Karen Kosoglad stores memories of her former figure models, her Jewish immigrant-turned-printing-mogul-father and her loving mother, within layers of finished and unfinished paintings in her home art studio. Occasionally, she brings them out for the public to view. Most recently, Kosoglad’s show at the Lisa Harris Gallery in the PikeContinue Reading
Woody Allen once quipped that every time he listened to the music of Wagner, he got the urge to invade Poland. Woody isn’t alone. Many people can’t hear Wagner’s music without thinking of Nazism and Hitler. Some Jews can’t bear to listen to it at all. Seattle Opera is presentingContinue Reading
Musician Dan Reed may not be Jewish, but that didn’t stop him from spending nine months studying at a yeshiva while living in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood outside of Jerusalem. “I met some of the rabbis in the neighborhood, and they invited me down to check out the yeshiva. So IContinue Reading
Finding himself with a free hour in Washington, D.C. not too long ago, Max Mayer visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He boarded the elevator with the crowd to go to the permanent exhibit, when something unexpected happened. “The last thing, just before they close the doors, they ask, “˜WhoContinue Reading
When the Idan Raichel Project came to Hillel at the UW four years ago, I was blown away — and I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t seen so many Israelis since being stuck in a traffic jam in Tel Aviv. Seeing the Project again, this time in their home country ofContinue Reading
Working as a performance artist, it didn’t take Susannah Perlman long to discover she wasn’t the only nice Jewish girl trying to make a living by doing things on stage of which her mother did not approve. “I do comedy and music and I have hosted burlesque,” she recalled. “AndContinue Reading
Nearly 200 guests filled the Museum of History and Industry’s McEachem Auditorium on June 14 to see the world premiere of Unsilenced, a 40-minute documentary that highlights the 10-year history of Music of Remembrance, and to hear the exquisite music that has inspired musicians and audiences alike. Unsilenced features performancesContinue Reading
Composer Aaron Kernis recently completed “Symphony of Meditations,” based upon the translation of a Hebrew poem by 11th-century poet Solomon Ibn Gabriol. Zach Carstensen, principal writer for “The Gathering Note” local music blog and government affairs director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, interviewed Kernis via e-mail about theContinue Reading
When you cram 15 to 20 Jewish books into a six-week reading period, unifying themes often emerge. Like pairing food with drink, here are some fiction and non-fiction book pairs that give each other an added dimension. Let’s first consider Aharon Appelfeld. At 77, he is one of Israel’s mostContinue Reading
When Elizabeth Kenny first read the one-woman play The Last Letter, she was drawn right away to the World War II-era story of a mother writing a letter to her son from a Ukrainian ghetto just days before her death. Kenny, who is now starring in New City Theater’s productionContinue Reading
Music of Remembrance, the Seattle-based chamber music organization dedicated to remembering Holocaust musicians and their art, always seems to bring Seattle audiences something new and unexpected. This time, it’s a dance work. MOR’s upcoming spring concert features its first dance commission, choreographed by Spectrum Dance Theater’s artistic director Donald Byrd.Continue Reading
At Home In Utopia is a movie based around an apartment complex. The 2008 documentary, directed by Michal Goldman, tells the story of a cooperative housing venture started by Jewish garment workers in the 1920s in the Bronx. The film will screen April 27 as part of the Seattle JewishContinue Reading
For generations of American Jews, an innocent, unformed Dutch teenager personified the victims of the Holocaust. What might have been the repercussions had the story of a courageous young woman named Hannah Senesh been widely circulated instead of Anne Frank’s saga? That’s one of the fascinating questions implicitly raised byContinue Reading
Strangers (Zarim) Directors: Guy Nattiv & Erez Tadmor Israel, 2007 Hebrew, Arabic & French w/subtitles A few years ago, an Israeli filmmaker in his 40s told me he didn’t expect peace to happen until a future generation of Israelis and Palestinians came of age that was unburdened by the oldContinue Reading
Circumcise Me Directors: David Blumenthal & Matthew Kalman United States, 2007 English & Yiddish w/subtitles Comedian Yisrael Campbell has acquired a hard-earned piece of knowledge he’d like to share with you. That business about the first cut being the deepest? Don’t believe it. A convert to Judaism — not once,Continue Reading
Temple B’nai Torah will wrap up its 10-week-long 2009/5769 Cultural Arts Series on April 12 with a performance by New York-based songstress Chava Mirel Severino. Severino is no stranger to Temple B’nai Torah — far from it. In fact, as the daughter of B’nai Torah’s senior rabbi, James Mirel, SeverinoContinue Reading
Veteran Israeli director Avi Nesher is an uncommonly ambitious and fearless filmmaker. His latest film, Secrets (HaSadot), calmly broaches as many taboos as it can. A gripping and occasionally melodramatic argument for the emancipation of religious women, it draws equally on Yentl and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Secrets screens inContinue Reading
Fake advertisements for futuristic products. Centerpieces made out of plastic water bottles. Frogs in a jar. These are just a few of the objects visitors can expect to see at the Tikkunim art exhibit currently on display at Howard House in downtown Seattle. The exhibit, which is being presented inContinue Reading
The Seattle Jewish Film Festival celebrated its “Bar Mitzvah” last year. As it enters adulthood, festival director Pamela Lavitt and her committee decided the 11-day showcase of Jewish films should become more socially responsible as well — and they’re doing it with a Jewishly environmental spin. The festival, which runsContinue Reading
All the books presented here are concerned either with Torah or Israel, or both. Rabbi Ian Pear might argue that one leads to the other, as happened to him. The Accidental Zionist (New Song, cloth, $19.48), subtitled, “What a Priest, a Pornographer and A Wrestler named Chainsaw taught Me aboutContinue Reading
