By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Finding new ways to promote Jewish culture has moved two prominent members of the local Jewish community in new directions. Matthew Brogan and Michele Yanow will steer the direction of Nextbook, a project promoting a deeper understanding of Jewish culture in the Puget Sound area and around the country.
Brogan, who until a couple of weeks ago headed the Seattle Arts and Lecture series, has packed up and moved his family to New York City to become Nextbook’s National Fellows Program Director. Yanow, who co-owned and operated the Tree of Life Judaica and Bookstore in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood for the past 10 years, has moved on to work with Seattle’s and King County’s public libraries in her new role as the region’s Nextbook Fellow.
“The idea is always that we’re doing programs that have Jewish content but that are open and accessible to everybody,” says Yanow, who will be working with librarians from the two systems to develop reading lists, recommend new books for their collections, and promote activities in and outside the library that illuminate both the spiritual and cultural Jewish experience. Yanow says she expects the programs to include readings by Jewish authors in addition to other presentations, such as music, storytelling and other performances.
Brogan says they plan to have fellows in at least five cities around the country, which includes Yanow in King County and two others around Chicago. Nextbook is planning to name two fellows to work in Washington D.C. and in the Fairfax County, Va. area in the near future as well. Brogan says they are also considering one or two fellows for the San Francisco Bay Area, and possibly one in another, yet-to-be-determined city.
Nextbook, a project of New York-based Keren Keshet — The Rainbow Foundation, describes itself on its Web site as “a gateway to Jewish culture, history, and ideas for Jews and non-Jews alike [which] seeks to achieve a broad understanding of Jews and Judaism in our pluralistic nation.” Its goal is to find innovative ways to expand Jewish cultural literacy and show people how Jewish and American can overlap and can help people understand both in context.
Keren Keshet — the name is derived from the Hebrew word for rainbow — was formed in 1999 by the estate of Zalman C. Bernstein. The foundation operates in the United States, Europe, and Israel, developing and supporting programs to enhance connections among Jews while respecting differences in religious backgrounds. Their stated goal is “to fortify Jewish culture through study, practice, and increased awareness and understanding.”
Bernstein formed the eponymic Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. securities firm in 1967 with what the New York Times described in his obituary as “a demonstration of chutzpah that is still reverberating on Wall Street.”
Bernstein’s firm handled only discretionary accounts, where the portfolios were managed without consultating its clients. At the time, this practice was widely frowned upon.
When Bernstein died, the firm was one of the world’s largest independent investment companies, servicing 25,000 clients with over $80 billion in securities.
Late in his life Bernstein began to practice Orthodox Judaism and developed an active interest in his Jewish heritage. He moved to Jerusalem after his retirement, and replaced “Sanford” and “Charles” with “Zalman Chaim.”
Keren Keshet was created to continue the philanthropic work he began during his lifetime.
Both Yanow and Brogan say Nextbook is still in its planning stages, and what it will ultimately become has yet to be determined. The two have conducted focus groups in different parts of the community to gather ideas and opinions of what people may want to see.
The reports of those sessions are still being compiled, so the two declined to give out any details as of yet.
Even so, Brogan and Yanow have hit the ground running, and have a lot of ideas swirling around them already. Brogan says the first visible manifestation of Nextbook is its newWeb site www.nextbook.org, which recently became fully operational. A planned series of books, edited by novelist Jonathan Rosen, will be published by the Knopf division of Random House as well.
“It’s going to be a series by contemporary writers that is going to be on either important figures of the past or important issues in Jewish history and culture from the past,” says Brogan. “It’s going to be a series of short books, 150-200 pages.”
Brogan says writers are being contacted now, but based on the usual timeframe for getting books through the publishing cycle, they probably won’t appear on shelves until 2004 or 2005. Another project in the pilot stage, he says, is a reading list of Jewish books to be distributed to bookstores and libraries around the country.
“We’re going to test-market those over the next six months or so to see how well they work,” Borgan says. “If there is a strong interest, which we expect, then we will sort of roll those out and those will become a more apparent program.” Some of the reading lists are currently available on the Web site.
Locally, Yanow already sponsored one program with a visiting Jewish storyteller during Passover, and has booked husband-and-wife storytelling team Mark Novak and Renee Brachfel as part of the King Co. Library’s annual Storyfest in mid-August. They will perform Nextbook-sponsored programs in the libraries.
“We will also be doing an additional program with them that is being co-sponsored by Jewish Family Service” on Monday, Aug. 18, Yanow says. The JFS program will be held outside the library system and will be what she called “a family and intergenerational program.”
“One of the things that we’re definitely going to do is a literary series — probably six events starting in October and running through April or May,” Brogan says. “We have not necessarily famous, but certainly distinguished, Jewish writers that we’re going to try to bring into town.”
Another project, called Nextbook Now, will be made up of eclectic events related to Jewish literature. Some, Brogan says, may be authors on book tours, others done in partnership with cultural organizations here, and the rest in partnership with the libraries.
“For instance in November, I think, the symphony is doing a production of Bernstein’s ‘Kaddish,’” he says. “We’re probably going to work with the symphony to do a program around that — maybe an educational program, maybe a literary program around that piece. We’re looking for things going on in the community or where there’s an interest in the community to do a project and we will partner with them.”
At this point, Yanow says she is has been working most closely with the King County libraries, including having an office located in a library facility to maintain close contact with the staff there.
“We would like to work with [Seattle Public Library] more and I think they would, too,” she says. “I just think that some of these logistical requirements didn’t work out because they have a lot on their plate.”