Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

This semester, I am teaching two novels and a few short stories written by brilliant, critical Orientals, and Africans following Edward Saids advice to make use of his work on orientalism so we might then produce new studies of our own that would illuminate the historical experience of Arabs and others, including Muslims, in a generous enabling mode, as he puts it in the Forward of his masterpiece Orientalism. I realized that the exploration of the multi-faceted reflections of these literary works with my Palestinian students, living all their life in besieged Gaza, might be a way into a discussion of the sources from which the East-West differences ultimately arise as a strategy for understanding what Said labels as the clash of ignorance. But I also have Paulo Freires theories of the pedagogy of the oppressed in mind. The texts I am referring to here are written by our own Ghassan Kanafani, Ousmane Semebene, Nureddin Farrah, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, and Mohsin Hamid.

I thought that since it is primarily American Christian fundamentalism, embedded in the highest level of U.S. military and governmental power, and Ashkenazi Zionism which perceive themselves under attack by Islam, and the essentially antisemitic Orient, it might be useful to pursue literary texts exhibiting non-confrontational juxtapositions of the two traditions, or the other story, that of the oriental/Muslim. And most of my students fall into this category.

This approach seems to me in keeping with the spirit ofEdward Saids life work. Said tried to show that what Samuel Huntington called a clash of civilization was actually a clash of ignorance . In a series of books distinguished for their inclusiveness, Said presents a profound and nuanced analysis of this conflict, following Vicos conviction that human culture, since it is man-made, can be positively shaped by human efforts. In addition to Orientalism, I am thinking of Covering Islam, The Question of Palestine, Culture and Imperialism, Reflections on Exile, Representations of the Intellectual, The World, The Text and The Critic, and Out of Place. Saids concern stems from the fact that as an Oriental who grew up in Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon, all subject to the domination of the colonizing West, he found it important to define the impact of the United States, where he later received his education and which had had such a profound effect in his own life and that of all other Orientals exactly like the Muslim narrator/protagonist of Mohsin Hamids The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Hence the choice of Mohsins text to teach to my Palestinian students, i.e both the text and the act of analyzing it are an attempt to de-orientalize the orient, so to speak. As Said says in the Introduction, he writes from the perspective of an Arab/Palestinian with a strong concern and empathy for the region. This identification isobvious from such statements as this: Orientalism is written out of an extremely concrete history of personal loss and national disintegration, recalling that Golda Meiers notorious and deeply Orientalist comment about there being no Palestinian people had been made only a few years before he wrote the book.

Hamids protagonist, like Said, suffers from the Islamophobic mood dominating the U.S., where he works for a multi-national company after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and from what can essentially be defined as a rising American white supremacy that dates back to the inception of modern America. The late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seized that moment to vent all that orientalist, Islamophobic, Zionist wrath on the West Bank and Gaza, both of which became the testing laboratory, before Afghanistan and Iraq, for what should be done to Anti-American bearded and hijabi, dark-skinned Muslims. My students understand this, being at the receiving end of all the crimes committed in the name of civilizational mission.

As the current disastrous phase of Anglo-American colonialism sinks even deeper into chaos and anarchy, causing untold suffering in the Arab and Muslim worlds and elsewhere, thoughtful reflection and careful analysis become more urgently needed. Headlines daily reveal ever more clearly not merely the failure of American politicians, diplomats, and military leaders to understand the Middle East and the Muslim World but their failure to take the simplest measures to compensate for this failure.

While teaching my Palestinian students, I am reminded of what Said called for so eloquently in Culture and Imperialism, namely the possibility of a more generous and pluralistic vision of the world. There is an urgent need for books, courses, and lectures which encourage that approach. And this is precisely why teaching the literary works of Ghassan Kanfani is of paramount importance as it comes in the context of decolonizing the Palestinian mind; Kanafani was after all the writer of Resistance Literaure.

Mondoweiss is a nonprofit news website dedicated to covering the full picture of the struggle for justice in Palestine. Funded almost entirely by our readers, our truth-telling journalism is an essential counterweight to the propaganda that passes for news in mainstream and legacy media.

Our news and analysis is available to everyone which is why we need your support. Please contribute so that we can continue to raise the voices of those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians to live in dignity and peace.

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Resistance literature and 'pedagogy of the oppressed' in colonized Palestine - Mondoweiss

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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

Budiman Minasny & Josh Stenberg

Jewish communities in Indonesia have always been tiny, though their history is long. Jewish merchants are recorded in Sumatra in the tenth century, and diasporic and Israeli newspapers regularly report on the very small groups of Jews now living in Indonesia. (A 2019 article in Haaretz estimated 140 Indonesian Jews in six different locations, including Medan). However, the period when the Jewish community reached its highest numbers and the most substantial traces involve a late colonial presence in Batavia, Surabaya, and Manado.

The digitisation of Dutch archives, both from European publications and the colonial newspapers, has made it easier to learn more about the history of Jewish groups in the archipelago. In this article, we offer some notes towards a history of some Jewish merchants in Medan between the 1870s and 1940s, as tobacco plantation on Sumatras east coast developed.

The Deli region on the east coast of Sumatra was not developed until the mid-1860s, when a few Dutchmen accepted an invitation from the Sultan of Deli to establish tobacco plantations in the area. By the late 1890s it was one of the most profitable parts of the Dutch empire.

Deli tobacco leaves were thinner than cigarette paper, and softer than silk, and quickly the plantation zones tobacco became highly valued as a cigar wrapper. The result was a brown gold rush of Deli tobacco in the late 1870s, attracting German, Swiss, English, and Polish planters as well as Dutch to the new dollar land. Planters, tolerated and sometimes abetted by colonial authorities, instituted a brutal and often murderous system of exploitation of imported Chinese and Javanese labour.

Before long, merchants established themselves to serve the European populations taste for European goods and technology. Among these new arrivals were several Jews, including Ashkenazi Jews from the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany as well as others who relocated from existing Baghdadi Jewish communities in Penang and Singapore. There is also scattered evidence of Jews in the Dutch army serving in Sumatra.

We know very little about how many Jews tried their luck in the eastern coast of Sumatra, but we have not yet found any evidence of a synagogue (as in Surabaya) or a dedicated cemetery (as in Aceh). The most consistent record of the community is through Amsterdams Nieuw Isralietisch Weekblad (New Jewish Weekly). The first mention we have found in that newspaper was a report of an August 1879 anonymous donation of 60 guilders originating in the Sumatras east coast and destined for the Dutch branch of the Alliance Isralite Universelle, an international Jewish educational charity.

Between 1899-1901 the NIW published letters from N. Hirsch, a non-commissioned officer initially writing from the fortress of Fort de Kock (now Bukit Tinggi). In his letters, Hirsch is troubled by the challenges of Jewish life in the Indies (when not speculating that some Indonesians might be descendants of the lost tribes), without religious or community institutions. Months after his first letter, Hirsch joyfully reported the arrival of a kosher butcher and in 1901, having since moved to Padang, on the first religious services in his home.

However, the bulk of sources concerns a few European Jewish merchants who became prominent in Medan. Among the first Europeans to come to Deli were members of the Httenbach family, an established and assimilated merchant family from the German Rhineland city of Worms. The eldest son, August Httenbach, began working for the German-Jewish Katz Brothers in Penang in 1872 at the age of 22. The Katz Brothers, who had arrived in Penang in 1864 at the height of the tin rush, invested in all kinds of business, including supplying ships for freight. When the Dutch-Aceh war broke out in 1873, they provided logistics and supplies to the Dutch military, and the Httenbach familys shipping business ran a regular service to the Aceh ports.

While August became a prominent merchant in Penang, his younger brothers Jacob and Ludwig Httenbach settled in Deli. In 1875 they opened the first European store in the harbour settlement of Labuhan Deli to cater to all the needs and requirements of the Dutch government, plantations, and industrial groups. Gradually, the family firm developed into a general merchandise company supplying all sorts of goods from Europe, and even establishing its headquarters in Amsterdam and another office in London. With their own shipping lines at their disposal, they were for a time the only importer in Deli. When Httenbach moved its Sumatran operations to Medan in the 1880s, the street on which they established their business was named Httenbach Street (today Jalan Ahmad Yani VII).

Httenbach enterprises supplied all manner of goods and services, ranging from live water buffalos and Brazil nuts to Bordeaux wines. It furnished machinery, tools, motors, electrical goods, harnesses, saddles, guns, ammunition, watches, and clothing, and served as an agent for brands including Ford, Cadbury, Heineken, and Guinness Stout, as well as other European trading, insurance, and manufacturing companies. In the 1910s, its annual imports totalled 1,200,000 guilders and it supplied the whole of Sumatra.

At the turn of the 20th century, Jacob and Ludwig retired to Europe and left Heinrich Httenbach (1859-1922), the youngest of the brothers, in charge of the company. Heinrich, who had been a well-known planter in Malaya, moved to Medan to run the company. One glimpse of the brutality of plantation life is visible in the German primer Heinrich wrote to provide instruction for Europeans learning plantation Malay (Anleitung zur Erlernung der Malayischen Sprache), including instructions such as:

Lu orang bhong. Lu bukan sakit. Lu malas sadja. Saja mau kassi pukul sama lu.

(You lied. You are not sick. You are just lazy. I will hit you).

Medans growth attracted other Jewish merchants, who also opened stores selling European consumer items such as clothes and luxury items. Two German Jews, Louis Kellermann of Leipzig and Max Goldenberg of Hamburg opened the S. Katz & Co. shop in the Kesawan shopping street. It may be that Kellermann and Goldenberg used the familiar Katz name to capitalise their business. The Katz brothers, prominent in London and Singapore, in any event did not appreciate what appeared to be an appropriation of their name., and put a notice in the local newspaper, the Deli Courant making clear that no such connection existed.

One of S. Katzs employees was Russian-born Alfred Aron Arnold Zeitlin (18631938). Partnering with Goldenberg, Zeitlin opened a new store called Goldenberg & Zeitlin in November 1898, which by all accounts, was a majestic shop on the main shopping street Kesawan. They specialised in the importation on luxury items such as jewellery, music boxes, typewriters, hunting rifles, glassware, curtains, suitcases, cigars and so on.

Other competitors were not far behind. An English-language travel guide to Sumatra in 1912 wrote:

A visit should also be paid to the establishment of Messrs. Cornfield. The firm are the official suppliers to the various sultans, and make a specialty of superior diamond jewellery of every description, although their stock includes well selected continental fancy goods, pictures and also the latest modes.

Wilhelm Cornfield (18621908), an Austrian Jew, came to Deli in the 1880s, first working as a cutter at the S. Katz shop. In 1893, Cornfield started his own business as a tailor, offering European clothing with imported fabrics. Cornfield soon carried a complete range of clothes and luxury items from London and Paris.

The first generations of merchants eventually left or passed away and were replaced by their children. When Wilhelm Cornfield passed away in 1908, his children expanded their fathers business. In particular, his son Isidore (1885-1923) was an investor in many luxury stores in North Sumatra. He also owned tea and coconut plantations on the east coast of Sumatra.

Jewish merchants competed to import European consumer goods, merging, dividing, and often clashing with each other. In 1915, the Httenbach company split into a wholesaler business and the retail business. The retail business was managed by Isidore Cornfield while Heinrich Httenbach maintained its import business. This split, however, caused a legal dispute between Heinrich Httenbach and Isidore Cornfield about who should manage the new department store. In the end, Isidore Cornfield won the case and opened Medans Warenhuis (Warehouse) in 1920, the first department store in Sumatra. The remains of the building still exist today. The Httenbach firm, on the other hand, was declared bankrupt in December 1921, after 46 years of business, due to mismanagement.

The bankruptcy resulted in Heinrich Httenbachs departure and he returned to Amsterdam. A few months later, he went missing on a passage from Amsterdam to London, and was declared dead five years later. Nor did things end well for the Cornfields. Isidore and his wife, opera singer Henriette Zerkowitz, returned to Vienna, and he died in October 1923 at the age of 38, due to heart disease. By 1939, now run by his brother Adolf, the Cornfield fashion store was in financial trouble and was liquidated. The shop closed its doors in July 1939 after trading for more than 50 years. Most likely, as the Depression caused a decline in demand for Sumatra tobacco and the demand for consumer luxury goods plummeted.

Like many German and Dutch Jews, many of these merchants were assimilated and identified nationally. They belonged to Dutch and German clubs and contributed to patriotic celebrations. Indeed, Hirsch complained of the European Jewish merchants that they represented themselves as Christians, were lost in bitter competition with one another, and were utterly lacking in piety. If the majority were secular and/or assimilated Jews, there may have been little impetus to form Jewish institutions.

At the end of World War I, there was a high demand for expatriates to come to the Deli region to manage plantations and serve the colony. Many Dutch Jews responded and went to work for plantations, Dutch companies or the government. There are also a few examples of Jewish doctors. But newspaper archives suggest that numbers remained tiny, and only from the mid-1920s is it possible to speak of community activities.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Jewish community raised funds to support relief efforts, but by March 1942 Sumatra too had fallen to the Japanese. Some Jewish families found themselves under threat at both ends of the world: persecuted in Europe on the basis of their Jewish identity, and in the Indies as Dutch enemies of the Japanese. Adolf Cornfield died in a Japanese internment camp. A Dutch Jewish physician who worked on the east coast of Sumatra, Dr. Hans Koperberg, was also captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. In a book of poetry titled Bittere pillen en scherpe pijlen (Bitter Pills and Sharp Arrows) he wrote about his experiences of being moved from one camp to another and dedicated the book to my two Sisters murdered by the Huns, Uncle Dr. Felix Catz and Aunt Brama and to all the friends murdered by the Japs.

Our investigations have so far found little record of Jews in Sumatra after the Second World War. Survivors left for the Netherlands or perhaps Australia, and by 1958 Sukarno had expelled all Dutch citizens from Indonesia.

Budiman Minasny is a Professor of Soil Landscape Modelling at the University of Sydney with an interest in Indonesia colonial history. Josh Stenberg is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney.

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Merchants and entrepreneurs - Inside Indonesia

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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

Spiritual connection can be found in the most mundane places

It may seem peculiar to admit, but one of the spaces I feel the most unabashedly Jewish is in a chain grocery store.

I currently live in Outremont, my small apartment building nestled amongst the rows of beautiful houses containing large, lively Hasidic families. Between Lipas Kosher Market, Continental Deli, and the dozens of synagogues, I could definitely get my share of Jewish culture anytime I left the house. But, as much as I love a Cheskies black and white cookie, as a secular(ish) reform Jew, these arent really my people.

However, a forty-minute bus ride away, at an unassuming IGA, thats where my people are.

My grandparents immigrated to Canada around 1953 as refugees of the Holocaust. The war broke out when my grandmother was a young teen, and after losing all of her family other than a sister and cousin, likely to Auschwitz but well never know, she met my grandfather in a labour camp. After liberation, the pair were processed through Italy, went to Israel, then finally arrived in Montreal.

Our family began as working class Mile End Jews, as many post-War Ashkenazi immigrants did. In comparison to the more affluent uptown Jews of Westmount, who had already assimilated to Canadian culture through a couple generations of living here, downtown Jews like my family had a difficult time initially, adapting to two new languages and secular life, all while reeling from the most awful trauma imaginable.

By the 1980s, after moving through multiple Montreal boroughs, my grandparents, again following the trends of their Polish Jewish peers, finally settled in Cte-Saint-Luc. And there they lived until they passed my grandfather before I was born and my grandmother this past summer.

Everytime my parents and I would travel to Montreal to visit my grandmother, a trip to the Cavendish Mall IGA was inevitable. Beginning as an opportunity to make sure my grandmother got all of her granddaughters favourite foods, and later because driving herself became impossible, the IGA factored into every family trip to Montreal.

Growing up in suburban Virginia, never had I seen so much Jewish food in one place. Or, honestly, Jewish food for sale in general, other than a lonely box of Passover matzah inexplicably stocked in a Hanukkah display.

The IGA has been a constant, not just for my family, but for the large Jewish Cte-Saint-Luc community. The store has a sizable kosher section spanning not only the Eastern European Jewish staples like knishes and verenikas, but also babaganoush and harissa to accommodate the more recent influx of Sephardic Jews into the neighbourhood.

Early in the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Cavendish IGA briefly closed its doors to shoppers. IGAs parent company Sobeys stated that their decision was made to limit the amount of times residents were leaving their houses. With Cte-Saint-Lucs especially elderly population, this call was made in an attempt to protect residents from disease. However, the move created a backlash from older residents, who either did not have access to or proficiency with computers and online ordering.

On top of the accessibility concerns of online shopping, closing the Cavendish IGA limited the social aspect of shopping for not only the older community, but Jewish Cte-Saint-Luc residents in general.

Much has been said about food and cooking as community-making, but why do we not extend this thought to the grocery shopping experience?

In Cte-Saint-Luc, the IGA has become somewhat of a cultural hub for the community, as, especially during the pandemic, its one of the few places community members, mostly older adults, will get a chance to see their neighbours.

I dont go to the Cavendish Mall much these days. Since my grandmothers passing, Ive only been out to Cte-Saint-Luc a few times to help clean out her apartment. But I went this past week, partially to have an excuse to get some reading done one the bus, but mostly because in the stress of exam season, I was craving the warm embrace of Jewish carbs.

Once I passed the extensive bakery section, I was greeted by a giant Hanukkah display. A bit early? I chuckled to myself, thinking about the clich of Christmas decorations popping up as soon as Halloween passes. Then, I realized I didnt even know when Hanukkah begins this year. Turns out its Nov. 28, so the jokes on me.

But after the twinge of pain knowing that Hanukkah will have come and gone before Im even done with finals, I thought: where else would I come face to face with a kiosk full of dreidels, menorahs, and adorned with an image of a yarmulke-clad cartoon boy?

Thats the thing about the Cavendish Mall IGA. The mundane fact that matzah ball soup mix is sold all year (in a section that actually corresponds to the correct holiday), that its the only place Ive ever found kasha varnishkes outside of my dads kitchen, that I can walk around on a Friday early afternoon, see a box of candlesticks in my fellow shoppers cart and share a knowing look.

Though I had no real reason to go to the IGA recently, even without my grandmother to guide me to the good gefilte fish, the experience still ignited something comforting in me that I cant quite articulate. Maybe its God, maybe just good chicken soup.

Feature graphic by Kaitlynn Rodney and James Fay

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My very Jewish love letter to the Cavendish Mall IGA - The Concordian

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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forwards free newsletters delivered to your inbox.

My first thought when I saw Old Navys new Happy ALL-idays commercial was: How clever, I cant believe nobody came up with that term before. Then I watched it.

First you see the T.V. personality Keke Palmer emerging from a chimney in a Santa hat. Expecting someone else? she asks cheerily. Ho-ho no! Its the ALL-idays, and we are all about it! What are these ALL-idays, you ask? Well, they look a lot like Christmas.

Palmers playmates are in pajamas dotted with Santa faces, and they dance in front of sparkly-lit trees then go through a door with a red wreath. There are references to nice and naughty, lovely weather for a ride together, sleighs and egg nog.

Theres also a token menorah on the hearth in the background, holding not candles but bulbs in blue and white but also red and green. However you jingle, Palmer says, weve got your jammies.

I love pajamas as much as the next person, but they are not part of my observance of any holiday. Green and red jammies with pine trees or snowflakes are just as Christmasy as the jammies with Santas face, and the inclusion of blue onesies with five-pointed stars dont mean anything to me.

I dont want Hanukkah pajamas. I dont want ALL-idays. I want to light my menorah, make my latkes, and spend Christmas eating Chinese food and going to the movies without hearing another word about this fake holiday season.

Courtesy of YouTube

Old Navys ALL-idays commercial.

I am aware that there are many Jews who love Christmas. Jews who love Christmas music, maybe even join friends in caroling around the neighborhood, mumbling the parts about Jesus under their breath. Jews who love to bake Christmas cookies, in all their adorable deliciousness. Jews who decorate their homes in sparkly lights, maybe even have a Hanukkah bush. Jews like my own daughter, who count the days until Starbucks brings out the Peppermint-Mocha Latte each year.

I am not one of those Jews. Ive got a huge Christmas chip on my shoulder. If the first step is acknowledging you have a problem, this is me acknowledging. I dont hate Christmas; I just wish everyone would leave me out of it.

That means not saying Happy Holidays when you mean Merry Christmas. It means not asking me, What are you doing for Hanukkah? as if its a time for travel and major family reunions.

It means not buying idiotic Hanukkah merch that is really about Christmas (Oy to the world) or Passover (Why is this night different from all other nights? Happy Hanukkah). It means recognizing that we live in a Christian country and just dealing with it.

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I have a holiday season just not in December. Ours is, frankly, much more of an authentic season a month-long journey from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur to Sukkot. Thats a great time to tell me Happy Holidays or, better yet, Chag sameach. You want to celebrate ALL-idays? How about letting my kids make up the pottery class they missed on Kol Nidre? How about not scheduling the science fair for the day after Passover Seder?

Or, heres an easy one: how about mentioning just one of those September Jewish festivals in the local high schools daily email blast along with Constitution Day, the First Day of Autumn and Patriot Day? (Yes, these are the same daily email blasts that, last spring, highlighted Meir Kahane for Jewish American Heritage Month.)

I got an email on Monday announcing the Parent Ambassador Cookie Walk at my sons school:. Please share your familys favorite holiday cookies to celebrate the season.

Now, I probably like cookies more than the next person, but my family does not have favorite holiday cookies and we do not celebrate the season. The only cookie that plays a central role in a Jewish holiday is Hamantaschen for Purim, and most are among the driest, worst-tasting treats of any kind. When it comes to cookies, we love any with chocolate chips all year round.

Yes, I know, I could make Hanukkah cookies, cutting out six-pointed stars and menorahs and even Judah Maccabee shapes. But they are not family favorites they are a lame, not-delicious attempt to be part of the ALL-iday season that I reject. I certainly will not buy the Manischewitz Chanukah House cookie-decorating kit.

A friend suggested I could send in donut holes, a nod to sufganiyot, the filled Hanukkah treat fried in oil. I probably will, but Im not happy about it theyre not cookies, my family never really ate them for Hanukkah except when we lived in Jerusalem, and the cookie walk is Dec. 16, 10 days after our holiday ends.

I know I sound like an absolute Grinch. I have already acknowledged this is a me problem. As I watched the new ALL-idays commercial, I got to wondering if maybe I was missing something. Maybe Jews who live in interfaith families like our Second Gentleman, who made history by hanging a mezuzah on the door of the Vice Presidents residence feel differently about the season?

This is not a fringe group; this is a huge portion of our community. The 2021 Pew Research Study found that fully 42% of married American Jews have non-Jewish spouses, 61% of those married since 2010.

So I asked our contributing columnist Tema Smith, whose day job is with 18Doors, the leading Jewish group focused on interfaith families, what she thought about Old Navys ALL-idays.

The biggest thing that struck me is, Dont call it ALL-idays when its still about Christmas, Tema said, echoing my own reaction (and my daughters).

I appreciate all of the interfaith dialogue-y-ness of all this stuff, and at the same time, this is so dumb we dont have to go on about how our holidays are so similar in order to like each other.

Tema said that while some interfaith families do syncretistic versions of mashing up holidays like hanging Stars of David on their Christmas trees most who mark both holidays do them separately.

In her own family, the mashup is Chinese food and stockings which they do separately, as she said, its not about stuffing egg-rolls into socks.

Image by Screenshot from Walmart.c...

Chanukah merch is often simply Christmas merch made to seem vaguely Jewish.

Interestingly, Tema said its her Jewish mother, not her non-Jewish dad, who drives here. Its like her favorite thing to go shopping for things to put in the stockings my father does not care, Tema said.

What interfaith families bristle at when people say Jews dont do Christmas is the exclusivist-ness of it, she added, that you are somehow not authentically doing Jewish if you are doing Christmas.

Tema, like me, went to public school, and she mentioned that her mom made a whole big fuss that the Christmas concert should be a holiday concert. It was still Christmas songs, until they threw in that dreidel song, she recalled.

This brought me back to the holiday concerts at my own Mason-Rice Elementary, where we sang a little ditty called Here in my House.

Here in my house, there are candles burning bright, one for every night of the holidayWe gather with friends, sharing gifts and happy times, Happy HanukkahAnd in my neighbors house the lights are shining, too, Red and green and blue, round the doorThe sound of jingle bells and laughter everywhere, Merry Christmas and many moreSeason of light, season of cheer, season of peace, may it last throughout the year

By now it will not surprise you to learn that I did not love this song. Like Old Navys ALL-idays campaign which, according to this news release, seems really to be more aimed at racial diversity around Christmas than anything to do with Jews I know it came from a place of good intentions.

The composer, Aline Shader, actually taught at another elementary school in my hometown, Newton, Massachusetts, which was a place with plenty of Jews (though my sisters and I were the only ones in our public schools who went to shul rather than class on Sukkot). She was a major mentor of Julie Silver, who I went to camp with and who is one of the best Jewish singer-songwriters of my generation (and whose Hanukkah album does not include Here in my House.)

I thought about Shaders song a lot last year, when perhaps because the pandemic had forced us to spend so much time at home I felt a strong pull to put up some twinkly lights outside. I would only have considered plain white, of course, but in the end even that felt way too Christmasy (and also like a lot of work). Instead, I bought one of those menorahs with the screw-in lightbulbs and put it in the window of our front porch.

Well light that menorah again this year, along with our regular menorahs candles burning bright, one for every night of the holiday. And when Hanukkah is over on Dec. 6, Ill put it back in the box, get my daughter a Starbucks Peppermint-Mocha Latte and start thinking about what movies well watch after dim-sum on Christmas.

I had a cool opportunity this week to talk with the folks who lead five of our best local Jewish journalism outlets. They are participating in a year-long program sponsored by the Maimonides Fund. My talk was about how to make our work more audience-focused and audience-engaging including tools like (I hope!) this very newsletter. Were partnering with these and other local publications to make sure you get the best Jewish stories no matter where they come from.

If you dont already, please check out the websites and sign up for the newsletters of your local Jewish publication. And no matter where you live, you might want to follow these fabulous five:

TC Jewfolk (TC as in Twin Cities): A new-ish digital publication that also has several podcasts.

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This is not my holiday season. Please leave me out of it.

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This is not my holiday season. Please leave me out of it. - Forward

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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

Actors in a recent production of Waiting for Godot at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm performed neither in the classic plays original English nor in Swedish translation.

Rather, they were speaking Yiddish, a language spoken by few Swedes but increasingly cherished by many.

The Yiddish version of Samuel Becketts classic absurdist play, translated by Shane Baker,premiered in 2013 through the New Yiddish Rep, a theater company in New York City, under the direction of Moshe Yassur, a Holocaust survivor whose career in Yiddish theater dates to his prewar childhood in Romania. It has toured as far afield as Paris and Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

The performances marked its debut in Sweden, and the first time ever that a play in Yiddish was staged at Swedens national theater company the only home that its local backers considered.

I didnt want it anywhere else but in Dramaten, said Lizzie Oved Scheja, the executive director ofJ!Jewish Culture in Sweden, one of the institutions responsible for bringing the performance to Stockholm, about the choice of the venue.

We believe that Jewish culture should be a part of Swedish culture, and that it should be presented on all the main stages in Sweden, she said.

The three performances were filled almost to capacity and drew prominent audience members including the Swedish minister of culture, leading Oved Scheja to characterize the staging as a triumph of a culture that was supposed to be wiped out in the Holocaust.

In Sweden today, no more than 3,000 people out of a Jewish population of roughly 25,000 can speak Yiddish,according to the countrys Society for Yiddish(Jiddischsllskapet). Even that figure may well be an overestimate, given the countrys small number of haredi Orthodox Jews, the population that most often speaks Yiddish in their regular lives, and high rates of assimilation.

But the language has a long history in the country, dating back to the 18th century, when Jews were first allowed to settle in the country. The population of Yiddish-speakers further rose at the beginning of the 20th century, with a new wave of Jewish emigration, mostly from Russia, and after World War II, when thousands of Holocaust survivors arrived in Sweden, which had sheltered its own Jewish population from the Nazis.

In 2000, Yiddish became one of Swedens official minority languages (alongside with Finnish, Sami, Menkieli and Romani). The status of cultural heritage brought governmental funding for initiatives aimed at preserving the language within Sweden over the past 20 years.

At the same time, some younger Swedes have begun reconnecting with their Jewish heritage, in keeping with a trend that has unfolded across Europe.

There is a generation of people who are now in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and find out that they are Jewish, Oved Scheja said. Their interest in Yiddish means it is taught at universities in Lund and Uppsala, and at the Paideia, a 20-year-old Jewish studies institute in Stockholm.

Swedish Radio has a program devoted to Yiddish called Jiddisch far alle, or Yiddish for All, and two years ago a Swedish publisher, Nikolaj Olniansky, released theYiddish translation of Harry Potter.The publication was partly financed by the Swedish government, as were many other initiatives aimed at preserving the minority languages.

An activeSociety for Yiddish(Jiddischsllskapet) which has its own amateur theater and stages classic plays in the language is the main Swedish organization dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of Yiddish. The society helped produce Becketts play, with the support of J!Jewish Culture in Sweden, which has more experience in identifying Jewish artists, writers, and performers who are most likely to engage the broader Swedish public.

In recent years the two organizations collaborated on several other projects connected to Yiddish, such as a Yiddish film series. Last month it launched a Yiddish-language podcast, Yiddish Talks.The first episodeis a conversation withBaker, the translator and actor of Waiting for Godot who is not Jewish.

The plays connection to Jewish culture predates its translation into Yiddish. Becketts biographer wrote about how a Jewish friend who was captured by the Nazis and died shortly after liberation was an inspiration for the playwright, who in an early draft named one character Levy, a traditionally Jewish name. And Becketts nephew, who saw the play some years ago, reportedly said that it could have been written in Yiddish because the language fit so well with its themes.

Waiting is Jewish, Yassur told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after one of the Stockholm performances. Godot is very much part of the Jewish tradition of waiting. Jews have been waiting for the Messiah for 2,000 years. He is not coming, but they are still waiting.

Born in the 1930s in Iai, Romania, the same working-class city where Avraham Goldfaden had decades earlier established what became known as the first professional Yiddish theater troupe in the world, Yassur spoke Yiddish and performed in Yiddish theater as a child. After surviving a major pogrom in his city in 1941 and then the Holocaust, he moved to Israel in 1950, and later to New York.

It was only years later that he came back to working in his first language at New Yiddish Rep, a decision that he said was natural for him. But he said he doesnt see himself as a protector of Yiddish or have a mission of bringing Yiddish theater to life.

Yiddish will survive and protect itself. As long as the Jewish people survive, the Yiddish language will survive too, Yassur said.

While the play was written when millions of displaced people, including Yassur, were wandering across devastated Europe, it resonates with todays migration problems. Sweden has in recent yearsaccepted an influx of refugees, then dealt with challenges related to their absorption and a rise in far-right political activity aimed at rejecting immigrants.

The notion of displacement, cultural and linguistic, is a pan-European issue and Sweden has been affected by it too, says dramaturg Beata Hein Bennett. There is a line in Waiting for Godot where Estragon asks: Where do we come in? Vladimir answers: On our hands and knees.

The contested status of immigrants in Swedish society, where Jews were not so long ago a major refugee population, made a Yiddish performance of the play at the Royal Dramatic Theater even more resonant.

It is extremely important that a play in Yiddish was performed at the national stage, Oved Sheja said. That shows the theaters willingness to open up, to have diversity. And what is the essence of diversity if not this language, this play itself, the fact that it is performed by an ensemble from New York?

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Sweden's national theater stages its first ever Yiddish production J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

This January, New York City Opera (under the direction of Michael Capasso, General Director) will produce its latest world premiere of a new American opera, Ricky Ian Gordons THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, a co-production with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director, Dominick Balletta, Executive Director). With a libretto by Michael Korie, based on Giorgio Bassanis 1962 novel, THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS will be conducted by James Lowe, directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford, and will open on Wednesday, January 19 at Edmond J. Safra Hall in the Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS is set on the eve of World War II and tells the story of an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Continis, who believe they will be immune to the changes happening around them. As they make a gracious haven for themselves in their garden, walling out the unpleasantness of the world outside, Italy forms its alliance with Germany and begins to enforce anti-Semitic racial laws. But the Finzi-Continis discover too late that no one is immune, no one is untouchable.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS not only continues New York City Operas mission to produce new and important works by American composers, it will also continue NYCOs tradition of showcasing outstanding talent, said Mr. Capasso, adding I am very excited about our cast which includes many young and emerging artists in leading roles alongside established NYCO stalwarts.

We are proud to co-produce the world premiere of THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, by said Mr. Mlotek. This important new work illuminates an important part of Italian Jewish history, and sadly, its themes of discrimination and antisemitism still resonate in our world today.

Rachel Blaustein (Micl Finzi-Contini), Brian James Myer (Alberto Finzi-Contini), Mary Phillips (Mama), Franco Pomponi (Pap), Anthony Ciaramitaro (Giorgio at select performances) and Chris Carr (Giorgio at select performances) will head the cast of THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, which will feature production design by John Farrell, costume design by Ildiko Debreczeni, and lighting design by Susan Roth. The cast also includes Matt Ciuffitelli, Peter Kendall Clark, Sarah Heltzel, Spencer Hamlin, Kristee Haney, Robert Balonek, Gabe Ponichter, Violet Paris, and Meredith Krinke.

Tickets for this limited engagement, which will play eight performances only through Sunday, January 30, are available atNYTF.orgor by calling the box office at 855-449-4658.For additional information call 212-655-7653.

This January, composer RICKY IAN GORDON will see two of his works have their world premieres in New York. In addition to THE GARDEN OF FINZI-CONTINIS, Gordons INTIMATE APPAREL, with a libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her acclaimed play, will premiere at Lincoln Center Theater. Gordons other works include the operas The Grapes of Wrath, Ellen West, The House Without a Christmas Tree,27, Morning Star, A Coffin In Egypt, Rappahannock County, Green Sneakers, The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and Orpheus and Euridice. For theater, he has composed the music for the musicals Sycamore Trees,My Life with Albertine, andDream True. His honors include an Obie, the Helen Hayes Award, the AT&T Award, Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Music Theater Foundation Award), and the Richard Rodgers Award. Upcoming productions include the musicalPrivate Confessionswith playwright Richard Nelson.

Librettist-lyricist MICHAEL KORIEs librettos include: The Grapes of Wrath, Harvey Milk; Hoppers Wife; Wheres Dick; Kabbalah (music by Stewart Wallace); and the upcoming SuperMax (music also by Stewart Wallace). He wrote the lyrics to Scott Frankels music for the musicals Grey Gardens (Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Musical; Tony, Drama Desk, Grammy nominations; London Offie Award for Best Musical), War Paint (Drama Desk Award nomination), Far from Heaven, Happiness, and Doll (Ravinia Festival). He was also co-lyricist with Amy Powers Doctor Zhivago (music by Lucy Simon on Broadway, London and internationally).. He is the winner of a Marc Blitzstein Award, the Edward Kleban Prize, the Jonathan Larson Award, and the ASCAP Richard Rodgers Award. He serves on the Dramatists Guild Council where he is a mentor for their DGF Fellows Program, and teaches theater at Yale and Columbia. Upcoming projects include the lyrics for the new musical Flying Over Sunset, with a book by James Lapine and music by Tom Kitt, scheduled to open at Lincoln Center Theater in December.

Maestro JAMES LOWE, a Grammy-nominated music director and conductor, has appeared at Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera and Houston Grand Opera, where he recently ledLa bohmeandSweeney Todd.He made his European debut conductingCandideat the Thtre du Capitole in Toulouse and Opra National de Bordeaux. He arranged, orchestrated and conductedSongbird, a new adaptation of OffenbachsLa Pricholein the style of 1920s New Orleans jazz for the Glimmerglass Festival.On Broadway, Mr. Lowe was the music director and conductor of the recent revivals ofLes Misrables and Anything Goes. His U.S. national tour credits include the Cameron Mackintosh/National Theatre production ofMy Fair Lady (music director and conductor) of, The Light in the Piazza (conductor) and The Phantom of the Opera music (music supervisor) Mr. Lowe has appeared in concert with Sir Elton John, conducting his own orchestrations and choral arrangements of Eltons classic songs, as well as with singer-songwriter Randy Newman and the legendary Booker T. Jones. His arrangements have been performed by Joyce DiDonato (Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall), Isabel Leonard, Ailyn Prez and Nadine Sierra (Metropolitan Operas Three Divas at Versailles concert), as well as at the Glimmerglass Festival and Utah Opera.

RICHARD STAFFORD directed and choreographed NYCOs productions of Los Elementos, the double bill of Rameaus Pigmalion and Donizetti's Pigmalione, and choreographed NYCOs world premiere productions of Dear Erich, Stonewall. On Broadway, he was the choreographer for My Life, associate choreographer for Aspects of Love, and dance supervisor for Cats. Off-Broadway, he choreographed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at St. Clements and directed and choreographed Castle Walk for the New York Music Festival. Internationally he directed and choreographed The Full Monty and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Mexico City, Cats in Copenhagen, So Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro; and choreographed productions of Jesus Christ Superstar in Mexico City, Evita in Sydney; and Cats in Buenos Aires. He has also choreographed national tours of Cats, My Fair Lady and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. His awards include a Barrymore Award for outstanding choreography for La Cage aux Folles at Philadelphias Walnut Street Theatre.

Soprano RACHEL BLAUSTEIN (who will perform the role of Micl Finzi-Contini) will make her NYCO debut after performing this fall for the first time with Tulsa Opera as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. Her Chicago Opera Theater credits include roles in Taking Up Serpents, La Hija de Rappaccini, and their upcoming production of Carmen. Baritone BRIAN JAMES MYER (Alberto Finzi-Contini) created leading roles in two NYCO 2019 premieres: as young Erich in Ted Rosenthals jazz opera Dear Erich and as the schoolteacher Carlos in Iain Bell and Mark Campbells Stonewall. He has created other roles in new works for Florida Grand Opera, American Lyric Theatre, Opera San Jose, and Opera Las Vegas. Mezzo-soprano MARY PHILLIPS (Mamma) is closely associated with the music of Wagner having won acclaim singing many mezzo roles in the Ring cycle with Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera, and at the MET, where she has also performed in works by Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Strauss, Anton Dvorak and Philip Glass.

ABOUT NEW YORK CITY OPERA

Since its founding in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as The Peoples Opera, New York City Opera (NYCO) has been a critical part of the citys cultural life. During its history, New York City Opera launched the careers of dozens of major artists and presented engaging productions of both mainstream and unusual operas alongside commissions and regional premieres. The result was a uniquely American opera company of international stature. For more than seven decades, New York City Opera has maintained a distinct identity, adhering to its unique mission: affordable ticket prices, a devotion to American works, English-language performances, the promotion of up-and-coming American singers, and seasons of accessible, vibrant and compelling productions intended to introduce new audiences to the art form. Stars who launched their careers at New York City Opera include Plcido Domingo, Catherine Malfitano, Sherrill Milnes, Samuel Ramey, Beverly Sills, Tatiana Troyanos, Carol Vaness, and Shirley Verrett, among dozens of other great artists. New York City Opera has a long history of inclusion and diversity. It was the first major opera company to feature African American singers in leading roles (Todd Duncan as Tonio in Pagliacci, 1945; Camilla Williams in the title role in Madama Butterfly, 1946); the first to produce a new work by an African-American composer (William Grant Still, Troubled Island, 1949); and the first to have an African-American conductor lead its orchestra (Everett Lee, 1955). A revitalized City Opera re-opened in January 2016 with Tosca, the opera that originally launched the company in 1944. Outstanding productions during the four years since then include: the world premieres of Iain Bell and Mark Campbells Stonewall, which NYCO commissioned and developed, legendary director Harold Princes new production of Bernsteins Candide; Puccinis beloved La Fanciulla del West; and the New York premiere of Daniel Catns Florencia en el Amazonas the first in its pera en Espaol series. Subsequent pera en Espaol productions include the New York premiere of the worlds first mariachi opera, Jos Pepe Martinezs Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, Literess Los Elementos, and Piazzollas Mara de Buenos Aires. In addition to the world premiere of Stonewall, the productions in NYCOs Pride Initiative, which produces an LGBTQ-themed work each June during Pride Month, include the New York premiere of Pter Etvss Angels in America and the American premiere of Charles Wuorinens Brokeback Mountain. New York City Opera has presented such talents as Anna Caterina Antonacci and Aprile Millo in concert, as well as its own 75th Anniversary Concert in Bryant Park, one in a series of the many concerts and staged productions that it presents each year as part of the Parks summer performance series. City Opera's acclaimed summer series in Bryant Park bringsfree performances to thousandsof New Yorkers and visitors every year. New York City Opera continues its legacy with main stage performances at Jazz at Lincoln Centers Rose Theater and with revitalized outreach and education programs at venues throughout the city, designed to welcome and inspire a new generation of opera audiences. City Opera's acclaimed summer series in Bryant Park bringsfree performances to thousandsof New Yorkers and visitors every year.

New York City Opera:

http://www.nycopera.com

Instagram: @nycopera

facebook.com/NewYorkCityOpera

Twitter: @nycityopera

ABOUT THE NATIONAL YIDDISH THEATRE FOLKSBIENE

Now celebrating its 107th season, Tony Award-nominated and Drama Desk Award-winning National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) is the longest consecutively producing theatre in the U.S. and the world's oldest continuously operating Yiddish theatre company. NYTF, which presented the award-winning Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, directed by Joel Grey, to sold out audiences before it moved to Off-Broadway uptown, is in residence at the Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Zalmen Mlotek and Executive Director Dominick Balletta, NYTF is dedicated to creating a living legacy through the arts, connecting generations and bridging communities. NYTF aims to bring history to life by reviving and restoring lost and forgotten work, commissioning new work, and adapting pre-existing work for the 21st Century. Serving a diverse audience comprised of performing arts patrons, cultural enthusiasts, Yiddish-language aficionados, and the general public, the company presents plays, musicals, concerts, lectures, interactive educational workshops, and community-building activities in English and Yiddish, with English and Russian supertitles accompanying performances. NYTF provides access to a century-old cultural legacy and inspires the imaginations of the next generation to contribute to this valuable body of work. Learn more at http://www.nytf.org.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE A LIVING MEMORIAL TO THE HOLOCAUST

The Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is New Yorks contribution to the global responsibility to never forget. The Museum is committed to the crucial mission of educating diverse visitors about Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. The third largest Holocaust museum in the world and the second largest in North America, the Museum of Jewish Heritage anchors the southernmost tip of Manhattan, completing the cultural and educational landscape it shares with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage maintains a collection of more than 40,000 artifacts, photographs, documentary films, and survivor testimonies and contains classrooms, a 375-seat theater (Edmond J. Safra Hall), special exhibition galleries, a resource center for educators, and a memorial art installation, Garden of Stones, designed by internationally acclaimed sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. The Museum is the home of National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. The Museum receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit mjhnyc.org.

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New York City Opera to Present The World Premiere Of THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS - Broadway World

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on New York City Opera to Present The World Premiere Of THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS – Broadway World
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Posted By admin on November 25, 2021

JESSY LANZA This DJ and producer just released her contribution to the long-running DJ-Kicks mix series, blending her own tracks like the fizzy Seven 55 with cuts by other denizens of club musics cutting edge. She supports Caribou, the electro alter ego of the pop auteur Dan Snaith. Nov. 29, 8 p.m. Royale. 617-338-7699, royaleboston.com

CHVRCHES Screen Violence, which this Glasgow trio released earlier this year, throws back to the synthpop era in thrilling ways and sometimes those shocks come in horror-movie-evoking form, like the glassy, existentially bothered Final Girl. Dec. 1, 6:30 p.m. House of Blues. 888-693-2583, houseofblues.com/boston

MAURA JOHNSTON

Folk, World & Country

NEFESH MOUNTAIN Nefesh Mountain call themselves a bluegrass-Americana band, and they are certainly all that. But they also add an infusion to those forms that reflects their Jewish heritage and culture. Theyre currently celebrating that with their Hanukkah Holiday Tour, which stops in Rockport Saturday evening. Nov. 27, 8 p.m. $24- $29. Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main St., Rockport. 978-546-7391, http://www.rockportmusic.org

HOT TUNA/DAVID BROMBERG QUINTET A double-bill for the patchouli set: Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen come to town in Hot Tunas electric mode along with opener David Bromberg, who has been making a virtue of rootsy eclecticism since about the same time as Hot Tuna cranked up its version. Nov. 28, 8 p.m. $50-$65. The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St. 800-653-8000, http://www.ticketmaster.com

EMILY SCOTT ROBINSON Robinson is a singer-songwriter whose country-flecked folk music is starting to gain notice, which is attested to by the fact that John Prines record label, Oh Boy, saw fit to release her fine new album, American Siren, in partnership with her. Dec. 1, 8 p.m. $20. Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge. 617-492-7679, http://www.passim.org

STUART MUNRO

Jazz & Blues

CAROL OSHAUGHNESSY Acclaimed singer, actress, and funny woman OShaughnessy the doyenne of Boston cabaret has been compared with the likes of Bette Midler and Ethel Merman, though shes clearly one of a kind. Nov. 27, 7 p.m. Reservations required. Napoleon Cabaret Room, Club Caf, 209 Columbus Ave. 617-536-0966, http://www.clubcafe.com

SHANE ALLESSIO BAND The accomplished acoustic bassist and his ace band tenor saxophonist Bill Jones, guitarist Christopher M. Brown, and drummer Tom Arey will play original music from the new album Everything and Nothing, combining the compositional foundation of Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus with contemporary concepts. Nov. 28, 7 p.m. $10. The Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. http://www.lilypadinman.com

CCILE MCLORIN SALVANT WITH NEC STUDENT JAZZ ENSEMBLES This concert culminates the miraculously gifted singers New England Conservatory residency. A once-in-a-generation talent, McLorin Salvant combines the vocal virtuosity of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan with the actress-in-song directness of Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln. Dec. 2, 7:30 p.m. Free, tickets required. Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Ave. http://www.necmusic.edu/concerts

KEVIN LOWENTHAL

Classical

BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL Its a double bill of Telemann for BEMFs annual Thanksgiving chamber opera feast, as soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah and baritone Douglas Williams face off in the slapstick Pimpinone and soprano Amanda Forsythe takes center stage for the Greek mythology-inspired cantata Ino. Nov. 27, 8 p.m; Nov. 28, 3 p.m. Jordan Hall. 617-661-1812, http://www.bemf.org

CONRAD TAO Given the frequency with which hes appeared on local stages and livestreams, it seems impossible that pianist Conrad Tao hasnt made his Celebrity Series headlining debut yet, but that is in fact the case. Program to feature music by Bach, Beethoven, Robert Schumann, John Adams, Jason Eckardt, and the performer himself. Virtual tickets also available. Dec. 1, 8 p.m. Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge. http://www.celebrityseries.org

HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY: BACH CHRISTMAS Making his H+H debut, French conductor Raphal Pichon leads holiday music by two Bachs (J.S. and C.P.E.) and Giovanni Gabrieli. Dec. 3, Saint Cecilia Parish, Boston; Dec. 4 and 5, First Church in Cambridge. 617-266-3605, http://www.handelandhaydn.org

A.Z. MADONNA

ARTS

Theater

THE LAST FIVE YEARS Jason Robert Browns semiautobiographical musical about the dissolution of a marriage is a thing of intricacy and delicacy, with much depending on the execution a challenge director Leigh Barrett more than meets, with an invaluable contribution from set designer Jenna McFarland Lord. Scene by alternating scene, Barrett maps the musicals emotional trajectory with a combination of subtlety and lucidity. Her stars, the real-life husband and wife Jared Troilo and Kira Troilo, acquit themselves not just admirably but beautifully, in terms of both story and song. Through Dec. 12. Presented by Lyric Stage Company of Boston. 617-585-5678, http://www.lyricstage.com

THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE Engulfed in scandal after her affair with a married man becomes public, with the Nobel Prize committee asking her not to attend the ceremony at which she will be awarded her second Nobel, the pioneering physicist seeks refuge with her close friend, the British engineer and suffragist Hertha Ayrton. As Marie, Lee Mikeska Gardner again demonstrates her gift for inhabiting not just a characters behavior but even, seemingly, her thought process. Debra Wise delivers a briskly commanding performance as Hertha. Lauren Gundersons play is directed by Bryn Boice. Through Dec. 12. Presented by The Nora@Central Square Theater. A Catalyst Collaborative@MIT production. At Central Square Theater, Cambridge. Also available on-demand from Nov. 28-Dec. 26. 617-576-9278, http://www.CentralSquareTheater.org

ALL IS CALM: THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE OF 1914 A documentary musical inspired by episodes during the first year of World War I, when German and Allied troops emerged from their trenches and shared a Christmas celebration, complete with the singing of carols, exchanges of gifts like cigarettes and plum puddings, and an impromptu game of soccer. Written by Peter Rothstein, with vocal arrangements by Erick Lichte and Timothy C. Takach. Directed by Ilyse Robbins. Music direction by Matthew Stern. Featuring Christopher Chew, David Jiles Jr., Michael Jennings Mahoney, Bryan Miner, and Gary Thomas Ng. Nov. 26-Dec. 23. Greater Boston Stage Company, Stoneham. 781-279-2200, http://www.greaterbostonstage.org

THE RISE AND FALL OF HOLLY FUDGE Karen MacDonald stars as Carol, a single mother renowned for the Holly fudge, named after her daughter, that she makes each holiday season. Amid the pandemic Christmas of 2020, Holly (Kristian Espiritu), now in her 20s, springs a surprise on her mother by coming out to Carol and bringing home her girlfriend (Eliza Simpson). Meanwhile, noisy protests are escalating against the city councilor who lives across the street. World premiere of Trista Baldwins play is directed by Courtney Sale. Live onstage Nov. 26-Dec. 12. Then available as video-on-demand Dec. 16-26. Production by Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell. 978-654-4678, http://www.mrt.org

DON AUCOIN

Dance

MIKKO NISSINENS THE NUTCRACKER After more than a year and a half, Boston Ballet returns to live performance at the Opera House with its most beloved production. Tis the season we let those visions of sugarplums dance in our heads, and this lavish, beautifully constructed production promises to bring those visions to life with vivid dancing, opulent sets, and soaring live music. Nov. 26-Dec. 26. $39 and up. Citizens Bank Opera House. http://www.bostonballet.org

METHUEN BALLET ENSEMBLES THE NUTCRACKER Methuen Ballet Ensemble, under the artistic direction of Vanessa Rae Voter, has staged the popular ballet for more than 25 years, creating more and more elaborate productions to showcase both student and professional performers. This year, the company welcomes guest artists from Festival Ballet Providence Eugenia Zinovieva and Mamuka Kikalishvili in the roles of Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier. Nov. 27, noon and 4 p.m., $34. Dana Center at St. Anselm College, Manchester, N.H. https://tickets.anselm.edu/eventperformances.asp?evt=272

HANOVER THEATRE AND CONSERVATORY NUTCRACKER When Ballet Arts Worcester became a part of the Hanover Theatre & Conservatory three years ago, the company began envisioning a whole new look for its annual semi-professional production of The Nutcracker. This year, it all comes to fruition with a vivid and whimsical new design by Broadway veteran Christine Miller that artistic director Jennifer Agbay calls a real-life pop-up book come to life with childlike charm. Nov. 26-28. $39-$52. Hanover Theatre & Conservatory, Worcester. http://www.hanovertheatre.org

KAREN CAMPBELL

Visual Arts

WENDY RED STAR: APSALOOKE: CHILDREN OF THE LARGE-BEAKED BIRD Installed in Mass MoCAs educational galleries, Red Stars exhibition has much to teach. Its lessons are both specifically about the 1880 Crow tribe delegation that traveled from their reservation in Montana to negotiate with the federal government, concerned with settler encroachment violating treaty agreements and, more broadly, the bad faith that underpinned those negotiations and countless others like it for decades. Government promises disappeared in a whisper, along with millions of acres; delegations were toured to sprawling military installations as a tacit or else. They were also made to sit for portraits for posterity, government officials thought, a record of a people soon to be no more. It didnt work out that way, and Native American tribes like the Crow have traveled a gauntlet of adversity to thrive in the 20th century. Red Stars work reclaims those portraits, infusing them with dignity and history through dense hand annotations, making vibrant and whole a series of pictures intended at the source to be partial and fading. Through May. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams. 413-664-4481, http://www.massmoca.org

JEFFREY GIBSON: INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE Gibsons career survey at the Brooklyn Museum in 2020 fell victim to on-again, off-again pandemic closures, so this show is a welcome second chance. Gibson, whose work blends the aesthetics and motifs of his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage with his identity as a queer man, champions resistance on both fronts, making space for his twice-marginalized self with provocative, often-spectacular pieces that span traditional fabric and textiles, sculpture, and video. Through March 13. deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln. 781-259-8355, thetrustees.org/place/decordova

DIEDRICK BRACKENS AND KATHERINE BRADFORD The Carpenter Center at Harvard returned from its 18-month COVID hiatus at the end of last month with a serendipitous flourish: Painter Katherine Bradford, one of the two artists featured in its re-inaugural exhibition, had just been named the 2021 winner of the annual $35,000 Rappaport Prize a month before. The prize helps pique interest in the show, which shouldnt need it: Bradfords work is a natural pair with Diedrick Brackenss intricate textile pieces, both of them radiating oblique, seductive mystery. Through Dec. 23. The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University. 24 Quincy St., Cambridge. 617-496-5387, carpenter.center

MURRAY WHYTE

WOOD QUILTS: WORKS BY LAURA PETROVICH-CHENEY Quilts can be like comforting pieces of home, made from familiar scraps. After Hurricane Sandy demolished Petrovich-Cheneys childhood home in New Jersey, she thought to make a quilt from the recovered wood. Now, she salvages wood from churches and barns destroyed by natural disasters, measures it with a quilting ruler, shapes it with a bandsaw, and fits the painted, chipped, and weathered scraps into intricate patterns. Through Dec. 31. New England Quilt Museum, 18 Shattuck St., Lowell. 978-452-4207, http://www.neqm.org

CATE McQUAID

EVENTS

Comedy

LAURA SEVERSE Severse was aghast one day when her husband told her their 11-year-old son had Googled Kim Kardashians butt. I said, You had the talk right? she remembers. Hes like, Yeah, yeah! Totally had the talk. Showed him how to clear the history. Nov. 26-27, 8 p.m. $20. Nicks Comedy Stop, 200 Warrenton St. http://www.nickscomedystop.com

SEAN SULLIVAN When on a diet, its tough to just buy a drink at Dunkin, says Sullivan. Id be like, Hi, can I get a large iced tea, black, no sugar, no lemon. Theyd be like, Sure. Do you want 17 doughnuts for a dollar? Were having a special where for $1 well give you 17 doughnuts, just for today, well also give you that dollar. Nov. 27, 8 p.m. $20. The Comedy Scene, 2 Patriot Place, Foxborough. 508-203-2100, http://www.thecomedyscene.club

TOTAL LOSS: A COMEDY SHOW ABOUT DEATH Will Martin had intended to record this one-man show, the moving and sometimes inappropriate story of the deaths of his brother and best friend, as a special in 2020. Those plans got scuttled, and now hes recording it as his comedy swan song, as he intends this to be his final stand-up show. Nov. 27, 8 p.m. $18. The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville. http://www.therockwell.org

NICK A. ZAINO III

Family

FALL FAMILY SCAVENGER HUNT What better excuse to get outside after a Thanksgiving feast than to go on a scavenger hunt? In this self-guided scavenger hunt, families will hike beautiful trails, learn about the outdoors, and have the chance to win prizes along the way. Registration is not required. Nov. 26, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Hale Reservation, 80 Carby St., Westwood. Hale1918.org

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS Ring in the holidays with a free photo with Santa, steaming hot cocoa, and other fun activities like face painting and ornament making. Guests are encouraged to bring unwrapped toys to fill their toy bin to support local families in need and make the holiday season a little brighter. While youre there, dont forget to check out the holiday tree market, either. Nov. 27, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free. Suffolk Downs, 525 William F McClellan Hwy. atsuffolkdowns.com

INAUGURAL HOLIDAY SHIP LIGHTING The wooden play ship will be illuminated for the first time ever with a special visit from Kris Kringle himself, who will be arriving by boat. Tuscan Kitchen and Flour Bakery will provide hot cocoa, and Ball in the House will be performing holiday classics with Seaports very own Betty the Yeti. Nov. 27, 4-6 p.m. Free. Martins Park, 64 Sleeper St. eventbrite.com

FROG POND SKATING SPECTACULAR Skate into the winter season with U.S. Olympian Scott Hamilton and Skate America and US champion Matt Aaron. The Skating Spectacular takes place before the Boston Common tree lighting and features national and international veteran skaters for a night full of fun. Be sure to stick around to see the Common lit up. Dec. 2, 5-6 p.m. Free with admission. Frog Pond on Boston Common, 38 Beacon St. bostonfrogpond.com

RIANA BUCHMAN

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Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond - The Boston Globe

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Posted By admin on November 23, 2021

Card game The Game of Old Maid with anti-Semitic playing cards, c. 1920 ( German Historical Museum)

TheGerman Historical Museumin Berlin announced the acquisition of an archive of some 15,000 objects and ephemera related to the history of anti-Semitism, ranging from anti-Semitic postcards and playing cards to concentration camp currency and food ration cards. Amassed over the course of three decades by the late German civil engineer Wolfgang Haney, who lost family in the Holocaust, the items chart the development of anti-Semitism in Europe since the late 19th century. They have been acquired for their significance as a historical record; as an educational bulwark against present-day anti-Semitism, which ison the rise in Germany; and to keep the items from dispersing throughout the free market, where potential buyers may well have anti-Semitic motives not to mention little interest in connecting personal or looted objects with their rightful owners.

The acquisition was supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, the Federal Minister for Education and Research, and the State Cultural Foundation. The Haney Collection contains historically unique testimonies that show National Socialists oppression and crimes against humanity and the gradual escalation of the racist terror system, said Monika Grtters, Germanys Culture Minister, in a statement. The collection is such a valuable bundle for research into antisemitism, which is currently challenging us again.

Haney, who was born in Berlin to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, witnessed the ascent of the Nazi party as a child and experienced its devastating effects. He was forced to leave high school, and in 1943, a bombing destroyed his familys home. Much of his extended family perished after being sent to Lodz and then Auschwitz. His mother evaded deportation by hiding in the woods outside of Berlin, while Haney who was spared deportation due to his fathers connections aided her. After the war, Haney went on to become a municipal civil engineer in his birth city. He had been a numismatist from a young age, but it wasnt until his retirement, in 1991, that he turned to an unusual new collecting category: anti-Semitic material.

Haney spoke about his motivation for collecting these painful items withWiden the Circle,an anti-prejudice nonprofit that honored him with the Obermayer German Jewish History Award for Distinguished Service. I must do it I must do something to remember all the people who died in our family, Haney recalled thinking. The Germans must say what they have done to the Jews.

To build his collection, Haney combed antique stores and flea markets throughout Germany, ultimately spending over 1 million (~$1.13 million). Along the way, he wrote several books on the history of the Holocaust and loaned objects from his holdings to exhibitions at a number of German and Polish institutions, as well as the Imperial War Museum in London and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. In 2006, he was awarded the Berlin Order of Merit, the citys highest honor.

In a statement on the museum acquisition, Markus Hilgert, General Secretary of the Kulturstiftung der Lnder, described Haneys collecting efforts as pioneering work in the investigation of crimes committed by National Socialism and the persecution of Jews.

No museum or archive has compiled such objects in a comparable way, Hilgert added.

An essay by Fritz Backhaus, the German Historical Museums Director of Collections, separates Haneys collection into three parts. One segment focuses on the growth ofanti-Semitism around the Wilhelmine Period, when German mass media was taking off. Bigoted images and sentiments became naturalized as they were insidiously disseminated through low-cost postcards, posters, leaflets, and stamps. A second part features items from the Third Reich, including advertisements for the notorious Nazi propaganda filmJud Sss(1940), photographs taken in Jewish ghettoes, letters and diaries written at concentration camps, and a variety of bureaucratic ephemera such as food ration cards for Jews and special banknotes used at the camps. The third segment consists of items from the years after the war, demonstrating the ongoing presence of anti-Semitism in right-wing extremist groups and considering how the Holocaust has been portrayed, misrepresented, or erased in the media.

Due to legal and ethical questions about the origin of the objects, the German Historical Museum said in a statement that the acquisition will require additional research. Regarding personal documents of Holocaust victims, the museum will collaborate with theArolsen Archives, an international organization founded to trace victims of Nazi persecution that has built a massive archive over the years. The museum will also consult with theClaims Conference, which deals with restitution and compensation for victims of Nazi persecution, to determine next steps with regards to scraps of Torah scrolls, which German soldiers stole from synagogues and used as wrapping paper.

Items from the Haney Collection acquisition will feature in a forthcoming permanent exhibition at the German Historical Museum, which will incorporate object research by the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University, Berlin.

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An Archive Traces the History of Anti-Semitism Across Europe - Hyperallergic

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Posted By admin on November 23, 2021

It is popular, in these febrile times, to hound somebody out of professional existence for historical misdeeds. But we need to recognise that digging for dirt in peoples past lives, a phenomenon known today as offence archaeology, is a self-defeating exercise. Rafiqs own unforgivable remarks do not temper the pain of team-mates referring to him as a P---, or negate the vital service he has performed in bringing institutional racism at Yorkshire to light.

Similarly, the intolerance of which he was guilty at 19 should not define the person he is at 30. This same benefit of the doubt was granted to Robinson, and it needs extending to Rafiq, too. Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has accepted his apology, her response conveying a valuable lesson. Azeem Rafiq has suffered terribly at the hands of racists in cricket, so he will well understand the hurt this exchange will cause to Jews who have supported him, she said. We have no reason to believe he is not completely sincere.

Rafiq has evidently done much to improve his character these last 11 years. One of his most telling contributions at DCMS was to reinforce the significance of education if cricket is ever to put its house in order. For it is the lack of even the most basic education on race that unites so much of the hideous behaviour by young players.

It is central to Rafiqs story of how, as a 15-year-old Muslim, he had red wine poured down his throat in a team car. It is the reason why Alex Hales already forced to deny that he called his black dog Kevin, copying a racist label allegedly used by Gary Ballance was pictured in blackface at a party in 2009. It is why Jack Brooks, the Somerset bowler, kept referring to Cheteshwar Pujara as Steve, despite his Indian team-mates insistence that he did not like the name. And it is why Rafiq, the key whistleblower, imagined as a teenager that anti-Semitism was somehow permissible. The efforts to discredit him on this basis are obscuring the key point here: that crickets moment of enlightenment cannot come a moment too soon.

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Azeem Rafiq's anti-Semitism does not undermine his claim that cricket is racist - it just proves he is part of the problem - Telegraph.co.uk

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Posted By admin on November 23, 2021

Is RDA a Jew-hating group?

You seem to be a long way behind the rest of us mate - Every group should be an anti-Jew group because they want you exterminated. Thats fact.

At no point in its history has RDA confronted, or even fully acknowledged, the use anti-Semites have made of the organisation. The RDA castigates outlets who report on its tolerance of neo-Nazis in its milieu as propagandists for the Victorian government. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic incidents connected with the anti-lockdown movement continue to occur from stickers claiming Jews committed the September 11 attacks, to Judaicised depictions of Dan Andrews with horns and a skullcap appearing at RDA-affiliated rallies.

Craig Kelly has not clearly acknowledged or spoken out against the antisemitism among his affiliates.Credit:SMH

Craig Kelly has taken a page from the RDA book, adopting a similar combination of disinterest and outrage when asked about the spread of anti-Semitism among his affiliates. In September, Plus61J brought the issue to Craig Kellys attention, providing him with a cache of evidence about how neo-Nazis are endorsing him and using the freedom movement to endanger the safety of the Australian Jewish community. We asked if he would disavow endorsements received from such groups. In his response, Kelly stated: I have many close friends that are Jewish and declared that any insinuation that he had any connection to anti-Semitism whatsoever was false and highly defamatory.

Together, RDA and the UAP have sent a dangerous message to extremists in the anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown community: you can deny the Holocaust, you can promote conversations on the Jewish question, you can share articles from neo-Nazi websites, and you can bring racist placards to our rallies and we will not reject you. We may not share your views, but we will bring you onto our channel, we will allow you to use our online spaces for recruitment, and we will deny in the strongest possible terms that you have any presence in our movement.

Both the RDA and the UAP have denounced political violence and urged protestors to be peaceful. Such denouncements, while welcome, have not been enough to alleviate the concerns of the Australian Jewish community. It is not unspecified violence that is the issue, but a very particular form of demagoguery and fanaticism that shows few signs of abatement.

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There is nothing racist or fascist about questioning vaccine mandates and lockdowns. These are new measures, new shared experiences, and they have understandably generated public debate. However, it is in the interests of all involved for the leaders of the anti-lockdown movement to emphatically disassociate themselves from the neo-Nazis in their wings.

If RDA or the UAP were to release a statement acknowledging and condemning the spread of anti-Semitism in their movement the effects would be immeasurable. These two actors are the darlings of the freedom movement, with the largest audiences and the most engaged followings. A strong signal from them would disrupt the pipeline of recruitment and push the anti-Semites back into the shadows.

Without intervention, the road of escalation leads only one way. It has no natural limits. It is the nature of hate groups to push their demands as far as external conditions will allow. What happens next will depend on Kelly and the moderate wing of the anti-lockdown movement.

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Darlings of the freedom movement must denounce the anti-Semites in their wings - The Sydney Morning Herald

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