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.

In hundreds of scripts that mated the psychology of horror with the nuclear nightmare of postwar America, Rod Serling put the blame for the annellation that was just around the corner squarely where it belonged…. on us. “Rod Serling: His Life, Work and Imagination” (University Press of Mississippi) by author and “Twilight Zone” expert Nicholas Parisi is a new 500-page biography of the man whose name alone has come to distill the condition of something eerily out of whack with the rational. In it, he shines the spotlight on the episodes of the now 60-year-old television show that has resonated with millions, of every generation.

He also documents Serling’s contributions, in whole or in part, to other well-known material produced for film, television and radio. Among these works are “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” a drama from the so-called Golden Age of Television, whose only ethical character, a brain-damaged boxer, is destroyed by the manager he loves, and the 1964 Cold War-themed movie “Seven Days in May,” still capable of packing a thrill. Pursuing his career immediately after World War II, when the particularly brutal combat he experienced added to the dark vision of the world that he had formed during childhood, Serling left a considerable legacy behind when he died at the age of 50 in 1975. 

On the “Twilight Zone,” man’s inhumanity to man occurs on a grand scale but starts small, with the seemingly inconsequential aggression of “the little guy.”  Transported, as Sterling intones in his well-known introduction, to a “middle ground between light and shadow,” viewers recognized this place as being like, but not like, home. There, blindly solipsistic men, women and often even children who have faith in their own moral superiority, but little else, end up decimating, rather than repairing the world. Their smugness and ignorance lead to the subjugation of the vulnerable, the election of malevolent leaders and the trusting of hungry martians.  Is there anyone capable of compassion or tenderness at all? In a recurrent theme, “The Twilight Zone’s” creator looks not to humans, but robots, to answer our longing.  It is this inherent pessimism that places Serling within the 20th century Jewish literary tradition. For him, even the powerless determined their own destiny, and this time, their destiny was the apocalypse. 

Special Judaica Collection to Make its New York Debut
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The Barr Foundation of Virginia Beach, Virginia, has launched the first American tour of its impressive Judaica collection. The installation features more than 200 traditional and contemporary Torah pointers—an implement used by the reader to retain his or her place in the text of the assigned passage, in compliance with the prohibition of touching the Torah directly.  Formerly on exhibit in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the show will move to New York City, where “Guiding Hands” will be on view from February through May 2019 at Temple Emanu-El’s Hector and Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The exhibit will be augmented by examples of Torah accoutrements from the New York synagogue’s own acquisitions.
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Carved, cast and fabricated, the styles of these pointers, called the yad, the Hebrew word for hand, reveal a diversity of aesthetics, and most interestingly, their construction and materials are on occasion dictated by the settings and situations in which they were created.  Dating from World War II, a yad from the South Pacific theater in the foundation’s collection was made from used shell casings, while a 19th-century gilded Austrian pointer embellished with turquoise and garnets was probably commissioned by a private patron, for worship in the home.  Add to these the collection’s masterpieces of design by renowned artisans, including Wendell Castle’s three-part work, a stylized rendering of an elongated silver pointer finger, complete with one extra segment, nestling in the palm of a hand-shaped stand, itself resting on a wooden table, or Michele Oka-Doner’s Surrealist-inspired sculpture-pointer, whose multiplicity of corkscrew tendrils emanate like hair or tree branches from a bronze torso-shaped handle, and there will be much to make the exhibit a memorable one.

​​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.

It’s great to know that many Jewish people are constantly engaged with their directive of tikkun olam, or healing the world, extending even to their entertainment choices. A glance at the subject matter addressed at Jewish film festivals screened around the country provides the evidence: movies of all genres address a host of pithy topics that range from Holocaust history to the dilemma of the transgender Chabad congregant. At this celebratory time of the year, all-consuming gravitas has the potential to send moviegoers exiting the theater for the nearest happy hour. It’s sometimes difficult to remember that Jews are God’s funniest chosen people.

In this season of light and joy, listing a round-up of some of the year’s funny Jewish movies…well, it couldn’t hurt. The movies were made by people both young and old, but all of them delve into issues that have the potential to make people rethink their relationship to their faith and ethnicity, and the roles that Jews have played in bringing about change for the better, with a sense of fun and good humor. This is a good thing.

As conveyed by its title, “Jewtah,” a film by Jeremy Rishe and Cameron Bossert, transports Jewish viewers to a place they’ve all visited. It could be in Salt Lake City, or anywhere else.  Consumed by his fear of Mormons, or rather, his fear of what he thinks Mormons think about Jews, our hero Pincus hasn’t left the basement of his grandmother’s Utah home for over a decade. When the unthinkable happens, God himself tells Pincus to clean up his act. Although the script is based on his own experiences as a Jew from Utah, it’s a distinct possibility that actor/writer Rishe didn’t really have a mystic encounter with a deity of any kind. However, he certainly enjoyed growing up with Mormons, taking pleasure and pride in being singled out as exotic in a community filled with people who were eager to know his traditions and wished him no harm. Ultimately, Pincus will revel in both his difference and in the ties that he forges with those around him, but you can bet that his “meshuga,” or crazy, road to self-actualization is going to be a bumpy one filled with ups, downs and laughs. 

The viewer rides along Israel’s byways in a bus filled with a gaggle of non-Jewish American stand-up comics in “Land of Milk and Funny,” Avi Liberman’s documentary about the morale-building tour he led in that country during a particularly dark time in the early 2000s. Carrying their big shticks to audiences whose day-to day-lives were affected by the threat of terrorist violence, these comics win over their audiences just by showing up, not to mention their boffo material. For Liberman, the ongoing tours, benefitting a philanthropy which assists victims of terrorism, is “a way to combine what I do for a living with something positive for Israel. …. while it may not make me any more famous or advance my career…the rewards outweigh any of that.” Hailed by the Times of Israel as “both side splitting and moving,” “Milk and Funny” proves that you don’t have to be Jewish to score big laughs in Israel.

Showcasing recently discovered tapes, home movies and diaries, “Love, Gilda” presents an odyssey into the life of Gilda Radner, an original “Saturday Night Live” ensemble member whose zaniness on stage, television and in film delighted millions before she died at the height of her career. SNL luminaries awed by her gifts for physical comedy, over-the-top mimicry and improvisation bring Radner’s presence to life, while the star’s home movies reveal her sweetness and warmth, as well as the courage and humor with which she confronted her illness.  Those of other generations who know her by reputation alone will be captivated by her and will find that much of her work holds up beautifully.
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Our final trip will take many older Jewish viewers back in time, as memories of gilded dragons, beaded curtains, brocade walls and the aromatic bouquet of wonton soup evoke past celebrations of Hanukah and Christmas. Set in a doozy of a 1960s Chinese restaurant, whose staff welcomes customers on Christmas day, “Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas,” is part fantasy, part documentary as filmed by Canadian director Larry Weinstein. In it, he divulges a shocking and hitherto unknown secret: the lyricists, composers and performers who remade Christmas in the 20th century, universalizing the sentiments of the holiday to make it accessible by all, were Jewish.  Told through interesting anecdotes, cultural history and archival material, the story of these musical outsiders is primarily conveyed through their own amazing songs.  Selections by Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston and others are sung in diverse styles, from klezmer to country, by musicians including Kevin Breit, Aviva Chernick, Tom Wilson and Dione Taylor, while even the Chinese waiters take their turn as revelers.  Although a nod is given to discussions questioning the morality of cultural appropriation, “Jewish Christmas” functions as an homage to America, and to a time when this kind of terrific thing could happen.

​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.

European Days of Jewish Culture

Constantly spearheading exciting projects which bring to life Judaism’s rich cultural heritage and educate the public on its integral role in the development of European civilization, The European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ) is now supported by B’nai B’rith Europe and 13 other organizations that have assumed the mantle of preservation in the aftermath of the tragic destruction resulting from World War II. Its visually impressive website is an enticement to hop a plane to get a look at the actual sites that are partially represented by photos depicting highlights of the 33 cultural routes mapped throughout the continent. Located in countries including Austria, Italy, Poland, Spain and Turkey, they were developed to provide an insider’s view of synagogues and other architectural treasures, some recently restored, and sites of historic interest as well as special exhibits and fine arts collections on view in local museums and archives. Assisted in the realization of its mission by important leaders and arts professionals, the AEPJ continues to revise its horizons.

For the past 19 years, AEPJ has spearheaded the annual “European Days of Jewish Culture” devoted each year to a tradition or broad concept intended to inspire a wide range of creativity, innovation and inclusion throughout the continent. Encompassing folklore and private diaries to biblical legends and Kabbalah, “Storytelling” has been designated as this year’s theme, with Sept. 2 representing the official date but in most places the celebration will commence prior to that day, and extend beyond, with cultural events including concerts, dance programs, screenings, dramatic productions, lectures and discussions produced by local arts ensembles, museums, libraries and academic institutions. For the first time, AEPJ has partnered with the National Library of Israel in the creation of a resource guide and a special touring museum show, among other initiatives.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” Coming to Broadway

After a few glitches with the estate of author Harper Lee, Oscar-winning screenwriter, playwright and movie director Aaron Sorkin is going ahead with his plans to bring his dramatic adaptation of her beloved novel, first published in 1960, “To Kill a Mockingbird” to Broadway’s Shubert Theater, slated to premiere on Nov. 1. Of course many remember the 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a role for which he won an Academy Award.  

Sorkin, whose successful first play “A Few Good Men” later became an even more celebrated film, is often credited with the creation of iconic television shows — “Sports Night,” with its glib repartee, hidden literary references, and complicated characters, and especially the much praised “The West Wing,” the continuing saga of the idealistic, yet flawed President Bartlett and his equally committed close-knit staff — whose content is sometimes said to reflect the Jewish concern for social justice. One of the show’s two Jewish characters, Toby Ziegler, the White House communications director and the Brooklyn-born son of a Russian Jewish mobster, was among its most memorable.

Trusting Sorkin, who like Lee, had a father who practiced law, the late Southern writer had given her permission to him to write the play, but her estate had judged his treatment of “Mockingbird” to be too far afield from the original book.  Little has been revealed about the changes that were contested, but Sorkin has noted that its protagonist, the dignified attorney Atticus Finch, who bravely defends an African-American man on trial for rape in the Jim Crow South, undergoes a transformation, to ultimately realize and act on his ethical decision, a change from Lee’s reverent, albeit one-dimensional portrayal. Sorkin’s intent in endowing Atticus with more human qualities will provide contemporary audiences with opportunity for empathy.

​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.

​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.

An esteemed neurologist, 72-year-old Harvard University professor Dr. Howard Weiner has devoted his life to the treatment of serious diseases like Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) — his primary area of expertise — both at the University and at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he directs the department of immunology. Given the life and death nature of his profession, the doctor was able to approach his next career move — that of filmmaker—with an attitude of nonchalance.  His award-winning documentary “What is Life?” premiered in 2011.

Perhaps contemplating his own future scenario as one of the ranks of the elderly, Weiner began working on a literary treatment of what could be best designated as a “bromance,” the touching and funny story of the offbeat camaraderie that develops between two very different men who meet in a nursing home. Finally brought to fruition as a film script, the project and its potential for success were linked to two important elements, the portrayal of the yin and yang that drives the friendship, and the ability to convey an authentic experience of life in a nursing home, in its sometimes mundane, and often fearful, aspects. The location, inside and out, had to be a real one. 

“If you look at old people from above, you make them children; if you look at them from below, you put them on a pedestal. These are real people. I mean, teenage boys talk like [the characters in the movie.] There’s nothing wrong with older people talking like that. Tolstoy said when he was 80, ‘I’m 80, but inside I feel 20,’” Weiner said when interviewed about the film, which was selected as a 2017 entry at the Tribeca Film Festival.

With a bit of tweaking from Weiner’s son, a successful screenwriter with well-known credits to his name, the script was polished, and in 2016 the filming of “Abe and Phil’s Last Poker Game” commenced, directed by Weiner himself. Among its financial backers were a number of his medical colleagues, who stepped up to the plate even after being warned that they would probably lose their shirts.

Filmed on the premises of an assisted living facility close to Boston, the movie shines a light on the talents of its two seasoned co-stars, the late Martin Landau and Paul Sorvino, both of whom were able work with Weiner to enhance character development, and illuminate the metamorphosis of their onscreen relationship. Landau was cast as the home’s most recent inmate, retired physician Dr. Abe Mandelbaum, who is resigned to going gently into that good night, but whose plans are detoured by the life-affirming personality of his blue collar pal, lusty fellow resident Phil Nicoletti (Sorvino). The friendship they form provides each with a renewed perspective. After a new employee attempts to locate her long lost father at the home, the boys, both eager to indulge in the joys of having a daughter, jockey for the role. As to be expected, the narrative is greased with a pound or two of schmaltz, and is punctuated by a few over the top high jinks, and perhaps too much detail on the specifics of geriatric medical conditions. With Landau’s final performance reviewed by Variety as “a thing of beauty,” “Abe and Phil” can be described as one of a handful of brave and engaging films that compassionately recognize the emotional consequences of the losses inevitable to the aging process. 

RECAP OF JEWISH FILM FESTIVALS

Co-sponsored with Manhattan’s Jewish Museum, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s eagerly anticipated 27th annual New York Jewish Film Festival, which took place from Jan. 10-23, showcased a wide variety of offerings from around the world, many of which were announced as New York, American or international premieres. Catering to a diverse audience, the screenings included “Across the Waters,” a World War II drama about the ferrying of Danish Jews to Sweden, during the time of Nazi persecution, and a newly restored version of the haunting 1937 Yiddish classic “The Dybbuk.” The film festival also included “The Cousin,” an Israeli thriller in Hebrew and Arabic about a Jewish actor who comes to the defense of his Palestinian handyman, after he is accused of a violent crime. Sam Pollard’s “Sammy Davis Jr: I’ve Gotta Be Me,” a 2017 documentary about the life of the multi-talented entertainer who converted to Judaism during the height of his career was also shown.
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Jewish film festivals will soon open in Atlanta and San Diego.