“How should American Jews pray for Israel?” asks Ari Kelman over Jewcy. His excellent overview comes in the wake of some recent brushfires in the blogosphere over suggested changes to the prayer in some congregations.
What do you get the Jewish state that has everything except internationally recognized borders, peace with its neighbors and a healthy division between government and religion? How about a national bird?
Meanwhile the Rootless Cosmopolitan is silent on Israel’s birthday, but is quite excited for Frank London’s.
As for us, we don’t care what the calendar says. Israel isn’t sixty until June 1.
Odessa/Havana is also emblematic of what might be termed post-multicultural creation, something that is increasingly happening in Canada’s major urban centres as mature musicians from diverse musical and cultural backgrounds meet, collaborate and create new sounds that transcend countries and cultures of origin. It is no coincidence that Odessa/Havana was born in the musical ferment of downtown Toronto, where there is so much natural experimentation occurring, and where musicians and creators from many different backgrounds are coming together in an a staggering array of projects.
I was intrigued by the term post-multicultural which is apparently quite common north of the border. In a practical sense it defines the current period as following Canada’s legislative and constitutional enshrinement of multiculturalism as a national value, which got its federal incarnation in the department of Multiculturalism and Citizenship. It is also interesting to note that the aforementioned department has since been folded into a larger Department of Canadian Heritage which subsequently received the dangling post-script of “and Status of Women.”
But clearly there is more at work in the meaning of this word. If multiculturalism in Canada’s cultural mosaic is an ideal of co-existence and a response to the American concept of the Melting Pot, then what does it mean to be post-multicultural? Does the fusion of Jewish and Cuban rhythms as in Odessa/Havana provide a kind of microcosm of the next steps a society can take from tolerance and co-existence to collaboration and mutual appreciation?
Perhaps that’s thinking of it in too high-minded a way. Perhaps it is better to listen to the clip below of Odessa/Havana’sNext One Rising and just appreciate the way two cultural traditions can come together to create something new without sacrificing their own unique identities. They’re not melting, but they’ve permeated the boundaries of the mosaic–I’m not sure what image that leads us to, but it sounds great.
Artist Nikolas Schiller, whose work Israel/Palestine 1993 appears in the current Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery Exhibition L (A) T T I T U D E S has an installation opening this Friday at Artomatic. Below is a time-lapse video of his preparations for that work:
Theater J has cancelled its previews of David In Shadow in Light that were scheduled for this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The first preview will now be on Saturday, May 11 at 8:00 pm with an additional pay-what-you-can performance Sunday, May 12 at 8:00 pm. The show is the largest production Theater J has ever mounted and they decided to take a few extra days to get things right before putting it in front of a paying house. You can read Artistic Director Ari Roth’s blow-by-blow of the creative process or visit their website for more information.
In the meantime, keep this favorite exchange from one of my favorite movies in mind:
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
This week brought evidence that even alterna-indie Jewish publications are not immune to the forces of globalization and media conglomeration. We’re speaking of course, of the “merger” (although that probably isn’t the right word) between Jewcy and Zeek. It is a slightly odd marriage between a hip, snarky cultural comment blog-cum-purveyor of equally snarky baby-doll tee-shirts; and a high minded literary journal that dares to publish poetry along with short fiction and brainy essays on literature, art and music. I’m a fan of both and understand that it is just an online collaboration–Zeek will continue to publish its bricks and mortar journal. I just hope one doesn’t get lost inside the other. This week, Zeek has a great interview with Joseph Cedar, the Israeli director of Beaufort which was nominated for an Academy Award. Meanwhile, Jewcy uses the occassions of Yom HaShoah and the Anniversary of Hitler’s death for a hilarious (to me anyway) exposition of Godwin’s Law: in which allthreemajor candidates, a celebrity chef, Santa Claus and the student body of Columbia University are all compared to Hitler. Very funny stuff.
Elsewhere, our favorite Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer (The Treatment, Nina’s Tragedies, Florentene) is about to go totally Audrey Tautou in a prequel to the DaVinci Code.
Yesterday, I posted what should have been obvious: that our April 1 post announcing a reading by J.D. Salinger at the 16th Street J of his new work was just a joke. The reading was supposed to take place on April 31st, a day which does not exist, but if you were looking for it on the calendar, your finger would be hovering between yesterday and today, May 1. I thought it was a decent joke. A couple of people actually registered for the event online. As jokes go, I thought it was okay. I’ve done better. So I was surprised to be watching the Colbert Report last night and learn that our schtick had been stolen… video sourceposted with vodpod
Taking a page from his book (not that I bought it), Mr. Colbert, we demand an apology. And just as you have threatened to tear out a story from Nine Stories for every night that Mr. Salinger does not appear on your program, so will we delete an episode of your show from our TiVo until you acknowledge that you or your writing staff are lifting material from this blog. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but sir, have the decency to acknowledge your sources.
A lot of lip service gets paid to the historic alliance between African-Americans and Jews. The actual experience of that history is a lot more complicated. All it takes is something like the recent media circus surrounding Reverend Jeremiah Wright to remind us that tensions below the surface can come gurgling to the surface with an intensity that evokes strong reactions and escalating rhetoric. By the time the shouting dies down, the gulf of misunderstanding has grown that much wider.
Enter The Afro-Semitic Experience on June 5th as part of the Washington Jewish Music Festival to narrow that gulf, if only a little. Led for nearly a decade by Warren Byrd and David Chevan, TASE not only talks the talk, but walks the walk by responding to racism and anti-Semitism with its unique fusion of Gospel, Klezmer, Jazz, Niggunim, Spirituals, Swing and straight-up Funk. Granted, the premise seems tailor-made to produce cheap warm fuzzies of racial tolerance–but TASE brings the chops that imbues their polyglot sound with artistic validity that is impossible to deny.
Tickets are on sale May 1 for the Washington Jewish Music Festival. The Festival begins June 1 with the Capital Celebration of Israel @ 60 on the National Mall featuring Regina Spektor, Mandy Patinkin and Mashina.
This post was an April Fools joke. I think it was pretty obvious, but people have believed more ridiculous stuff they’ve read on the internet. So just in case you didn’t notice there was no such date as April 31–there will be no reading by JD Salinger at the 16th Street J…this week anyway.
This week marks Yom HaShoah, the day set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust. It is around this time every year that I receive an email from some well-meaning friend or acquaintance that goes something along the lines of, “keep forwarding this email remembering the six million until it has reached six million Jews and we’ll have had our revenge on Hitler.” I may be getting the details wrong, it may be the goal to send it not to six million Jews but to sixty million people. It may not say anything about having “our revenge on Hitler,” it may be a tad less dramatic, something about, “keeping memory eternally alive.”
I don’t forward these emails. Hitting forward may fulfill a desire for active memory for some, but not for me. No thanks. Then again, I can’t quite bring myself to hit delete either. Who am I to tell people how they should remember? Is it worse that they should remember through chain emails than not remember at all? Is deleting one of these emails, over-wrought though I find them, akin to aiding and abetting a creeping complacency in historical amnesia?
We’re showing a film tonight, The Last Fighters about the living remnant of a moment in history at once tragic and heroic. It won’t grant us some sort of revenge on the many evil and many more complicit people who conspired to make a place like the Warsaw Ghetto a reality. It certainly will not lessen the burden of finding ways to remember the genocide of the Holocaust without becoming enslaved to that memory. And in the years since Warsaw, we’ve witnessed Cambodia, Darfur and Bosnia, so we know that our memory alone cannot prevent future genocides from taking place.
What we can do is draw on the memory of those who were lost, those who fought and those who survived in the unending work of repairing a badly broken world. An email can’t do that alone. Neither can a film. But it’s a start. As long as it’s not the end.
With Passover in the rear-view mirror this week, things can start getting back to, ahem, regular. Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Here’s just a sample of what’s available this week at the Washington DCJCC:
Monday, April 28
7:30pm–The Screening Room presents: The Last Fighters. This documentary film follows the lives of the last six surviving members of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising fighters. The uprising was the best known and most legendary act of armed Jewish resistance (though not the only one) to the Holocaust. The film follows these old veterans and reveals the legacy of their valor, the weight of history and the personalities beyond the legends. The program is supported by the Helen and Milton Covensky Fund of the Washington DCJCC and will include a post-screening discussion with: Aviva Kempner, co-writer and producer of The Last Partisans of Vilna; Dr. Marsha Rozenblit, Professor of Modern Jewish History at University of Maryland; and Estelle Laughlin, Warsaw Ghetto Survivor.
7:00pm–Class: The Art of Storytelling. Become a storyteller and connect to a powerful oral tradition. When you tell or hear a story, you are participating in one of the most basic and intense of human experiences. Instructor: Noa Baum.
6:30pm–LGBTQ Ballroom Dance class with Peter Pawlak. Co-sponsored by the 16th Street J’s Kurlander Program for Gay and Lesbian Outreach and Engagement (GLOE).
Saturday, May 3
10:00am–Spring Yoga Workshop with Samantha (Sam) Caplan. A 90-minute introduction perfect for those who just started practicing or those interested in finding out what yoga is all about. This class will cover yoga fundamentals such as breathing techniques and meditation, as well as break down the proper alignment of some basic poses.
7:30pm–
