-Jewish-Chinese composer.  At an April 10th lecture at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Professor Mark Slobin will trace the roots and manifestations of Eastern European Jewish musical culture, and an ongoing exhibit of art by Israeli-American sculptor Boaz Vaadia in Chelsea runs through April 15th.
 
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Yaniv Dinur, the Israeli-born conductor of the New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Milwaukee Symphonies and the previous recipient of three grants from the Solti Foundation in Evanston, Illinois, has been awarded the Foundation’s 2019 $30,000 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, given to musicians under the age of 38. The money can be spent for travel, study or the purchase of scores.

Considered one of the world’s greatest Wagnerian conductors, and esteemed for his interpretation of composers including Elgar, Verdi and Beethoven, the distinguished Maestro Solti (1912-1997), was a student of Bela Bartok, who had established a career in his native Hungary before increasing anti-Semitism forced him to emigrate in 1938, one year before the Nazi advent. Enjoying an international reputation, he was best known for his remarkable recordings made with the Chicago Symphony, where he served as music director for 22 years.

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Those who heard the National Gallery’s Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture on Saturday, March 9th, delighted in the feisty commentary and quips of 91-year-old Alex Katz, an iconic artist whose career took off in the late 1950s and who is still painting gorgeous large-scale canvases today. The son of a Yiddish theater actress, Katz recounted his years as a struggling student and painter who learned the importance of acquiring a command of drawing in contrast to his intuitive approach to color, all adding up to the masterpieces of portraiture and landscape so loved by museum-goers and collectors. The audience had a good time, but many of them (me) coveted the artworks and lamented (again, me) not having an Alex Katz hanging in their own living room.

​​Cheryl Kempler is an art and music specialist who works in the B'nai B'rith International Curatorial Office and writes about history and Jewish culture for B’nai B’rith Magazine. To view some of her additional content, click here.