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
It may seem like Barry Manilow has come a long way from his roots. Born Barry Pincus in 1943 to a Jewish family, Manilow was raised by his mother and grandparents in an impoverished section of Brooklyn where he spent his youth attending Hebrew school and playing the accordion. ButContinue Reading
Marc Revenson grew up around music but always took it for granted. “For starters, I grew up around grandparents who had a real passion for Yiddish,” Revenson, known to his fans as Lil Rev, says. “The older that I got, the more of an appreciation I began to have forContinue Reading
Stereotypes may be in the eye of the beholder. At least, that just might be the case in how a character in the French animated film Azur and Asmar, which was screened at the Seattle International Film Festival’s SIFF Theater at the Seattle Center last month, is perceived. A takeContinue Reading
The history of the state of Israel is relatively short, but the tales surrounding its establishment go back thousands of years, and includes incredible stories of struggles, successes, failures, wars, defeats and victories. Until recently, those tales were mostly documented in long and tedious books, which kept them out ofContinue Reading
It’s been more than three decades since Golda Meir died. She was a giant on the world stage in her time. Starting life in Kiev, she made her way to the American Midwest before settling in Palestine and eventually becoming the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. In her day, aContinue Reading
Encompassing four events and a showcase of our state’s Jewish history, the culmination of a year’s worth of planning at Town Hall Seattle will bring Judaism to the masses. Its upcoming series, the latest in its annual celebration of world cultures, brings together local and national musicians, a silent filmContinue Reading
The action-packed World War II drama Defiance is a smart, satisfying chunk of pulp nonfiction that, while totally accessible to a wide audience, will find its most enthusiastic fans among Jewish moviegoers. Doubling as a Moses parable (with a nod to the Maccabees) and a rebuff to Schindler’s List, thisContinue Reading
Jorge Liderman: Aires de Sepharad: 46 Spanish Songs for Violin and Guitar www.albanyrecords.com I rushed to recommend this graceful recording to the music department at Classical KING-FM. The much-honored Argentina-born, Israel-trained composer Liderman made this hour-long suite for violin and guitar [editor’s note: corrected from originally stating the suite wasContinue Reading
There are any number of ways, from exploitation to trivialization to stultifying pretension, to bungle a film about the Holocaust and its repercussions. Likewise, the pitfalls and miscalculations marking the road from successful book to botched movie are legion. Both cases represent missed opportunities, which is the most charitable thingContinue Reading
