Arts Guide

Guide to the Arts

James Besser — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:07:00 +0000

Arts Guide

Your weekly guide to what's hot in the arts in the New York area

The Buzz: What's Hot in the Arts

LABA FESTIVAL WITH A ‘JEWISH SPIN’

Jewish arts music The arts theater

‘Bobbie’And ‘Zaide’s’ Triumph, On Canvas

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:11:18 +0000

Arts Guide

Steve Lipman

Young Julie Mauskop first heard stories from “Bobbie” and “Zaide” about their wartime experiences in the Holocaust when she was about 10.

Mostly, Toba and Marton Mauskop, who survived Auschwitz, moved to the Ukraine after World War II and immigrated to the United States in 1979, talked about growing up before the Nazis came.

“It was really hard for them to talk about” what happened to them during the Shoah, says Mauskop, now 23, living and teaching in Tel Aviv. “They got very upset.”

Biblical Psychology

Dara Levin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:35:07 +0000

Arts Guide

Gabrielle Birkner

Staff Writer

Ask clinical psychologist Marsha Mirkin, and she’ll tell you that the essential psychology textbook was written more than 3,000 years before the birth of pioneering analyst Sigmund Freud. Freud may have deemed religion “a mass delusion,” but Mirkin contends that the Divine parables of the Torah can provide unrivaled insights into human behavior.

A Jazz Man’s Roots Music

Gabriela — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:01:29 +0000

Arts Guide

by Robert Goldblum

Managing Editor

Of the elite jazz musicians working in New York, pianist Bruce Barth is probably the only one who can claim a klezmer pedigree.

Barth, 46, who has emerged as one of his generation’s most compelling pianists and will share the stage Monday at Merkin Hall with the legendary Cedar Walton in a two-piano duet, developed an ear for klezmer in high school in Harrison, N.Y. It was then that his brother introduced him to a clique of New York bluegrass musicians, including mandolinist/clarinetist Andy Statman and banjoist Tony Trischka.

Threshold Of A New Age

Gabriela — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:50:23 +0000

Arts Guide

by Robert Goldblum

Staff Writer

Borders are alluring and charged places. In Orson Welles’ classic film “A Touch of Evil,” a psychological study of life at the border, the place where America and Mexico meet is full of shadows. It’s hard to get a fix on it. The old rules don’t seem to apply at the border, and a new reality is born of the collision of two worlds.

A Jazz Man’s Roots Music

Gabriela — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:35:48 +0000

Arts Guide

by Robert Goldblum

Managing Editor

Of the elite jazz musicians working in New York, pianist Bruce Barth is probably the only one who can claim a klezmer pedigree.

Threshold Of A New Age

Gabriela — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:24:45 +0000

Arts Guide

by Robert Goldblum

Staff Writer

A Classroom For Principals

Gabriela — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:51:43 +0000

Arts Guide

by Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem - While their students savored every minute of summer vacation, an international group of senior educators spent part of their holiday break in an Israeli classroom. A varied mix of Hebrew day school professionals attended the Principal's Seminar on Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Bar Ilan University's Lookstein Center, which ran from July 10-24. Held partially on campus, partially in Jerusalem, the seminar afforded principals the ordinarily rare opportunity to share ideas with their peers, learn new strategies and assess their schools' strengths and weaknesses.

A Friend In The Holy Land

Gabriela — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:49:21 +0000

Arts Guide

by Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — When his parents began to suffer health problems that made it difficult for them to continue living in Israel, Bruce Markowitz got busy.

Believing that his folks might have to return to the United States, he contacted a number of New York-area geriatric care-management agencies that arrange everything from meals on wheels and home medical visits to property management and round-the-clock nursing care.

A House Divided, A House United

Gabriela — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:46:33 +0000

Arts Guide

by Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Ramle — The industrial zone of this working-class Jewish-Arab city between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is home to numerous car-repair shops, gas stations and factories. The streets are lined with broken glass and litter, the sidewalks with fancy cars awaiting a muffler or tune-up.

Acts Of Creation

Gabriela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:55:10 +0000

Arts Guide

by Daniel Belasco

Staff Writer

Judaism can come in the most unexpected of packages. At first glance, a nearly seven-foot-tall painting of a single thick black stripe running vertically across a black canvas signifies nothing but itself: a profound meditation on color and form. Yet Barnett Newman titled his 1949 painting "Abraham," after his father, who had died two years earlier, and the Jewish patriarch.

It's A Girl Thing

Gabriela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:51:32 +0000

Arts Guide

by Daniel Belasco

Staff Writer

For over 20 years, Elizabeth Swados has worked with youngsters of all backgrounds in musicals such as her '70s Broadway hit "Runaways." And she has collaborated with others to compose liturgical music like her '95 album "Bible Women." But one group was noticeably missing.

"I never worked with people who had the same background," she told The Jewish Week in a telephone interview. "I wanted to see what teenage middle-class Jewish girls had to say about sexuality, body image, relationships, and the influence of Jewish tradition."

A Lesson Of Tolerance

Gabriela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:48:36 +0000

Arts Guide

by Daniel Belasco

Staff Writer

Speaking before several dozen people munching on babaganoush and taboule and chatting away in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and English, the Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury invoked the hallowed name of Al-Andalus.

"And if we do not find it, we can build it in our hearts," he said at the reception for a literary event last week in the Soho studio of Iraqi-born sculptor Oded Halahmy.

Lens Of The City

Gabriela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:45:42 +0000

Arts Guide

by Daniel Belasco

Staff Writer

Hoping to stir up a little debate on a somewhat taboo topic, art critic Max Kozloff has mounted a historical exhibition of street photography that dares to define a Jewish aesthetic. "New York: Capital of Photography," at The Jewish Museum through September, argues that there're two kinds of New York photography: Jewish and gentile.

"It's totally provocative," Kozloff says, chuckling to himself during an interview at the press opening.

A Tale Of Two Egos

Gabriela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:37:54 +0000

Arts Guide

by Daniel Belasco

Special to The Jewish Week

At the height of their contest for Cezanne's mantle as the leader of the French avant-garde, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso agreed to swap pictures. Over the previous two years, Paris' leading provocateur Matisse had steadily ceded ground to the newcomer Picasso, until the fall of 1907, when the two men were deadlocked.